Although many of you will know this already, thanks to the instant world, I wanted to note the news that flashed out yesterday about former councillor Jim Green.
Green, who is an essential part of Vancouver history with his battles and ingenious ideas for building social housing, creating banks, redeveloping Woodward’s and more, had a bad bout with lung cancer two years ago.
(I was surprised at the time at how lowkey he was about it. He missed a couple of radio shows with the civics panel on Bill Good and only mentioned when he came back, his usual sometimes impatient and prickly, sometimes bubbling over with enthusiasm self, that it had been for lung-cancer surgery.)
Word came out yesterday, via various friends and then ultimately a message from the mayor’s office, that it was back and serious.
As the message said: “As you may have heard Jim has been quietly battling cancer over the past while. The cancer is spreading and Jim is spending all of his time with his family and working on various exciting projects,” before asking media to call Councillor Geoff Meggs for information and comments, rather than his family.
I heard from someone who called me yesterday that he is getting hospital-style care at home. Home, for the last few years, has been a mid-tower penthouse in the Woodward’s building, a beautiful space filled with the books, pictures and artifacts of his life, with windows all around that allow him to look out over the city he has loved and fought for so long.
Others would have wanted a place higher up in the building with a view. Jim liked being able to look at the old buildings along Cambie and at his Woodward’s project around him from a level where he felt like he was among them, not viewing them from above. I’m sure there are a lot of people in this town are hoping he will get to see that view for many, many more days and months.
12 responses so far ↓
1 Joe Just Joe // Feb 16, 2012 at 10:33 am
I’ve known Jim for only a few years but he’s managed to have an effect on me and influenced my outlook on certain topics. Wish him all the best and hope he takes comfort in all the good he’s done and the good that will continue based on actions he helped start.
2 MB // Feb 16, 2012 at 10:37 am
The last time I saw Jim Green I was having lunch in the Art Gallery Cafe and I looked up just as he was exiting past my table behind his family. At that time the city was building up to another election, post the James Green fiasco.
I said as he passed, with a mouth half full of salmon quiche, “Sure wish you were running again.”
He just smirked, winked, shook his head and gave me a pat on the shoulder.
That told me everything I needed to know: That he was past all that shit and just wanted to stay involved as a private citizen and part time consultant, spend more time with his extended family, and to improve his pool game.
Jim Green came a dropped feather away from the mayor’s chair twice, that after two decades as an activist for the common good in the DTES, which until Green, Bruce Erickson and Libby Davies and many unsung heroes, was an ignored backwater.
I believe that the involvement of people like Green paved the way for others like Phillip Owen and Larry Campbell to jump into the DTES with both feet while fully invloved in their political roles, though it is supremely unfortunate that Owen was skewered by his own party for doing so, as though the poor and addicted were not entitled to be their consituents along with the middle class and wealthy westsiders.
Look carefully, and you may see that this is where the NPA started its slide, its handful of fine candidates since then notwithstanding.
I think Green’s chances at the big chair wouldn’t have been possible if he hadn’t mellowed to centre-left and started to build consensus on development projects and urban policy.
Jim Green’s story is the story of Vision Vancouver, though some rightly say the vision now needs some adjustment back to Green’s origional intentions when he and five others left COPE.
To some old warhorses on the left, consensus building was for wimps, or was a dilution of their values. Obviously they’ve never tried it with their supposed ideological opponents, or strengthened their values with the practicalities of the real world and a larger constituency, and therein they’ve swallowed way too much defeat.
Some on the right feared Green, until they actually saw the mellow side — quick, give the growling bear a double shot espresso — and the willingness to trade the periphery, but never the core. He also has cool, something many male bluebloods often aspire to but seldom achieve.
Should Jim Green be eventually memorialized in bronze, the artist would be amiss to not include his familiar fedora, an accessory — along with his steely, often angry gaze broken by the occassional wink — that characterises his tall but ever-so-human stature in this town.
3 gmgw // Feb 16, 2012 at 12:36 pm
@MB#2:
Bruce Eriksen’s name was spelled “Eriksen”, not “Erickson”. Sorry to nitpick, but I notice this misspelling reoccurring almost every time his name appears in print nowadays. He deserves better.
Other than that, fine post.
gmgw
4 brilliant // Feb 16, 2012 at 12:40 pm
Certainly wish him well and know he will receiving excellent care at BC Cancer Agency.
This just made me realize Frances you didn’t run a piece on Tom Campbell when he died, despite the large effect he had on this city??
5 MB // Feb 16, 2012 at 1:13 pm
@ gmgw, thanks for picking up on that. Perhaps I should’ve spent more time proof-reading at home, rather than writing it on a coffee break.
6 Joe Just Joe // Feb 16, 2012 at 1:53 pm
Perhaps as tribute to Jim the city would have the eventual Carral St overpass to Crab Park built and named after him, ideally having him cut the ribbon. He was a man that connected things and it would be fitting to have a connector in the DTES named after him.
Knowing Jim he would rather the money be spent on more pressing needs and I don’t think he’d care much for having something named in his honour. After reading someone pen the name on this blog ,everytime I walk thru the Woodwards atrium I see myself smile when I see the Jim Green Pool.
7 Morry // Feb 16, 2012 at 3:08 pm
Wish Jim Green all the best. May his fighting spirit carry him a ways more on his life’s journey.
8 Michael Geller // Feb 16, 2012 at 5:13 pm
I was very saddened to see in print, confirmation of something I suspected when I last saw Jim Green at the DYS Anniversary Party. One look at him told me he had cancer.
I wish him all the best. He’s a fighter!
9 Higgins // Feb 16, 2012 at 8:42 pm
Geoff Meggs could not find a better moment to push a little bit more of his viaducts… he called it ‘Jim Green’s Vision of the viaducts” … on Twitter! Today.
Way to go Councilor, are you going for the sympathy vote, Geoff?
Pitiful.
Jim… all the best, considering!
10 Richard // Feb 16, 2012 at 11:10 pm
All the best Jim.
Thanks for everything you have done to make this city a better place.
11 Baran // Feb 17, 2012 at 10:49 am
The first time I met or heard of Jim was about 15 years ago when I was an anthropology student at UBC and Jim taught a few classes in an ethnography of Vancouver course. His focus was on the downtown east side, and that course had a profound impact on me in the years following that encounter.
Jim, I wish you all the best in this personal fight.
12 Frank Ducote // Feb 17, 2012 at 6:05 pm
Thinking of Jim just as a citizen, I think a personal high point must have been a few years ago when he interviewed Jane Jacobs about what turned out to be her last book, Dark Ages Ahead.
Sitting in the audience near the front, I was fully engaged in the warm, witty and insightful conversation that Jim had with a person who was clearly a personal hero, as Ms. Jacobs certainly was for the large audience as well.
It was a very memorable occasion and I thank Jim for it.
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