Is Victoria’s future a pseudo-Amsterdam?

Recently, I was downtown on Broad Street watching someone trying unsuccessfully to parallel-park a minivan in an open space. That was when I noticed that the space was shrunken by a Fiat 500 that was in a Smartcar spot, but had to poke 50 centimetres into the space in front of it to clear the yellow curb.

That got me to thinking: A former mayor drove a Smart car and we have micro-car parking spaces around downtown. Our current mayor is a cycling enthusiast and is building bike lanes like crazy throughout the city.

Now I’m worried that the next mayor might be an avid boater — will we then see canals being dug up Pandora and Johnson? After all, our council’s ideal seems to be Amsterdam. John Hutchinson Victoria