CKNW Editorial
for November 10, 1999

I remember a great many Vancouver mayors. The first one was when I was a very small boy and there was a parade to honour the silver anniversary of King George V. Mayor Lyle Telford came by in an enormous open car and I remember asking my Dad why if we were "Mairs" too, we couldn’t ride in the parade like Mayor Telford and throw toffee candies to the kids. I remember that mostly because of how hard my parents laughed and how puzzled I was that the question was funny. I remember the most famous mayor of all – the man who built Vancouver City Hall where we are broadcasting from today. It was the height of the depression and Gerry McGeer was called a fool at best to waste all that money. He said it would give people work, and it did … and the same building that housed the City of Vancouver administration in 1936 houses it today. After the war Gerry, who had done some MPing and Senator-ing in the meantime came back to the city and ran for mayor on the simple slogan "Gerry’s back" and won a landslide. Unhappily he died the following summer.

Tom Alsbury was not the first socialist mayor of Vancouver – that distinction goes to Mayor Telford, a Dr who, it was said, practiced what were then illegal abortions on the side. But the Tom we all remember was Tom Campbell … "Tom Terrific" … who is best remembered for the Gastown riots and his threat to use Trudeau’s War Measures Act to throw hippies in jail in 1970.

Mayor Art Philipps comes to mind – it was under his administration that the charming {I don’t think} Granville Mall came into existence and it was his council that decided against freeways for the city. Regrettably they didn’t decide how else traffic would be moved, a problem that bedevil’s us to this date.

Then there was Mike Harcourt who sent a telegram to Paris opposing the idea of Expo 86 then, against his better judgment, built the new Cambie Bridge, later taking credit for both. And, of course, there’s Gordon Campbell trying as Harcourt did successfully, to vault from the mayor’s chair to the premier’s office. There were many others of course. And we shouldn’t forget the two mayors that weren’t – Bill Vander Zalm and Harry Rankin.

I was once on the City Council in Kamloops and I can tell you, never again. I have the greatest respect for those who ply their trade at this level, The work is unbearable as are most of the citizens who hassle you every day … the meetings are excruciatingly long … and the pay is lousy. When I see long timers like George Puil … who’s even older than I … I cannot but marvel at his stamina. I often think that George, who was a helluva football player in his youth, must have played a couple of games too many without a helmet to put up with all the years he’s been in City politics.

But there is a serious side to all this. City politics, including, of course, school and parks boards, are where the rubber wheels of democracy hit the road. Not only is this where the politician and the voter meet face to face it’s where a hell of a lot of taxpayer dollars are spent. Most of it’s spent very wisely but if I were at an all candidate’s meeting this election I would ask this question – how many boondoggly trips to faraway places at taxpayers’ expense are you planning to take this year. I calculated that the home taxes of 20 homeowners on the street where I go to church in West Vancouver were required to pay for their mayor and a couple of bureaucrats to go to a flower show in an Arab Emirate no one’s ever heard of. In my then home of Kamloops our one twinned town was Fontana California and the mayors alternated, annually, visiting each other by car. That’s the way it should be. Somehow in the bigger municipalities it becomes a matter of vital importance to the municipality, indeed the universe, that the Mayor or some councilors visit a warm island in the middle of winter at taxpayers’ expense.

But I will come to the defence of councils on the amount of their pay. It’s not enough – being on council means that if you have an outside job, which your income off the municipality makes obligatory, you must abandon all other worldly pleasures including your mate and children.

Election time every three years is very important. While I’m always amused at the lack of originality in political slogans – I can’t remember mine but it must have been just as silly as we see all over the lawns these days – I am also faintly amused by what people say they are going to do. What they’re really going to do is manage a lot of your money and take up most of their days figuring out how to do it … and they’ll have very little room within which to maneuver. So I say don’t look so much at the slogans, look at the character of the people running and judge on the record, whether inside politics or outside, and make up your mind.

And then vote. Don’t forget to do that!