Campbell's Soup

Larry's Party
"The former chief coroner tries to take COPE to the centre, and Jennifer Clarke tries to keep city hall"

By Chris Nuttall-Smith
Vancouver Magazine
November 2002

Clarke wants to take a walk. She slides her mini van into a spot on Cordova Street, steps up to the curb, around a corner and left onto Hastings, smack into Vancouver’s ugliest urban neighbourhood. Jennifer Clarke, city councillor, lightning-rod candidate for this fall’s mayoral race, private-school girl, Shaughnessy money and the woman who referred, quite famously now, to this very neighbourhood as a “ghetto,” wants to walk through the Downtown Eastside. She strolls past the old Woodward’s department store and the squatters fighting there for social housing. Past the boarded-up buildings, past the junkies and past the Save-on-Meat and the Central American crack dealers who always seem to lurk outside. Before long, a blue mini van slows down alongside us. The man at the wheel, a thin white guy with a dirty blonde beard, is staring. He’s recognized her. He doesn’t look happy. “This is no ghetto!” he yells. “This is not a ghetto!” Clarke waves, looks down at the sidewalk. She keeps on walking.

Clarke wants you to know she cares about this neighbourhood. “When I was a girl, I used to shop at Woodward’s with my mom,” she begins. “And when I was a girl, I used to take the bus down to Chinatown for lunch with my girlfriends starting when I was 12 or 13. There were lots of little shops as well as Woodward’s. There were lots of working-class people here.” She doesn’t want to push anybody away, she says. There’s plenty of space for everyone, look at all the empty buildings. She says that Portland, Oregon, “reclaimed” its version of the Downtown Eastside by going in with a comprehensive health plan. “The police and law enforcement officials gave the necessary push to sort of push the addicts into—toward medical care.”

We stop at Hastings and Columbia at a coffee shop, and not long after we sit down another bearded man walks in. He’s dirty and unshaven, and he’s carrying something in his arms. He walks over to our table. “Would you guys be interested in an Emerson microwave oven? It’s brand new.” Clarke takes no time to compose herself; maybe she does not need to. “No thanks,” Clarke says, with a smile and a tone that manages to sound as if she truly appreciates the offer.

Just then I can’t help but feel sorry for her. I picture her as a little girl in knee high socks and a gingham dress, wandering through here with her mom, all wide eyes and innocence. Clarke could not have known then that this long-decaying strip would be her political Achilles’ heel; that she would stand accused of undermining the current mayor—her party’s leader—over his support of the bold “four pillars” plan to fix this very neighbourhood. That accusation has resonated through Clarke’s own party, the Non-Partisan Association. But at least Clarke and the NPA share a common ideology: they are and—with a few notable exceptions—they always have been the party of the west side, of business and boosterism, the crème de la crème keeping the socialists at bay.

Clarke’s rival from the left, the Coalition of Progressive Electors’ Larry Campbell, doesn’t have it so easy. His party constituents and his colleagues don’t share such a singular ideology. Take Tim Louis, the COPE city councillor who holds up Cuba as a model of fiscal responsibility. (“You know Tim Louis has a picture of Che Guevara on the back of his wheelchair?” Clarke informed me after our walk.)

Campbell is a lot of things: a former drug cop, former chief provincial coroner, owner of a successful consulting company and the basis for an award-winning television drama about a crusading coroner. He’s a media darling, and he just might do what COPE hasn’t been able to do in its 34-year history. Campbell might well make it to the mayor’s office. But he’ll have to take his party with him.

His new-found party’s stripes—Campbell only signed on a few months ago—were in evidence at its candidate selection meeting recently. For all the young couples there, the activist pensioners and the prepped-out students, there were just as many members from the anti-globalization crowd or from the labour movement. One young woman sold buttons with slogans like “Canada is ALL Native Land,” and “Detox on Demand.” Another of her wares bore the words “Class War,” underscored by a Nike swoosh and the tag-line “Just Do It.”

Up at the microphone one candidate for COPE’s city-council slate pledged that a COPE majority would keep Vancouver a Wal-Mart-free zone. She got the party’s nod. It felt like half the speakers began their speeches with “Brothers and sisters.” And at the back of the room, Ian Waddell, variously environment minister and tourism minister with the former provincial New Democratic Party government, and one of a few dozen NDP politicians and functionaries in attendance, was overheard saying, “Jesus, I remember when COPE used to meet in the community hall, hey?”

