Of Power and Those Who Have It
I is an 18-year tradition for Vancouver magazine: our annual Power 50 list. It’s an issue that takes a deep dive into who’s running this city, and it starts with a big question—namely: Who is truly powerful? Is it the people who can get anyone to answer their calls? Is it the one who makes change by creating a new system? Is it always the premier, the mayor? Is it the person who champions those who don’t typically have a voice in our city—the poor, the homeless, people with substance abuse issues—and whose eorts create real policy change?
So we start with a brainstorming session, where we invite people from a wide range of sectors and interests—from community activists to lm-industry types, from business owners to tech-industry inuencers, and from all political leanings—to share what they think was important to Vancouver this year, what they’ve seen change in the city, and who has helped to move the dial.
And while the list of names they brought forward was long and diverse, there was plenty they had in common: Indigenous leaders have been demonstrating profound and positive impact on the city; the aordable housing crisis, and those who were trying to do something about it, was a predominant force in 2018; and David Eby impressed everyone at the table, whatever side of the political spectrum they sat on.
From there, our editorial team dug deep into the research. Journalist Matt O’grady spent a lot of time looking into the hundreds of names that came up that rst night—and searching for people who didn’t, too. As always, the nal battle to narrow the list down had its excruciating moments—the number of great people inuencing our world in 2018 is, fortunately for us, a big one— but we diligently got it down to the nal 50 you can meet in these pages.
One group you won’t see on the list this year: municipal politicians. Our issue left for the printing press on October 12, which means we weren’t anywhere near being able to call who’d be in charge of the city (particularly so this year, one of the oddest elections on record)—nor did any of those potential elected o£cials have the chance to demonstrate just how inuential they’d be by our deadline. We’ll have to see who makes it on to the 2019 Power 50—and how dierent this city will be one year from now.