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Speakers
Honeymoon not over yet
Mayor Larry Campbell soothes Jews, says bubkes.
PAT JOHNSON SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
Last week, Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell was buoyed by a public opinion poll indicating his approval rating was close to 80 per cent. And on Tuesday, when he spoke to a lunch group at a fund-raiser for the local branch of the Jewish National Fund, it became doubly clear the honeymoon was far from over.
The mayor charmed the audience with humor and even a bit of yiddishkdt, demonstrating his ability to salve potential sore spots. The JNF lunch at the Four Seasons Hotel attracted about 50 people, largely business owners and executives who mi^t, vmder normal circumstances, not be amenable to the words of a mayor elected in a left-wing sweep. Add to this the general perception in Canada that the left is becoming stridently anti-Israel and the fact that two members of Campbell's council last year signcKi a pro-Palestinian petition that irked many in the Jewish community, the reception might have been less than cordial.
But the mayor defused any potential friction oflFthe top, vrith his assurance that, whatever negative remarks some members of his council have made about Israel, he does not share their views. Councillors aic free to disagree with each other, he said, and voters are free to make their choices.
"There's a ballot box that speaks quite loudly when the time comes, and I think 111 just leave it at that," he said.
The mayor spoke of his introduction to the Jewish rituals surrounding death when he was a coroner. Campbell was coroner in the city of Vancouver, then went on to lead the provincial coroner's service. In 1981, ho said, Rabbi Yitzchak Wineberg met with him and explained the sacred processes that the Jewish tradition proscribes for treatment of the deceased. Speeding up the process in the coroner's office so that a body could be released in time for burial, according to Jewish law, became the rule imder Campbell, he said. It also marked the beginning of a long friendship with Wineberg, who offered prayers at Campbell's swearing in last January.
"I think the low point of our relationship," Campbell said of Wineberg, "was when I met his wife and shook her hand and the room let out a collective 'oy vay.'" • He also noted the contributions of the Jewish community to the development and growth of the dty and added his apprecia-
tion for the vividness of the Yiddish language.
"You gave me terms like bubkes which I use a lot at city hall," he said.
Campbell spoke of the excitement around the awarding of the Olympics to Vancouver-Whistler in 2010 and acknowledged that he did not expect as dose a race as transpired in Prague.
The mayor laid out his vision for the dty, frankly acknowledging some of the failures.
"We do not have good buses. We do not have good transit. We have too many cars," ho said. "We need to get people from Point A to Point B m a way that is environmentally friendly."
The public must be involved in dcdsion-making, he said, and tiic dty must resist developing a "poor me" attitude when economic conditions are poor. Things turn around, he said.
Campbell, who was propelled to office in part by his stated determination to confront the disasters that exist in the Downtown Eastside, told the JNF audience that the area remains his top priority.
"We're going into the Downtown Eastside," he said. "If I do nothing else in three years, when I walk out of here, there will be a change in the Downtown Eastside."
A primary step, he said, was getting an agreement to purchase the old Woodward's department store building from the provin-dal government well below market value, attached to a promise of fimding for sodal housing.
Responding to questions from the audience, Campbell denied his council is intimidated from ruiming a transit line down the Arbutus corridor by the wealthy neighbors who oppose such a line.
"fd drive it through Shaugh-nessy in a Texas second," he quipped to laughter from the audience. "Tliey never voted for me."
But it is not an economically feasible proposal, he daimcd, noting that mass transit thrives on population density, which doesn't exist in suffidcnt numbers in the far west of the dty. Moreover, such a plan would require a new bridge to Richmond and double-tracking of the line, which is currently a single rail track.
The lunch was the last to be attended by Ran Bagg, the Jerusalem emissary to Vancouver, who returns to Israel in two weeks. □
Pat Johnson is a native Vancouveritc, a journalist and commentator.
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