Think of this column as a condensed three-act play, a snapshot of our political culture, starring West Vancouver Mayor Mark Sager.
The setting: the upper floor of the Beach House restaurant for the West Vancouver Chamber of Commerce Summer Social.
The backstory: it was the same day the North Shore News had published my column on the top-tier municipal hall departures, municipal manager appointment, and workplace complaint alleging bullying and harassment by the mayor.
The actors: Sager is at the Summer Social, as am I, North Shore News publisher Matt Blair, Coun. Linda Watt and, prominently for this play, former councillor Craig Cameron.
Spoiler alert: If the mood at the Social is expected to be tense – the mayor isn’t one to let critical coverage go unaddressed – any expected pique is milquetoast compared to what will soon happen.
Act 1: Sager comes out on the outdoor deck and starts into the publisher and me, wondering what negative thing I’ll write about him today, suggesting (wrongly) it is the News and not a current or former employee who has filed a workplace complaint. He claims fellow mayors found amusing the notion that he, of all people, had been accused of bullying. He indicates he’s going to have fun with me in his speech.
Before that, though, he seemingly wants to express his power, in this case physically. He rolls up his shirt sleeve, puts his elbow on the high-top table, and dares Blair to arm-wrestle. “C’mon,” he says, seriously, “let’s go.”
The show is only starting.
Act 2: Indoors now, and the Chamber event is handed over to Sager. He regales the audience of about 40 with his accomplishments – the deals in the works for a waterfront gym, for a track, and for Jimmy Pattison’s former home.
But, he tells the audience ruefully, not all the news we are hearing about his work is positive. Consider: when Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim called him to get the mayors together on a boat – “my boat is bigger than his,” Sager says – the CBC showed up and media later asked how much this was costing. (He says he paid for the trip out of his pocket and Sim paid for the wine out of his. The district still won’t release the list of attendees.)
Then he turns to the issue of “our local media” and repeats his claim that the mayors were amused about the bullying accusation. It serves to set up some showmanship he’s concocted as he stands at the front of the room: to prove his point, he calls upon some buddies to vouch for him. He asks a longtime friend in the crowd if he’s a bully, another longtime friend to back that up, then another to attest to the new municipal manager.
The orchestration has nothing, though, on the finale.
Act 3: Back on the deck, as Cameron is sharing his thoughts on the speech, again enters Sager and Watt. Cameron declines to shake the mayor’s hand, telling Watt it’s how the mayor rolls – pretending to be sociable, when he is in fact something Cameron describes in quite naughty terms. It’s not the worst name in the book, but upper-level. Watt chides him. Cameron suggests he’s destroying the career of an ethical public servant now on leave, and that’s when all hell really does break loose.
I have a ringside seat – Sager and Watt to my left, Cameron across from me – for the unbridled hollering, a trio raging at each other in open verbal combat. Sager and Watt lean in across the table, fingers jabbing but never making contact, with Cameron firing back and telling them to back off and get out of his sight. A few steps away, conversations had stopped on the deck as a half-dozen or so looked on speechless. The texts and emails that followed spoke of utter shock.
Was this spectacle a glimpse into our district’s political culture? What did it say about how our mayor leads in private if he would explode that way in public? Maybe it was just a bad day, maybe there is so much history of political animus down the well that it was bound to find a place to erupt. But sadly, it was hard to find anything approaching leadership in what played out that afternoon.
Kirk LaPointe is publisher and executive editor of Business in Vancouver as well as vice-president, editorial, Glacier Media Group, the North Shore News’ parent company. He is also a West Vancouverite.
