LEADERS’ LEGACIES
Remembering former Vancouver mayor Art Phillips and Alberta premier Ralph Klein.
In his two terms as mayor of Vancouver in the 1970s, Art Phillips set the foundation for Vancouver’s later emergence as a model for downtown density and neighbourhood- oriented communities.
From reversing a plan to run a freeway along the city’s waterfront to saving the Orpheum Theatre and developing False Creek’s south shore, Phillips sought to create a city that integrated livability with growth.
Phillips was instrumental in preserving pockets of green space in the downtown core — including the cherry- tree lined Discovery Square park at Dunsmuir and Burrard. The former mayor craftily saved the park from development when he convinced the Bentalls and the Royal Bank to buy the space and hold it for rapid transit — a full decade before rapid transit was a reality in Vancouver.
It was his capacity for that type of forethought that led many to tout Phillips, who died Friday at the age of 82, as one of Vancouver’s most important political figures.
“He was a visionary,” said longtime friend Michael Francis, who led a successful effort to have Discovery Square renamed Art Phillips Park this spring.
Francis said Phillips was beloved by many citizens of Vancouver who appreciated his years of service to the city.
“I spent the last year immersed in people who love Art,” said Francis, former chairman of the Simon Fraser University board of governors. “They all love him for different reasons. They love him because he saved the Orpheum, they love him because they saved the entrance to Stanley Park, they love him for False Creek. There’s just a myriad of people who want to tell you why they love him.”
A dedication ceremony for the newly named Art Phillips Park, where the former mayor often walked his dog, Daisy, had been expected to take place this spring when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom. But it was delayed when Phillips’ health started to decline, said Francis. Phillips died from complications resulting from an infection.
Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson echoed Francis’s sentiments Friday, calling Phillips a “visionary leader.”
“He helped shape Vancouver through his vision and commitment to public service,” Robertson said in a statement. “He was a champion of livability and inclusivity.”
Phillips became mayor in 1972 and held the office until 1976, at a time when urban reform movements were reshaping civic politics and planning in many North American cities. In Vancouver, these reformist forces created TEAM ( The Electors’ Action Movement) — and Phillips, as mayor, was its leader.
“He was a remarkable golden boy for that time,” said Gordon Price, a former city councillor.
“He was a striking guy, almost matinee- idol handsome. But with the gravitas of an investment manager.”
Phillips assumed power at city hall after making a fortune with his investment firm, Phillips, Hager and North.
In contrast to previous prodeveloper
He was a striking guy, almost matinee- idol handsome. But with the gravitas of an investment manager. GORDON PRICE FORMER CITY COUNCILLOR
regimes, the centrist TEAM led by Phillips kept real estate development on a tighter leash and made sure city planners took into account environmental and quality of life concerns — not just the wishes of developers.
Phillips and TEAM helped establish a new consensus about development that crossed all political lines — one that stressed local neighbourhood planning, public consultation and inclusive neighbourhoods with mixed income.
New direction
“It so clearly defined the movement of the city from one era to another,” said Price.
“He and TEAM set the foundations for the city that are still serving the city today.”
Coun. Geoff Meggs said Phillips fundamentally changed the way Vancouver made planning decisions. “( He) made it much more community- based and community- directed and saw potential where others saw problems.”
Michael Geller, a real estate consultant and media commentator, noted the former mayor had one lament: that he’d hoped to see issues of poverty and homelessness resolved in the Downtown Eastside.
“While he was proud of the city, that was one of the areas where he saw a need for improvement.” Geller said. “He was just troubled by the poverty and poor living conditions.”
The city’s 32nd mayor was given the city’s highest honour, Freedom of the City, by Robertson in 2010.
Asked about Phillips’ time in office after the honour was announced, former mayor and premier Mike Harcourt told The Vancouver Sun: “That was when we marched to a different drummer, when we said no to a freeway and yes to a livable city.
“Art was so much the person behind all of this.”
Phillips and his party came to power on a wave of citizen activism, which had forced previous mayor Tom Campbell ( dubbed Tom Terrific) to kill plans to build a freeway through Strathcona and Gastown, among Vancouver’s most significant cultural and architectural neighbourhoods.
Campbell came to be seen as the conservative nemesis of Vancouver’s vibrant ’ 60s counterculture. Phillips was seen as the anti- Campbell, more in tune with the new baby boom generation that was beginning to flex its demographic might.
TEAM’s approach was an abrupt switch from that of the long- ruling Non- Partisan Association, which had promoted the freeway and continued industrial development of False Creek.
Neighbourhoods
Phillips, along with other TEAM councillors like Walter Hardwick, had a different vision for the south shore of False Creek — a neighbourhood that would become mixed income, high density but non-highrise.
The redevelopment of False Creek and adjacent Granville Island were federally funded but were planned under Phillips’ TEAM.
The planning approach nurtured during Phillips’ two terms as mayor would later inspire what became known worldwide as Vancouverism — the creation of high- density neighbourhoods with plenty of community amenities around the central downtown core.
Phillips also created the property endowment fund, which protectively holds all of the city’s investments in lands and leases, in response to what he saw as previous councils’ wrong- headed sales of land in order to balance annual budgets.
Phillips’ star quality was cemented when he married Carole Taylor, a striking broadcast journalist from Toronto. The two met when Taylor interviewed Vancouver’s mayor for CTV’s W5. A long- distance courtship ensued, followed by marriage and two children. Taylor would become a successful politician in her own right, first as a city councillor and later as provincial finance minister.
False Creek move
Journalist Allan Fotheringham said Phillips and Taylor “were the city’s glamour couple. They were the city’s version of John and Jackie Kennedy or Brian and Mila Mulroney.”
Shortly after their marriage, the couple moved to a condo in the fledgling False Creek South neighbourhood, immediately giving it credibility.
“People were skeptical about whether anyone would want to live in False Creek South,” recalled Price.
“But once Art Phillips and Carole Taylor bought a townhouse in Leg in Boot Square, it became popular.”
Phillips was born Sept. 12, 1930. He attended Lord Byng secondary school in Vancouver and studied commerce at the University of B. C. The tall, athletic Phillips was a basketball star at both schools. Shortly after graduation, Phillips married his first wife, Patti.
Phillips is survived by Taylor, his six children, several grandchildren and one great- grandchild. A celebration of his life will be held in April.