This is a blog. A dying media, but indulge me.
I this in 2010 when blogging was something people did. I started writing about things going on in New Westminster and my volunteer work with the New West Environmental Partners under the title “GreenNewWest”. I then realized this was probably confusing to people because I didn’t represent the Green Party who seemed to be burgeoning locally, so I switched to the play-on-words NWimby (New West – in my back yard) which was funny/ironic because I was not a NIMBY. Dave missed the irony. Most (all?) of those blog posts are still here if you go to the archives, though their links are inevitably broken, and many of the strongly held opinions I had back then have probably changed. Some more than once.
When I got elected, I migrated the blogging to the current form. And despite the dying of this medium, I committed when I ran to keep on blogging about the City, so I’m kinda stuck now. I have managed to keep that promise by reporting here on every decision made during my time at Council, and giving people some insight into how we got to where we are (and gave them lots of ammunition to call me out on bad decisions). It has become a little more boring because of that, and I’m sorry. Governance is sometimes boring, especially compared to shouting from the peanut gallery. As time allows, I am also trying to keep up on posting those strongly held opinions that may change in the future.
Everything I write here is in my own words (outside of quotations, of course), and opinions are mine, and I really need to be clear this is is not official communications from the City. My blogs very likely don’t reflect the opinions of my Council colleagues or of any rational person.
I often start sentences with conjunctions and end them with prepositions, and my favorite piece of punctuation is ellipses. I know these are bad habits, but I suppose, like it or hate it, and, at times, I hate it myself, like when I get buried in too many subclauses to understand where my sentence is going and, eventually, end up with a sentence ending in a way that doesn’t make sense but does when you pick it apart, like this one, that is my voice. Please forgive the typos and recognize this as a volunteer effort, with volunteer results.
It feels weird to do a territorial acknowledgment on-line, but I remain aware that I work, live, and play on lands taken from the original inhabitants in an unjust way, and that the harms caused by the colonialization and genocide on these lands are not just part of an ancient past, but are around us today. To the Qayqayt, Tsleil-Waututh, Kwikwetlem, Musqueam, Kwantlen, Katzie and other peoples whose traditional use of these lands may have been lost through time and erasure by colonialization, I acknowledge that this land is unceded, and am committed to respectful and meaningful reconciliation.
So, fairly warned, please read, enjoy, share with your friends and neighbours, and tell me what you think.