I am grateful for my city, Vancouver. This isn't to say that I think this is the New Jerusalem, or heaven on earth, though there are those who would disagree with me. This city is far from perfect. I think I first began to conceive this city as something pleasing to the eyes when I was a boy of fourteen and first began to explore Vancouver on my own terms, which is to say, without the agendas nor the supervising presence, of Mom or Dad. I would get on the bus beginning in June, just after school got out for the summer and I had first discovered the joys of marijuana.
I grew up in the City of Richmond, a flat, alluvial plain clogging the mouth of the Fraser River, just south of Vancouver. Richmond is not pretty. It is flat, dull and if you happen to live there the legendary mountains, forest and ocean all seem thousands of miles away. When I first arrived downtown on my own in the fresh early summer of 1970 I was in for such a treat. The West End, the beaches and Stanley Park were such as I had never imagined, not to mention the old heritage buildings of downtown and Gastown. And the mountains were so close, huge and towering that I could see each individual tiny tree on the slopes.
Over the years that followed, my appreciation of this city was enhanced as I came to see it through the eyes of the many first-time visitors I have met. Then, as I began to travel in other parts of the world I really came to value what a jewel this city is in so many ways as well as the many privileges that come with living here.
But this city is not the New Jerusalem. If Vancouver were a person it would be a young woman, kind of a female surfer dude, wearing a white sundress setting off a fabulous tan and not necessarily naturally blonde hair. She would be, to put it bluntly, a dumb blonde. A live Barbie doll. Perhaps Marilyn Monroe without the tragedy, pathos or talent. She would be getting regular boob enhancement surgery and botox injections, though not really needing either, while hiring herself out by the hour to offshore scumbag millionaires. Despite her own fabulously fat bank account and investments, to the many poor and homeless lining her streets she might donate a token looney or toonie while on her way to her yoga or Zumba class, but really doing everything possible to romance every single randy real estate tycoon that wants to date her. Being a shallow, ablist little bitch, she would of course prefer bike lanes over sidewalks and youth and fitness crazed narcissists over human rights activists and community and health support workers with the most vulnerable members of society, with the exception of harm reduction and safe injection sites, anything to look fashionably compassionate and au courant.
Vancouver has become one of the world's most expensive cities to live in and unless, like me, you have the good fortune of living in affordable housing, unless you are rich, you are going to have to consider living elsewhere, because this city is only for the rich. It is my belief that our political representatives have intentionally planned it this way with their business and banking tycoons cronies and bosses. They have no intention of making Vancouver affordable, nor of doing anything to really solve our homelessness crisis, outside of the harshest most Darwinist ethos of natural selection.
Vancouver is very pretty, just like a dumb blonde, and just like a dumb blonde there is nothing beautiful about her, because beauty comes from the soul, and to have a beautiful soul you have to have love, passion and compassion for the less fortunate.
I still love this city, but not because she is pretty, only because of her potential for becoming a truly beautiful soul. In the meantime I still love the mountains, the ocean, the forests, the clean scented air, the pure clean public water, the parks and the many walkable streets and neighbourhoods. Vancouver will never become a world class city, whatever that's supposed to mean, but I think that if enough of us resist and fight hard and struggle long enough we can help her find beauty of soul.
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