A brief political biography.

I came to Canada from the United States in 1960, when I was 14. Saving you the math, that makes me 62 now. I lived in Vancouver from then until 2004 when we moved here.

I went to high school in Vancouver, got my first job, as a bank teller, there. I did office work for years. I lived in Europe for a year and a half, and after returning to Canada worked in some not very satisfying clerical jobs, then got a job at the University of British Columbia as a secretary. I became an active member of a pre-order food coop in Kitsilano, and joined the Association of College & University Employees - Local One. This was the beginning of my political life. It was 1975, and within two years I had become active in the women’s liberation movement working with other women to end violence against women and children.

In 1978, I was finally brave enough to come out, and this too extended my political life. At the time it was in no way safe or uncomplicated to come out. I didn’t have children, so had much less to lose than many lesbians I knew, and this made the level of risk much lower. I was afraid, nonetheless. As each day passed, and I grew more and more comfortable living my life more fully than ever before, I could also see the thoroughly political side of my fear of coming out, and the fear of many other people of lesbians and gay men.

These experiences in my thirties drew me into community and municipal politics in Vancouver. I learned that municipal politics were the closest to people’s daily lives, land-use, zoning, water and food security, affordable housing, being a good neighbour, living in peace without threat of violence in the streets or in our homes.

I was pretty busy for the next 20 years, studying History, then working at various research and writing jobs, followed by graduate school in History at SFU. I finished in 1990, and began teaching at Langara College in the Women’s Studies program. I stayed there until I went to work full time, as producer, at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival [VFMF] in January 1998.

Throughout those years I was a member of the Grandview Woodlands Area Council on Vancouver’s east side working mainly on zoning and traffic calming issues in that vibrant and changing neighbourhood. I worked in a number of women’s groups. One of those groups laid the foundation for and then operated Battered Women’s Support Services, now 30 years old. I helped to start the second rape crisis centre in Vancouver in the early 1980s and volunteered there for eight years. I added to my part time teaching income by doing bookkeeping, mostly for arts organizations. I went to a lot of meetings in those years. I worked on the production staff of the VFMF from 1987 to 1997, and on the Vancouver International Writers Festival from 1988 to 1995.

On many occasions I went alone and with others to the chambers of Vancouver City Council to speak my piece with and for others about many different matters. Those experiences were sometimes exhilarating, when it looked like things might change for the better. Sometimes those experiences were difficult to deal with.

The final time I went to Vancouver’s City Council George Puil was in what was to be his last term. He spoke to me disrespectfully, accusing me of self-aggrandizement as motivation for my appearance there. I finished what I had to say. Went out to my car. Got in, and put my head against the steering wheel and wept.

None of it had ever brought me to tears before. It was a long while before I drove home. I still carry what I learned that day. There is nothing good in personal attacks in politics. There is no good in reacting negatively to personal attacks. The best tactic in the face of the bullies is to get up, give yourself a shake and be better than they are. My promise, a humble one. Work from love. Honesty and integrity. Always strive to achieve the best, and understand that perfection is unattainable.

In 1993, then Minister for Culture Darlene Marzari appointed me to the British Columbia Arts Board, which became the British Columbia Arts Council [BCAC] in 1996. This appointment added to my experience in community politics by giving me experience sitting on a board that had a relationship with the government of British Columbia, albeit at arm’s length. The BCAC is the funder for arts organizations in British Columbia, and the BCAC determines their policies, and their programs.  I served on the Board and on the Council for a total of ten years.

I learned valuable lessons there about the ways government related boards operate. I came to understand how legislation acts as a boundary between such boards and government, and such boards and citizens. I was able to deepen my understanding about how things worked.

In 1992, I joined the Committee of Progressive Electors, COPE, and ran for City Council in the 1993 election – although I received over 20,000 votes, at that time it took nearly 40,000 votes to be elected. I ran again in 1996 with COPE, again unsuccessfully, and I ran as an independent in 1999. I was not elected. I had decided after the 1996 campaign that municipal party politics were not for me, and sometimes refer to myself as ‘not a party girl’ with tongue in cheek. Mostly.

By then I fully understood that municipal politics are about power, power and money. Land use policies and practices, no matter where, are about power and money. Who has it. Who wants it. Who benefits.

This is not intended as an indictment of any kind. I mean to say only that who controls land and the use of land, matters a great deal. Here’s some of how we get the reminders of exactly how much it does mean.

We learned more about that here in Halfmoon Bay, and all over the Coast, when the Pan-Pacific Aggregates mining claim was filed, taking advantage of the Province’s policy change allowing mining claims to be filed on line for $5 each. PPA claimed the entire Sunshine Coast peninsula. The principals of PPA listed their stock on a venture exchange in London, England and started to work to increase the capitalization for their proposed quarry, with talk of big business with California, where freeway construction relies on the stability of the gravel and other minerals mined here. And community members made sure that everyone here on the Coast knew what was going on, and that potential investors in England had information about community response to PPA.

And in other communities on the Coast there were more lessons from which to learn.

Herb & Steve Dunton and their company Columbia National Investments hit the front pages of the Coast Reporter with their plans to build a road from Squamish, a deep sea port in Howe Sound near Port Mellon, and an announced new municipality was going to be built in the Dakota Ridge area. Where are they now? Picking up the crumbs left them by PPA.

The hockey player, Geoff Courtnall & his partners. Took the timber and haven’t yet come back to keep their promises to the people of Egmont.

The Trails – developers got their permits and zoning changes. Took the timber and have now reapplied for different permits for the property. Have a look at the website, you won’t see any vistas of cleared land.

Silverback.

The Community Forest

The Chapman Creek and Gray Creek Drinking Watersheds

There are different strategies at hand to use in response to these regional and municipal issues. Perhaps the SCRD is not the place for some of these matters to be raised, but using our voices in our communities to demand that developers and those seeking licenses to exploit the resources on the Sunshine Coast start with the truth about their plans, when ‘consulting’ with concerned citizens, is crucial to the sustainability of our communities, wherever we live and work on the Sunshine Coast.