On the move!
Agh! You’re still here? My new site and weblog, ianking.ca is now up and running; new posts are building up over there, never to be mirrored here. Go! What are you waiting for? All the stuff worth keeping has been migrated over to the new server, and I don’t anticipate making any more posts here.
Bloggers and webmasters: Update your links! Simply replace vancouverscrum.blogspot.com with www.ianking.ca in your blogrolls or bookmarks to point to the new site. Old posts will remain on this server for as long as the people at Blogger/Google allow them to remain; unfortunately, I’m not going to bother to come up with any way of converting permalinks on this blog to their corresponding posts on the new site. Yes, I plead laziness. I also realize the irony of switching away from Blogger just it starts to add features that the demanding blog nerds insist upon.
Thanks for reading and linking, and see you over at ianking.ca!
—Ian King, December 13, 2004
Thursday, September 05, 2002
Vancouver's mayoral race is about to get a lot hotter. Former chief coroner Larry Campbell has announced that he will be running for mayor on the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) ticket.
Campbell, who has no relation to either the BC Premier, or former Vancouver mayor Tom Campbell, had been rumoured to be interested in the Mayor's job for some time now. His announcement represents a departure for COPS, and allows it to shed its reputation as a bunch of earnest, but naive, do-gooders.
Larry Campbell knows about the city's downtown eastside, and its problems, better than most. When he speaks, he speaks from his experiences as city coroner. He supported outgoing Mayor Philip Owen's controversial drug-treatment strategy, including that of harm reduction.
His attitude towards Canada's poorest neighbourhood is illustrated from this Vancouver Sun story.
Clarke, who comes from a prominent Shaughnessy family, has talked about the Downtown Eastside as a ghetto that needs to be retaken block by block. Campbell worked there for years as a coroner, has been a long-time board member with the homeless shelter Triage in the neighbourhood, and routinely delivers Christmas dinners in the area.
Campbell might live in Point Grey these days (the job of coroner pays well,) but he's no silver-spooner. He seems to want to bring the community into the city, not plow it under block by block by block.
'The people of our Downtown Eastside are members of our community and not occupants of a ghetto'
– Larry Campbell
from the CBC's story on Campbell's announcement that he will run for Mayot of Vancouver.
RealAudio: Larry Campbell spells out his platform (2:59)
This is going to be an interesting election for mayor; between establishment candidate Jennifer Clarke, former Vancouver park commissioner and BC Liberal MLA Art Cowie, and now Campbell. Three strong candidates mean that this will likely be the closes mayoral race in over a decade.
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