Somehow, Larry Campbell, the man in the dark suit, the dark shoes and the tie, the man with the silver hair brushed back off his forehead in a tidy wave, has to embrace all those parts of his party. But the thousand-odd faithful at the meeting that night can’t bring Campbell to power with their votes alone. He’s also got to look sharp for the voters who wouldn’t be caught dead wearing an “I Love Commie Dykes” button—the west-side, middle-class voters, the small-business people and the socially conscious yuppies who just could vote for COPE this year. Meet Larry Campbell, the man who can’t bend too far left, who mustn’t sway too far right, who mustn’t frighten either. Meet Larry Campbell, political androgyne.

All of this makes more sense when David Cadman explains it. Cadman was the party’s mayoral candidate last time around, and he’s been working to build COPE ever since. He uses the language of branding to describe it. “There’s COPE classic and there’s the new COPE,” he says. “The new COPE is about broadening that group of people who want to see good civic government.”

A moment later: “I think people are beginning to realize that if you want to be elected and serve this community, you’ve got to serve all the citizens. You’ve got to have a broader tent. That’s a transformation we’ve gone through.” Cadman says that transformation only grew more driven in the days of last year’s bus strike, when small-business owners, frustrated with NPA councillors’ refusal to intervene, turned to COPE for sympathy. Then, this summer Philip Owen went public with his claim of being pushed out by his own party. Jennifer Clarke shouldered much of the blame. And Cadman and his colleagues saw an opportunity to scoop up some of the NPA’s now disenchanted supporters. So what better man to do that than Campbell?

Cadman says he courted Larry Campbell, asked him to join the party. And he was a good choice. Campbell talks the free-enterprise talk. He lives in Point Grey. He and his wife own two homes in Saskatchewan. Which, it should be said, is not the same as owning a couple homes in Whistler. They’re both in Dubuc, a tiny agricultural town where houses go for $5,000, Campbell says, with three lots. But he owns three homes all the same.

It doesn’t seem too jarring, then, when Campbell suggests a meeting at Starbucks, though some in his party might find it an unfortunate choice of venues. Campbell is scheduled to introduce Naomi Klein, the anti-globalization, anti-branding crusader, at a COPE-sponsored event a few days after this meeting. As we settle over grande coffees, Campbell, who says he’s never belonged to a political party, acknowledges that some of his friends were surprised he chose COPE. “There is a certain segment that wanted me to run independent,” he says. “I didn’t think it was very realistic. It was a huge amount of money that I would have to raise, but more importantly, I would be fighting both ends of the [political] scale. And I actually felt very comfortable with COPE once I went there and we talked.”

But what about the party’s left wing? They sang the “Internationale” at COPE founder Harry Rankin’s funeral last spring. “Obviously I’m closer to the centre.” He searches for a few seconds, looking for words. “But I think if you look at our platform, we are fairly centre-left. And the ideas that we have are workable, they’re practical, and they aren’t pie in the sky.” Take business. Campbell says he’s pro-business and pro-development. He suggests that the city’s residents should have more say in development questions, and he wonders whether enough low-income housing is being built as a percentage of higher-income housing. But on the whole, Campbell has no major complaints. “I think the city is doing well for the most part on large-scale development.”

At a second Starbucks interview a few weeks later, Campbell seems more at ease with his party, and he’s happy to talk about some of COPE’s issues. “If you want to place me in this coalition, you can place me as centre-left,” he says. “Not far left, but centre-left. Anybody who watched me as chief coroner, who watched my recommendations, who saw my involvement in the four pillars can recognize that that’s where I am, and I’m a fiscal conservative.” It might be taking things a little too far to declare the city a Wal-Mart-free zone, he says, adding that the question of whether to allow Wal-Mart should be up to the neighbourhoods where they are proposed. He likes Starbucks, he says, no apologies.

When I mention Tim Louis’ fondness for Cuba’s fiscal restraint, Campbell chuckles and says he’s happy to hear Louis out. Same with the NDP politicos and the squatters occupying the Woodward’s building. “This is not a group that walks lockstep with each other,” Campbell says. “There’s a variety of people with different opinions, and I’ll tell you they bring up ideas that I would never have thought of. We all bring something to the table, and that’s what’s so interesting about the coalition.”

So everybody loves Larry? Not quite. There’s one other thing about Campbell. It takes a diplomat, sometimes, to hold a party together—particularly one with as disparate a membership as COPE. And if you ask some of Larry Campbell’s colleagues from his days at the coroner’s service, Larry Campbell is not a diplomat. Peter Gordon, a former part-time coroner under Campbell who now works as a consultant, describes Campbell’s style as something akin to Pontius Pilate’s: Campbell belittled people and used “bombastic rhetoric.”

“However, let me say this,” Gordon adds. “Larry is a capable person in many ways. His desire to defend the down-and-outers on the Downtown Eastside is commendable....[He] will definitely add some spice and colour to the election. ”

But in general, says Gordon, “I don’t believe that he is a consultative type of person that can get together with his fellow elected council and get down to the root causes, get down to the solutions. I think that he would not have the ability to build consensus on these people’s behalf. I think that he would just keep using that style and that kind of language, and he would get people’s back up.”

