Exits and Entrances - A Journey Through Many Landscapes: by Dave Jaffe; Chapter Seven - Part Three

     Chapter Seven - Part Three


    Out of the big names of the N.D.P. in the 1970's and 1980's, I found Bob Williams to be the most interesting. Like Dave Barrett he came from a progressive background in east end Vancouver. A town planner and developer, Williams gave off a tough side that could frighten some people. In one of his last years in the B.C. legislature, Williams just about shredded the Social Credit minister of forests Dave Parker. A former minister of forests himself in Dave Barrett's government,, Williams threw one question after another at Parker during one legislative session. I don't think that Parker ever recovered from Williams's third degree inquiry.
    Williams not only could frighten some people in the Social Credit government. He could also throw fear into some New Democrats. In the last half of the 1970's, Williams stepped aside from his legislative seat to make way for Dave Barrett to return to the legislature. Rumours abounded that Willaims was planning to unseat a sitting N.D.P. Member of the Legislature at a coming nomination meeting.
      During this time,Williams casually dropped into another east end riding just to pass the time of day. The executive assistant of this riding got scared. "Williams may be planning to take on one of our two sitting M.L.A.'s," she told me. "We've got to make sure that this doesn't happen." At the riding's next executive meeting, the two sitting M.L.A's ran another slate of candidates and threw out the old executive members. "I just wish Bob Williams had never showed up in this riding," one purged member of the executive said. "The sitting M.L.A.'s thought that we were supporters of Williams and just got rid of us." I got to know the N.D.P. M.L.A.'s who moved in the party at a lower level than Williams. The humanitarian Norm Levi served as Barrett's Minister of human Resources in Barrett's government. He took a terrible pounding in the media when he raised welfare rates. The short grey haired Levi had senn scenes of terrible violence when he was a soldier in the Israeli and British armies. Yet he kept a gentleness that surprised me.
      Emery Barnes played a tough game of football  for the B.C. Lions and helped his team win one Grey Cup. Yet this towering black man had a kind streak in him and a concern for the underdog. The cheerful Darlene Marzari lived in a large unpretentious house not far from where I lived in Kitsilano. When serving on city council she met Bruce Eriksen and Libby Davies. She helped them in their campaign to open the Carnegie Centre.
   Yet when asked years later about her positive role in this campaign she told the man who asked the question, "I can't remember that."