Chapter Eight - Part Two.
From the first day I saw my co-op apartment I was overjoyed. Yet not all people who moved in to Eight Oaks Co-op were happy to live here. "This is a zoo," said one wealthy woman after she and her husband settled in to a one-bedroom apartment. Soon after this, the couple left. Another resident, a single parent, called her place " A postage stamp." Like other mothers with children, she felt crowded. A few years later,she and her new partner bought a house and they were gone. Marilyn and Don Pollard, my original upstairs neighbours now live in the Kootenays. Fred and Judy Roman, two very active co-op members left to buy a house in east end Vancouver.
The problem with Eight Oaks Co-op was that many of the apartments were very small. The old style apartments around us on Cambie street were bigger than our suites. We had a huge lawn that was our front yard. Yet our apartments were for the most part not big enough for growing families.
In the next 34 years dozens of people moved in to our co-op and dozens of people left. Disputes and feuds erupted and then died down." Democracy is sometimes a messy business," one history lecturer told me. And in our co-op though there was a lot of democracy, many people tired of it. Part of our governing board resigned when we had to re-build huge parts of the co-op in 2004. After 1995 I moved into the background and just did my assigned tasks. In fact I made this move at about the same time that I left political parties and the antipoverty movement.
Moving into Eight Oaks Co-op was a great thing for me. It came with an added bonus and that was my first next door neighbour. Howard Ambrose was a one-legged native of Moose Jaw Saskatchewan.In his journeys across Canada, Howard had fathered two sons and divorced one wife. He'd also developed a wonderful gift for drawing and painting landscapes. An unfinished painting of a house sat on a table in his living room. Howard turned me onto drawing and painting which I'm still doing to-day.
Wednesday, 31 August 2016
Tuesday, 30 August 2016
Exits and Entrances - A Journey Through Many Landscapes by Dave Jaffe; Chapter Eight - Part One.
Chapter Eight - Part One
Politics didn't dominate all of my life in the 1980's and 1990's. On a late summer day in 1982, I opened up the door of an apartment in a housing co-operative on Cambie street. The housing co-op lay about eight blocks south of Vancouver City Hall. Up the street few blocks south lay the beautiful Queen Elizabeth Park and down the street going northwards, was the Cambie Street bridge which led straight into downtown Vancouver.
But as I opened the door to this spanking new apartment, my spirits leaped up. Here at last, I told myself, was a nice place to come home to. Carpets ran along the floors of this small one-bedroom apartment. A washroom with a washer and dryer stood just next door. And in this co-op, or around it, lay just about everything I needed.
For the next two weeks I couldn't wait to leave the two tiny rooms where I'd stayed in Kitsilano for the past seven years."When you move into a housing co-op you've won the lottery," said May Brown, the centre-right city councillor to a Vancouver city council. Brown had rightly described my state of mind on my first sight of where I would live.
Yet she didn't mention the constant meetings and tensions required to run a housing co-op. In the previous 16 months I'd gone to over 20 meetings and also twice to city council to make this co-op happen. Now the moment of payback had come. I was now a full-fledged resident of Eight Oaks Housing Co-operative, a four storey, 42 suite building on Cambie Street. On the co-op's north side and on its first floor sat Acorn Day Care where some of the co-op's children could go to.
1982 was one of the last years of Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau's time in power. The aging prime minister had been goaded by the left leaning New Democratic Party to finance social housing. Eight Oaks and many other co-ops came out of this new government spending. In his time in power Trudeau encouraged the building of 600,000 units of social housing. Never before or since has a Canadian government financed and helped build so many units of social housing.
Our co-op was developed by Richard Morgan and Jacques Khouri. Khouri headed up Inner City Housing and before becoming a developer, he had tried to save low cost housing in Kitsilano. I love living in Eight Oaks Housing and still live there, the last of the original residents to do so. Yet not all people were happy living there., a fact I'll discuss in the next section of this memoir.
Politics didn't dominate all of my life in the 1980's and 1990's. On a late summer day in 1982, I opened up the door of an apartment in a housing co-operative on Cambie street. The housing co-op lay about eight blocks south of Vancouver City Hall. Up the street few blocks south lay the beautiful Queen Elizabeth Park and down the street going northwards, was the Cambie Street bridge which led straight into downtown Vancouver.
But as I opened the door to this spanking new apartment, my spirits leaped up. Here at last, I told myself, was a nice place to come home to. Carpets ran along the floors of this small one-bedroom apartment. A washroom with a washer and dryer stood just next door. And in this co-op, or around it, lay just about everything I needed.
For the next two weeks I couldn't wait to leave the two tiny rooms where I'd stayed in Kitsilano for the past seven years."When you move into a housing co-op you've won the lottery," said May Brown, the centre-right city councillor to a Vancouver city council. Brown had rightly described my state of mind on my first sight of where I would live.
