The Greek gods, who enjoy cruel fun – look what they did to Sisyphus! – have conspired to make this my last shot at the Oct. 20 West Van elections.
My next scheduled yakking is on the eve of the vote. Policy, which I strongly endorse, is that election comments then are forbidden: No time for anyone to fling back responses.
As stated in May, I back the three councillors who voted against the new edifices on Park Royal Shopping Centre: Christine Cassidy, now mayoral candidate. Shrewd 22-year veteran Bill Soprovich. Well-brained Peter Lambur. All heavy on “neighbourhoods first,” as Lambur’s signs proclaim. All against the Santa Monicazizing of our fragile landscape.
The rest? Harder. Nora Gambioli voted with the angels against the Grosvenor cruise-ship lookalike, six and a half years in the making and still in traffic-snarling gestation (interesting if its popularity were tested in an Angus Reid poll).
So did Craig Cameron, who gleefully looks forward to our lunch at my favourite Downtown restaurant, the Shabusen, on my lost bet that he’d run for mayor this time around. My suspicion is he now muses that maybe he should have.
But Gambioli and Cameron – inconsistently? – joined Mayor Michael Smith and Mary-Ann Booth in supporting the widely resisted Park Royal expansion. This small business-stifling giant, about as un-level a playing field as can be imagined, has the ultimate backing of indescribably rich Ismaili Muslim leader Aga Khan. Booth is now running a sleek mayoral campaign against Cassidy and former – and also well-heeled – mayor Mark Sager.
The revelation since Sager’s late mayoral bid that the Law Society of B.C. has him before a discipline committee, for an alleged breach of its rules, can hardly help his campaign.
And Booth wants to move on, far on, from recusing herself years ago from the Grosvenor council vote because her lawyer husband was a negotiator for the Grosvenors – a family wealthy beyond the dreams of good old-fashioned avarice.
Sager and Booth look like ideological big-development allies – thus political enemies clawing for the same voters. Acid from Booth’s website: “Shall we hold ‘rallies’ such as the ‘Citizens’ Town Hall Meeting held on June 7 at the Kay Meek Centre, chaired by Mr. Sager? I attended that meeting, but found it less than strategic and largely unappealing. ... Almost four months have passed and what has been the result? Yes, Mr. Sager became a last-minute candidate for mayor, but other than that?”
A Sun story about subsidized housing – for WV employees, some, Agent Cp62 protests, with $100,000 incomes – quoted, with photo, only candidate Booth. Very interesting.
Back to council contenders. I favour, and not to be taken to the bank (especially the one I’ve been quarrelling with), Sharon Thompson – not just because she’d have the only gleaming white Vespa motor scooter in council parking spaces. She’s one of David Marley’s stillborn, then resurrected Phoenix Party, as I call it. Others are Jim Finkbeiner, Gabrielle Loren and Marcus Wong.
Kate Manvell and Heather Mersey are of the Christine Cassidy ilk, so earn a star. David Jones is an earnest aspirant. Beyond definite choices Lambur and Soprovich, my small mind is yet to be made up.
School board? Easy. The present board members voted unanimously for SOGI. So I’ll vote unanimously against them. Newcomers Lynne Block and Charlotte Burns should be grilled in the next two weeks for their stand on SOGI (parents, you’ll never know what’s being taught and left untaught behind classroom doors).
Education Minister Rob Fleming sneered at the surprisingly tough opposition to SOGI, a concoction of something called The ARC Foundation and the leftist education establishment, as “a side-show distraction.” Begone, Fleming.
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Know what? I’ve heard “off the record” and “don’t quote me” more often than in any election I’ve experienced.
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And speaking of the Aga Khan again: If you have jaws to drop, prepare to drop them now. He’s receiving no less than three honorary degrees – from the University of B.C., Simon Fraser and the University of Calgary. Astonishing coincidences, no?
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Swell party! Last Sunday 100-odd patients, some third generation, crowded Horseshoe Bay’s Docs on the Bay clinic to mark the retirement of highly popular Dr. Suzanne Langley. Her husband is notable too – prominent palliative care MD Paul Sugar.
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North Vancouver’s much-travelled radio journalist Philip Till sends grand emails, and is a vigorous exponent of sick-making dishes. As witness this:
“Just spent a glorious, high-temperature month puttering around Turkey. … For ignoramuses and North Shore political proponents and lovers of the ubiquitous B.C. obsession with the alleged benefits of density, I would recommend a visit to Istanbul. Fifteen million people live in claustrophobically humid and eyeball-to-eyeball close proximity.
“Had scheduled a humble luncheon on the Bosphorus with some friendly Turks. Was looking forward to grilled baby mullet and a bowl of ishkembe (bubbling, boiling pungent tripe soup splashed with lashings of fresh garlic and vinegar). Alas, it was all rather a letdown, as the 10-km round-trip drive from our centrally located hotel to the restaurant took a fumes-belching, lung-choking total of four hours. Conclusion: socially engineered density stinks (literally).”
Editor’s note: Trevor Lautens is an opinion columnist. His opinions are his own. The North Shore News does not endorse election candidates.
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