Last year I received an invitation (thanks, Bruce Watson!) to speak to the Vancouver Historical Society. We chose a nice general topic – 50 years of local government – and then, as January 26 approached, I realized I actually had to come up with something.
So here it is: some general observations on the nature of civic politics in this city, with recollections, anecdotes and opinions scattered in. I’ve added my notes below – but they were just a rough guide for a somewhat extemporaneous talk.
Basic role of municipal government.
Vancouver exceptionalism: The Charter and Parties
1930s-1960s: The NPA Coalition
- closing of the greenfield frontier
- end of the clubhouse
1972: Centrist Coalition of TEAM
- an alliance of business, academia and activists
- social movements of the late 60s
- Jane Jacobism
- Freeway fight
1980s: Fractioning of the Left
- low growth and Expo: the beginning of the international city
1990s: Gordon Campbell’s New Centrist Coalition
- Vancouverism: Politicians, planners and shapers of the city
- megaprojects and preservation
- Nixon in China: How the unlikely do the unexpected
2000s: Closing of the brownfield frontier and the tidal wave of wealth
- fractioning by personality
- The illusion and preservation of single-family nrighbourhoods
- density, equity and globalism
2010s: Regional Shifts
- leadership, consensus and the Livable Region
- provincial distraction and redirection
In my experience, dating back to my 1940’s school years VANCOUVER has always been known as a world class city.
Indeed, I had a job lined up as a tea planter in Bengal before my Dad, horrified, staked me to CANADA. Needless to say there was only one destination in my mind.
And, of course, I choose the hard way to get here: ocean liner across to New York, Greyhound across the US, New York, Chicago, Salt Lake City, Boise, Seattle arriving almost mid-night May 23, 1951 Douglas (not Blaine) BC: Bob McGrath, Greyhound’s bus driver, got me into the, then, Alcaza Hotel.
Phew, thanq God I didn’t land up in India!
That Greyhound trip was something: talking to everyone, real cowboys in Cheyenne, even watching a military marriage break-up on the back seat! Everyone, on the bus, had some idea of Vancouver!
For a couple of years I lived in Mexico City, another world-class city and in every way different to Vancouver: still everyone knew the place from whence I came.
And from those years I do not know what makes a world class city. It certainly isn’t size.
I suspect it is a self-promoted, chamber-of-commerce-like, title that becomes generally, and sometimes unwittingly, accepted or why would anyone bother to dispute the locals’ need for fame!
I have lived on Nanaimo’s downtown water front now since returning from DF in 1998. I doubt anyone would call Nanaimo a world class city, except me!