Yet she didn't mention the constant meetings and tensions required to run a housing co-op. In the previous 16 months I'd gone to over 20 meetings and also twice to city council to make this co-op happen. Now the moment of payback had come. I was now a full-fledged resident of Eight Oaks Housing Co-operative, a four storey, 42 suite building on Cambie Street. On the co-op's north side and on its first floor sat Acorn Day Care where some of the co-op's children could go to.
1982 was one of the last years of Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau's time in power. The aging prime minister had been goaded by the left leaning New Democratic Party to finance social housing. Eight Oaks and many other co-ops came out of this new government spending. In his time in power Trudeau encouraged the building of 600,000 units of social housing. Never before or since has a Canadian government financed and helped build so many units of social housing.
Our co-op was developed by Richard Morgan and Jacques Khouri. Khouri headed up Inner City Housing and before becoming a developer, he had tried to save low cost housing in Kitsilano. I love living in Eight Oaks Housing and still live there, the last of the original residents to do so. Yet not all people were happy living there., a fact I'll discuss in the next section of this memoir.
Monday, 29 August 2016
Exis and Entrances: A Journey Through Many Landscapes, by Dave Jaffe: Chapter Seven - Part Five
Chapter Seven - Part Five
Just before I left political parties and the anti-poverty movement I heard one New Democratic party member describe me to an N.D.P. Member of the Legislature. "That man," this member said about me, "is one of the slipperiest slimiest member of this party I've ever known." This man may have been right. Still, he forgot to mention that I voted for him in a long ago nomination contest. But he remembered that I had failed to show up in another nomination battle where he was campaigning for a candidate who was defeated.
Yet it wasn't just my flawed behaviour that led me to leave political parties. It was also the political climate that swirled around North America and Canada in particular in the 1990's. Events shattered my dreams of a democratic socialism. The rise of the reform Party and massive federal deficits led nearly every political party to swing in a conservative arc.
In the 1990's the Mulroney Conservative government signed on to two North American free trade agreements, first with the U.S. and then with the U.S. and Mexico. These free trade deals tied the hands of any government that wanted to bring in any new social programs. Then the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 discredited any kind of socialism, even the democratic kinds like what the N.D.P. used to offer.
One beautiful spring day in 1997 I travelled down the Fraser Valley to the small town of Hope. Here, the mighty Fraser River swings west towards the Salish Sea and Vancouver, a two hour journey away. The sun shone down from a clear blue sky as I gazed at the river and the huge mountains that it streams past.
"I'm done with political parties," I told myself. "I'm still a progressive but I'm not going to be involved with politics and social movements any more." On the banks of the heaving Fraser Raver I waved an imaginary goodbye to COPE, the N.D.P. and the anti-poverty group called End Legislated Poverty or ELP. I was now 55 and it was time to leave behind the passions of the past.
Just before I left political parties and the anti-poverty movement I heard one New Democratic party member describe me to an N.D.P. Member of the Legislature. "That man," this member said about me, "is one of the slipperiest slimiest member of this party I've ever known." This man may have been right. Still, he forgot to mention that I voted for him in a long ago nomination contest. But he remembered that I had failed to show up in another nomination battle where he was campaigning for a candidate who was defeated.
Yet it wasn't just my flawed behaviour that led me to leave political parties. It was also the political climate that swirled around North America and Canada in particular in the 1990's. Events shattered my dreams of a democratic socialism. The rise of the reform Party and massive federal deficits led nearly every political party to swing in a conservative arc.
In the 1990's the Mulroney Conservative government signed on to two North American free trade agreements, first with the U.S. and then with the U.S. and Mexico. These free trade deals tied the hands of any government that wanted to bring in any new social programs. Then the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 discredited any kind of socialism, even the democratic kinds like what the N.D.P. used to offer.
One beautiful spring day in 1997 I travelled down the Fraser Valley to the small town of Hope. Here, the mighty Fraser River swings west towards the Salish Sea and Vancouver, a two hour journey away. The sun shone down from a clear blue sky as I gazed at the river and the huge mountains that it streams past.
"I'm done with political parties," I told myself. "I'm still a progressive but I'm not going to be involved with politics and social movements any more." On the banks of the heaving Fraser Raver I waved an imaginary goodbye to COPE, the N.D.P. and the anti-poverty group called End Legislated Poverty or ELP. I was now 55 and it was time to leave behind the passions of the past.
Saturday, 27 August 2016
Exits and Entrance - A Journey Through many Landscapes by Dave Jaffe: Chapter Seven - Part Four
Chapter Seven - Part Four.
Another interesting and committed member of the New Democratic Party was Margaret Mitchell who served as the New Democratic Member of Parliament for Vancouver-East from 1979 to 1993. Mitchell grew up in central Canada and became a nurse and then a social worker.
