Who’s in Charge?
The Power 50 shines a light on what’s important to this city.
, there’s always a happy buzz at the Websters—the awards night for B.C.-based news media organizations. And this past October, when about a thousand journalists and their supporters gathered in a Vancouver ballroom to celebrate the best work in print, digital, radio and broadcast media, that buzz was there—but there was also something a little dierent in the air.
This year, the winners were notably subdued as they took the stage. Many of the top investigative stories in the last year focused on the opioid crisis, and just that day, the latest tally had been announced: between January and August, more than 1,000 people had been lost to overdose, a number equivalent to how many were attending the party that night. In their speeches, the winners thanked those who were on the front lines— often working outside of legal connes for the sake of saving lives.
A few of those agitators and front-liners have found their way into our Power 50 feature this year. It’s alively night of discussion when we gather inuencers into a room to debate who should be on the list. We talk about what’ s important to the city right now— real estate, always, but also hot-button issues like the Trans Mountain pipeline, pot legalization, thechanging workeconomy and theopioidcrisis—issues that areshaping Vancouver and putting a new spotlight on a dierent set of voices in our city.
As our planning night wore on, a theme became clear: activists were taking power. A shift in our provincial leadership inevitably sees former outsiders (John Horgan, Carole James) rising up the power list. But we also saw inu en ce happening from typically lessrecognized corner soft he city. People like Sarah Blyth, who, when authorities weren’t able to cutthrough red tape to get assistance to those dying from overdose, set up her owntent—andcreated amodel that has beenboth yielded to byauthorities and emulatedacross thecountry. Or ShelleySheppard, themother of the late Baby Mac: herplea to make sure herchild’s death in anunlicensed daycare would not be invain has direct ties to theNDP’s promise to create ana or dab le licensed childcare system.
And, of course, there has been no let-up in our obsession with real estate in the last year, and so moguls like Terry Hui and Ian Gillespie have kept a strong footing, as have philanthropists (Michael Audain, Jim Pattison), tech-sector disruptors (Gerri Sinclair, Ian Crosby) and Howe Street types (the Aquilinis, Frank Giustra).
And because thislist is anite 50, there arealways so manyothers whosepower in our community is worthy ofrecognition. Ilook forward to the debates on our Twitterfeed.