STRAIGHT TALK

The NPA’S rookie city councillor, Hector Bremner, thinks he’s ready for the mayor’s job this fall; also, a new B.C. book takes a look at the history of drug prohibition in Canada—starting with Vancouver.

ROOKIE COUNCILLOR READY FOR MAYOR’S JOB

Hector Bremner may be new on Vancouver city council, but he projects the confidence of someone ready to become mayor.

“I have a plan for our city, and it’s clear, it’s credible, and we can deliver on it,” Bremner told the Straight in a phone interview.

The rookie councillor, who turned 37 in early January, is not coy about his mayoral intentions.

“I don’t know if anybody can say that they’re 100 percent ready,” Bremner said with a laugh when asked if he’s prepared for the top job. “Anybody that tells you that is not telling the truth.”

His party, the Non-partisan Association (NPA), is set to open its nomination process to select a mayoral candidate for the October 20, 2018, municipal election, and Bremner is very interested.

“I think I bring a perspective that’s unique in terms of anybody else that I’ve seen considering these things,” he said.

Because the NPA has yet to roll out its nomination rules, Bremner cannot declare himself as an official contestant, but he’s busy reaching out to potential supporters.

“I’m in the process of meeting with [NPA] members and talking with people in the community and inviting them to join the party, and we’ve had a lot of success in that and people are excited,” he said.

Going back to his plan for the city, Bremner, who took office on October 31 last year after winning a byelection, said that the main plank of his platform is affordable housing.

“We should really talk about how we build middle-class housing for working families in the city, and that message right now is resonating, so I’m going out there and speaking with people,” he said.

NPA president Gregory Baker said in a separate interview that the party will open its nomination contest soon and that the vote will likely happen in the spring.

“Our goal is to provide a long runway between the announcement of our nomination contest and the meeting itself, in order to attract as many great candidates as possible,” Baker told the Straight by phone. > CARLITO PABLO

NEW B.C. BOOK EXAMINES HISTORY OF DRUG WARS

Canada’s war on drugs began in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and one day, possibly in the not too distant future, the Downtown Eastside is where it will end.

University of Victoria professor Susan Boyd recounts that story in her new book, Busted: An Illustrated History of Drug Prohibition in Canada, which was launched at SFU’S Goldcorp Centre for the Arts this week (January 23).

“Our first narcotics laws, the first Opium Act, was enacted because of events that happened right here in Vancouver,” she explained in a telephone interview.

On September 7, 1907, a parade of thousands marched on City Hall, which then was located at the corner of Main Street and East Hastings. “Stand for White Canada” read a banner the group carried at its front. The mob ransacked Chinatown and Vancouver’s Japanese quarter.

Canada’s deputy minister of labour, William Lyon Mackenzie King, was dispatched to investigate claims for compensation. “Shortly afterwards,” Boyd writes in the book, “King met with a deputation of three men from the Chinese Anti-opium League. A few days later, while speaking to the Vancouver Daily Province on June 3, 1908, King declared: ‘It should be made impossible to manufacture this drug in any part of the Dominion…we will get some good out of this riot yet.’ ”

The Opium Act of 1908 was the result, a piece of “race-based legislation”, Boyd continues, that was subsequently used to target Chinese people across the country.

Canada’s war on drugs was under way. And—in Vancouver, especially—so was a movement against it.

“We have a long legacy of resistance,” Boyd told the Straight.

The book includes a rich collection of photographs and artwork that Boyd spent years curating. The images appear alongside fascinating and often lesser-known chapters of Canadian history: experiments with psychedelic drugs in Saskatchewan, for example, and parades in favour of alcohol prohibition that marched through the streets of Toronto.

Throughout there runs a theme of missed opportunities, of recurring moments in history when Canada almost took a road away from prohibition.

“In the 1970s, it looked like cannabis was going to be legalized,” Boyd said. “Our minister of health and welfare announced that cannabis would be legal by the end of the year. But it didn’t happen. And so what were the forces that came into play and stopped it from happening?…i wanted to look at that more closely.”

Toward the end of Busted, Boyd returns to Vancouver, where she recounts how activist groups like the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users and the Portland Hotel Society have led a movement against Canada’s war on drugs. She explains how they’ve focused on harm reduction to challenge prohibitionist policies that often hurt people addicted to drugs more than the drugs themselves.

While the book only mentions Canada’s ongoing overdose epidemic in its closing pages, Boyd said the opioid crisis is very much the context within which she intends Busted to be discussed.

“If people were more acquainted with our history of prohibition, then they might more critically reflect on the routes that we should take right now, in the midst of a drug-overdose crisis,” she said. > TRAVIS LUPICK