This short blonde woman joined the Canadian army and worked in South Korean hospitals during the Korean War. She later moved to Vancouver and was one of the hardest workers I ever saw in the political world."Margaret makes sure that her constituents's problems get solved, " one of her assistants said.
During her time in Parliament Mitchell was, I think, the first Member of Parliament to focus on and denounce wife battering. As she condemned this practice, Members of Parliament in other political parties tried to shout her down. Yet she persisted in her speech unfazed by the abusive words hurled at her. She was one gutty lady.
These M.L.A.'s and M.P."s I have mentioned plus other New Democratic representatives , in government or in opposition, battled tough well-entrenched political machines like the Bennett father-and son Social Credit Party, the Trudeauite Liberals and the Mulroney Tories. They didn't win too many elections but they kept the progressive flame alive in British Columbia.
From 1972 to 1976 I took part in over 20 elections. I licked stamps, stuffed envelopes, canvassed many voters and met many people. But I didn't fit too comfortably into the world of party politics. I panicked at key moments, talked far too much and asked too many questions. Nor was I a team player the way I should have been.
"Here comes Dave Jaffe," one friend of Dennis Cocke said when he saw me at the 1990 N.D.P. convention in downtown Vancouver. "He's going to talk my head off about politics and ask me some very searching questions." When I discovered the different factions in the N.D.P. I would go up to some people and ask them, "Do you belong to the (Bob) Wiiliams wing of the party, the (Dave) Barrett brigade or the (Dennis) Cocke machine?'
These kind of ridiculous questions convinced many people I knew in the N.D.P. that I was a problem to stay away from. At last in 1996 I agreed with them and left the N.D.P. and COPE. At the same time I walked out of the anti-poverty movement where I also had caused problems. I had hung around movements for change too long and had become ineffective and a very small but disruptive force. Politics I realized was a very serious business and I was too undisciplined to fit in to the political machine.
Another interesting and committed member of the New Democratic Party was Margaret Mitchell who served as the New Democratic Member of Parliament for Vancouver-East from 1979 to 1993. Mitchell grew up in central Canada and became a nurse and then a social worker.
This short blonde woman joined the Canadian army and worked in South Korean hospitals during the Korean War. She later moved to Vancouver and was one of the hardest workers I ever saw in the political world."Margaret makes sure that her constituents's problems get solved, " one of her assistants said.
During her time in Parliament Mitchell was, I think, the first Member of Parliament to focus on and denounce wife battering. As she condemned this practice, Members of Parliament in other political parties tried to shout her down. Yet she persisted in her speech unfazed by the abusive words hurled at her. She was one gutty lady.
These M.L.A.'s and M.P."s I have mentioned plus other New Democratic representatives , in government or in opposition, battled tough well-entrenched political machines like the Bennett father-and son Social Credit Party, the Trudeauite Liberals and the Mulroney Tories. They didn't win too many elections but they kept the progressive flame alive in British Columbia.
From 1972 to 1976 I took part in over 20 elections. I licked stamps, stuffed envelopes, canvassed many voters and met many people. But I didn't fit too comfortably into the world of party politics. I panicked at key moments, talked far too much and asked too many questions. Nor was I a team player the way I should have been.
"Here comes Dave Jaffe," one friend of Dennis Cocke said when he saw me at the 1990 N.D.P. convention in downtown Vancouver. "He's going to talk my head off about politics and ask me some very searching questions." When I discovered the different factions in the N.D.P. I would go up to some people and ask them, "Do you belong to the (Bob) Wiiliams wing of the party, the (Dave) Barrett brigade or the (Dennis) Cocke machine?'
These kind of ridiculous questions convinced many people I knew in the N.D.P. that I was a problem to stay away from. At last in 1996 I agreed with them and left the N.D.P. and COPE. At the same time I walked out of the anti-poverty movement where I also had caused problems. I had hung around movements for change too long and had become ineffective and a very small but disruptive force. Politics I realized was a very serious business and I was too undisciplined to fit in to the political machine.
Exits and Entrances: A Journey Through Many Landscapes by Dave Jaffe; Chapter Seven - Part Four.
Chapter Seven - Part Four.
Margaret Mitchell was another interesting and principled New Democrat. Mitchell served as member of Parliament for Vancouver-east from 1979 to 1993. Mitchell grew up in central canada. She became a nurse and then a social worker.
Margaret Mitchell was another interesting and principled New Democrat. Mitchell served as member of Parliament for Vancouver-east from 1979 to 1993. Mitchell grew up in central canada. She became a nurse and then a social worker.
Friday, 26 August 2016
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."
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."
Thursday, 25 August 2016
Exits and Entrances: A Journey Through Many Landscapes by Dave Jaffe: Chapter Seven - Second Part
Chapter Seven - Part Two.
