The great yearn to leave great monuments. The pharaohs left the pyramids.
I’d rhapsodize on, but space is painfully tight. Leap to West Vancouver Mayor Michael Smith. My nomination for his legacy monument is Klee Wyck.
Fairness! Give discredit where it’s due: Decades of town hall neglect. Brent Richter reported last month in this paper, and Mike Wakefield’s photo shockingly illustrated, the scandal of this bequest to WV. An excellently crafted editorial scorched the municipality for its appalling inaction. Arts activist Ingunn Kemble also didn’t pussyfoot, ending with this devastating indictment: “If you ever consider donating a piece of property to West Vancouver for a specified purpose, don’t do it.”
Timeline. 1960: Dr. Ethlyn Trapp and WV enter a trust specifying Klee Wyck’s uses. Fast forward to April 2004: A WV cultural report says: “Klee Wyck is available for rental to a variety of cultural groups for their activities, as well as being the home to DramaWorks, a group of theatre arts instructors who provide creative training for children and youth. It is also used by the Klee Wyck Carvers, the West Vancouver Sketch Club and Sol Maya Glass Blowing.” 2005-11: Pam Goldsmith-Jones is mayor. 2012-18: Michael Smith is mayor.
Did the serious neglect begin on the watch of then-mayor Goldsmith-Jones, now MP for West Vancouver- Sunshine Coast-Sea-to-Sky Country? Asked. Her reply in part: “At that time, the glassblower Sol Maya occupied a successful studio on the grounds … and DramaWorks was running. The house, however, was in poor repair when I became mayor and as we were building the Kay Meek Centre, we felt the best thing to do was to move DramaWorks to the studio theatre and close the house for safety reasons.”
I emailed Mayor Smith: “You have been CEO for nearly eight years. During that time, what measures did you take, what expenditures did you direct staff to make, to preserve, maintain or restore this historic site?”
None, if silence speaks. Instead Smith listed arts priorities – “the Ferry Building, the Silk Purse, the museum, as well as Klee Wyck are all in need of attention” – of “a facilities inventory … condition assessments … a long term plan … an asset levy. … . We intend to provide the necessary funding to make that happen but it was necessary to have an overall look at what we had and what is needed first.”
A rebuke in a letter to council, name blacked out: “This [North Shore News] article is the tip of the iceberg ... I have sat on committee after committee and review after review for arts facilities collecting endless opinions and possibilities. … After more than 20 years we are still collecting data. It is pure and simple neglect.”
Why? In fabulously rich West Van? Top marks to the mayor for quick reply to my requests. When he took office in 2010, he writes, there was “a net financial asset shortfall of $4.6 million. At our 2017 year-end we had a surplus of $23.1 million.” Director of corporate services Mark Chan responded that community asset contributions from the massive Grosvenor project alone were $11,336,000. Meanwhile Klee Wyck – remembered by Peggy Stortz, who ran the DramaWorks program, quoted by Richter, as “a dear little place” – rots.
The money’s there. If Klee Wyck weren’t nestled in the “remote” green end of Keith Road, if arts weren’t subsidized, if it had commercial possibilities, if big international money … but fie on such cynicism.
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It’s more than a pipedream and less than a party. It’s the new kid on the WV political block. It’s WVEM, an awkward acronym. Maybe stands for “Wave ‘em,” as in “goodbye” – to some present councillors, none of whom gets its endorsement.
In fact it stands for the West Vancouver Electors’ Movement, not a “slate” but a “team” of four candidates, introduced at a candidate meeting next Thursday, July 5, 7.30 p.m. at St. Francis-in-the-Wood’s Caulfeild Cove Hall.
The favoured four are retired forest industry executive Jim Finkbeiner; longtime WV Chamber of Commerce president Gabrielle Loren; Sharon Thompson, constituent assistant at the Horseshoe Bay office for MLA Jordan Sturdy; and Marcus Wong, a strategic communications adviser, WV Police Board member, with wide experience and usefully quadrilingual.
WVEM’s organizers are well versed in monitoring WV governance: Garrett Polman, Scott Hean, Jean Lewis (not to be diminished by the description of wife of popular late councillor Michael Lewis), and David Marley, seasoned political back-room wagonmaster and showman federally, provincially and locally.
Hold on. Higher arithmetic reveals there are six WV councillors. And just four WVEM aspirants. Only if all four were elected would they dominate council. Marley calls it “a coalition of independents” – “collegial,” not bound by party discipline: “We have no hidden agenda nor any affiliation with a federal or provincial political party.”
Most eye-blinking: No nominee for mayor.
Sounds all too benign to steer a council revolution? No intent. This is West Van.
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Agent 4Gpjjw states that complaints to police about motorhomes parked for days at Dundarave Park go unheeded.
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Agent Z89tq3 reports the overheard (possibly litigious) fury of well-heeled residents, one famous, about noise in a development that won’t be named here in order not to damage their property values.
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West Van’s wandering farmers market has finally found an excellent home. After shifting from 14th Street alongside Vancity Credit Union, a traffic stopper, to Dundarave’s 2400-Marine Drive block, a space too narrow, the Ambleside Artisan Farmers’ Market now has a true market-like feel near the park entrance. And many innovative offerings.
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