You'll be missed, Larry

Editorial

The announcement that the wildly popular mayor of Vancouver, Larry Campbell, will not run for re-election this November leaves a vacuum in civic politics here. While the last election was a Campbell-led landslide that ushered in a whole new group of politicians, the next election will be a more realistic representation of the city's political climate. Campbell – or just Larry, as he is usually called – will be a dramatic chapter when our history is written.

It was his bluntness that probably accounts for his huge popularity. In an age when politicians are so careful not to offend that they often speak in a vacuous lingo that only they can decipher, Campbell said, it seemed, whatever popped into his head.

One of the most welcome such incidents was when he told the Bulletin early in his term that Jewish voters who didn't like the knee-jerk anti-Israel antics of some of his COPE colleagues could register their disapproval at the ballot box.

For his part, Campbell never succumbed to the ill-informed, trendy attacks on Zionism that were rampant on the left when he took the helm of the city's left-wing group. He made careful and apparently heartfelt efforts to reach out to our community. Like his predecessor, Philip Owen, Campbell attended an endless string of Jewish community events, Chanukah menorah lightings, Jewish National Fund dinners and agency lunches. In what may have been the definitive verdict on Campbell, the mayor had just left the room after delivering a speech to a Jewish community lunch downtown when, in the ensuing quiet as organizers prepared to resume their agenda, an audience member, addressing his seatmates but heard by the whole room, declared, "He seems like a nice man."

Campbell spoke frequently about how Rabbi Yitzchak Wineberg, the senior Lubavitcher rabbi in town, guided him through Jewish tradition and ritual when Campbell was coroner. The necessity of quick attention by the coroner in order to meet the demands of Jewish burial traditions was Campbell's introduction to the nuance of Jewish tradition and the beginning of a lasting friendship with the rabbi and our community. In his signature fedora, the mayor often blended in with the rabbis milling about at outdoor events.

Campbell's term as mayor will go down in Vancouver's annals as a fascinating and remarkable time, not least for the landslide that brought him to power – sweeping away a rival political organization that had governed for most of the last century – but also for the drama that came after his election.

Campbell will be missed, by his city and by its Jewish community.

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