"When I say “we” in this story, I will be talking about Ann McAfee and myself and our band of planning professionals, along with the other professionals in all the departments that make up the City, because we were always on the front lines together — often fighting a very hard fight. I will also be talking about our political masters, particularly those who sponsored the innovations. For me, close allies were Councillors Gordon Price and Jim Green, and Mayors Gordon Campbell, Philip Owen, and Larry Campbell. They were intelligent leaders, who often showed courage in their embrace of what we suggested. But the “we” will also include the developers and private design professionals who were constant collaborators, as well as the citizens who threw their hats into the ring to take part in what we were doing.
Of course, we were all led by the chief of the City — known humbly as our city manager. Our generation was very lucky to have extraordinary, even brilliant, leaders in Ken Dobell and then Judy Rogers, who built on the legacy of the genius who preceded them, Fritz Bowers (I mean that seriously, he was a Mensa)."
UBC Press | Vancouverism By Larry Beasley (emphasis mine)
I first saw Vancouver on an early Spring day in 1971. I walked across the Hastings Viaduct, demolished a year or two later. It was a mill town. False Creek was home to a working cooperage (Sweeney’s), mud flats and sawdust burners. I loved it, joined thousands of my generation and settled.Canada population projected to double or triple this century. To benefit from this growth university towns like #Nanaimo will need to invest in urbanization, the public realm, city centre neighbourhoods, redirecting public monies that now subsidize sprawl. https://t.co/mwA9IYshpw
— NanaimoCommons (@NanaimoCommons) March 10, 2021
Among my group of friends happened to be the daughter of City Manager Fritz Bowers. Meant little to us then but serves now as a point in time from which to examine how this visionary, transformative False Creek redevelopment came to catalyze the maturing of a mill town into a confident Pacific Rim city.
A number of historic global forces acted on the development of Vancouver over subsequent decades. The 1986 World’s Fair, the return of Hong Kong to China, the Winter Olympics, the arrival of highly mobile global speculative investment capital. It’s clear also that the mill town of 1971 had in it inherent qualities—of geography, culture and climate—that would at some time attract the country’s and the world’s attention.
These forces and natural gifts were harnessed by the vision and ambition of a succession of city managers and progressive departments of planning and urban design and courageous political leaders, among them those mentioned by author Beasley above.