Once I had joined COPE I realized its internal set-up. COPE brought together communists and left-leaning social democrats. The communists like Bruce Yorke, Fred Wilson and communist sympathizers like Harry Rankin ran COPE because they had founded COPE back in the late 1960's. But social democrats like Libby Davies, Bruce Eriksen, Jean Swanson and the health economist Dave Schreck gave COPE a wider appeal. Unfortunately neither Jean and Dave ever got elected to city council though both of them ran for council quite a few times.
I was now launched on a 14 year involvement in the political world. While belonging to COPE, I also volunteered for the New Democratic Party. This double role caused me some tensions.
"We can't get close to COPE," Gerry Scott, one of the N.D.P.'s chief organizers told me in 1980. "They've got communists in there. We've got to keep them at arm's length." I stayed active in COPE and in the N.D.P. too. When people asked me what the N.D.P. was like I usually replied, "It's an organization like any other. There's a top, a middle and a bottom.I'm at the bottom."
At the top stood the provincial secretary and the party leader. During most of the 1970"s and into the 1980's, Dave Barrett, the charismatic former social worker from east end Vancouver led the party. A great organizer Yvonne Cocke, was the provincial secretary for some time.
In the middle of the party you found the elected Members of the Legislative Assembly and the federal Members of Parliament or M.P.'s. Near the top of the party also were trade union leaders like the head of the B.C. Federation of Labour, the heads of provincial public sector unions and the then-head of the International Woodworkers of America. Then at the bottom sit the rank-and-file N.D.P. members like myself along with the 40,000 other members of the provincial party. I was just one of tens of thousands of anonymous members who basically showed up to canvass, and lick and stuff envelopes. Nothing I or other canvassers did, really affected election results. I used to tell people, "My dad was a salesman for a cable company. I'm a salesman for social democracy."
I divided the prominent N.D.P. members into two groups:Those I knew and those I didn't. I never knew Dave Barrett, the hard driving M.L.A. from New Westminster Dennis Cocke, or Bob Williams the tough intellectual from Vancouver-East . Barrett led the N.D.P. to victory in 1972 and served as premier from 1972 to 1975. The New Westminster -based Cocke was B.C."s Minister of Health under Barrett and did a very fine job. His wife Yvonne was for a time the provincial secretary, as stated before. Then there was Bob Williams. These four people basically set the directions for the N.D.P. in the 1970's and early 1980's.
Once I had joined COPE I realized its internal set-up. COPE brought together communists and left-leaning social democrats. The communists like Bruce Yorke, Fred Wilson and communist sympathizers like Harry Rankin ran COPE because they had founded COPE back in the late 1960's. But social democrats like Libby Davies, Bruce Eriksen, Jean Swanson and the health economist Dave Schreck gave COPE a wider appeal. Unfortunately neither Jean and Dave ever got elected to city council though both of them ran for council quite a few times.
I was now launched on a 14 year involvement in the political world. While belonging to COPE, I also volunteered for the New Democratic Party. This double role caused me some tensions.
"We can't get close to COPE," Gerry Scott, one of the N.D.P.'s chief organizers told me in 1980. "They've got communists in there. We've got to keep them at arm's length." I stayed active in COPE and in the N.D.P. too. When people asked me what the N.D.P. was like I usually replied, "It's an organization like any other. There's a top, a middle and a bottom.I'm at the bottom."
At the top stood the provincial secretary and the party leader. During most of the 1970"s and into the 1980's, Dave Barrett, the charismatic former social worker from east end Vancouver led the party. A great organizer Yvonne Cocke, was the provincial secretary for some time.
In the middle of the party you found the elected Members of the Legislative Assembly and the federal Members of Parliament or M.P.'s. Near the top of the party also were trade union leaders like the head of the B.C. Federation of Labour, the heads of provincial public sector unions and the then-head of the International Woodworkers of America. Then at the bottom sit the rank-and-file N.D.P. members like myself along with the 40,000 other members of the provincial party. I was just one of tens of thousands of anonymous members who basically showed up to canvass, and lick and stuff envelopes. Nothing I or other canvassers did, really affected election results. I used to tell people, "My dad was a salesman for a cable company. I'm a salesman for social democracy."
I divided the prominent N.D.P. members into two groups:Those I knew and those I didn't. I never knew Dave Barrett, the hard driving M.L.A. from New Westminster Dennis Cocke, or Bob Williams the tough intellectual from Vancouver-East . Barrett led the N.D.P. to victory in 1972 and served as premier from 1972 to 1975. The New Westminster -based Cocke was B.C."s Minister of Health under Barrett and did a very fine job. His wife Yvonne was for a time the provincial secretary, as stated before. Then there was Bob Williams. These four people basically set the directions for the N.D.P. in the 1970's and early 1980's.
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