There’s more. According to Gordon, the provincial ombudsman launched an investigation because of complaints—including Gordon’s—about Campbell’s behaviour. Maybe it’s nothing.

Maybe it’s something. Campbell doesn’t really say. But questions about what really happened on his watch make Campbell’s face, rosy at the best of times, turn a deep red. At that second Starbucks interview, Campbell says there was never any ombudsman’s investigation of his service. He would not allow it. “The ombudsman wanted, I believe, to investigate the coroner’s service on a particular case, but let’s just say that the ombudsman, in my opinion, was delving into areas that in my opinion were simply not part of the ombudsman’s job,” Campbell says, adding that the issue in question was not about Gordon. So instead, the deputy attorney general conducted an investigation, according to Campbell. About what, specifically, Campbell can’t recall. He says he does not have a copy of the investigation’s report. He sits leaning against the Starbucks wall, his hand fixed on the rim of his coffee cup. “Where are you trying to go with this?” he asks. He asks again. The current ombudsman, Howard Kushner, says he can’t say whether his office ever investigated complaints about the coroner’s office or Campbell.

Dr. Robert Stevenson, a former regional coroner in Nanaimo who is now retired, says he wants to leave his old job behind him; however, Stevenson confirms another coroner’s service story about a memorable Campbell incident. According to that story, at a meeting of coroners, then Chief Coroner Campbell tore a strip off of Stevenson, belittling him in front of his colleagues. It later became clear that Stevenson had been in the right, but Campbell never acknowledged his error. When asked if that version of events was correct, Stevenson answers, “Yep, big time. Big time.”

Another senior staffer—who has left the coroner’s service and spoke only on condition of anonymity—says that Campbell was a bully. “I frankly worry about the administration of the city of Vancouver if he gets in.”

But Lil Premack, a former deputy regional coroner in Kelowna and investigating coroner in Vancouver, interprets Campbell’s mannerisms and management style much more positively. “I liked him because he was very straightforward, for one thing; he didn’t pull any punches,” she says. “He’s a no-nonsense kind of guy. And I respect that in a person who’s in the position he was in.

“I worked for Larry for many, many years and Larry never did me any wrong and I saw he did a lot of good for the city of Vancouver, for one thing. And to me, if I needed management, and Larry was in management, I got management.”

In his own defence, Campbell says personality conflicts are normal in any organization, as are reviews of how an organization is working. He often defended his staff, he says. He’s adamant that he was no bully. “Am I a manager who lets things slide and is wishy-washy? No, I’m not. I’m decisive, I make decisions, and we move on with it.”

Like Jennifer Clarke, Larry Campbell wants to go for a walk. We turn right out of Starbucks and head down 10th Avenue toward his home. Campbell belongs to this community and he’s proud of it. As we go past an old man with a walker, Campbell marvels that the man doesn’t have his bucket and squeegee with him—that same old man cleans windows along this strip each morning, Campbell says. He stops to greet the owner of Bean Around The World, a coffee shop down the street. “Max. Hey, Max. Good morning. Don’t say anything bad. I’m being interviewed, okay?” We walk past the clothing store where he shops and past the public library, closed this Monday morning. He calls it a “crying shame” and pledges that the city’s libraries should stay open every day for at least eight hours.

We head up Trimble Street now, then we turn right a little way along. Campbell stops at a modest Arts and Crafts number. Campbell’s wife, pathologist Enid Edwards, ripped up the lawn long ago and planted their yard full of rhododendrons and heather. The garden and the home behind it are an urban dream. “It’s just your old trades house,” Campbell says.

The most famous picture of Larry Campbell shows him standing in a morgue in a trench coat with a grim look on his face, surrounded by the dead. A few toe tags poke out from the gurneys. For all his years as a coroner, Campbell is most closely associated with the junkies and the overdoses of the Downtown Eastside. It feels like he wants to show he’s about more than just that, that he lives in a normal place with a deck and lawn chairs and a doghouse in the yard.

It seems fitting that Valerie MacLean, former RCMP officer, face of the B.C. mainland Better Business Bureau and newly conscripted mayoral candidate for the Vancouver Civic Action Team, also takes me for a walk. This happens because Stuart Backerman, MacLean’s handler, wants to give me some party bumf he’s left in his car. So we need to get from Library Square to Burrard Street. The walk proves illuminating.

MacLean seems about as new at this as they come. She actually says that win or lose, she just wants to go out there for this campaign and make it fun. She’s just finished a radio interview with Rafe Mair, too, so she’s going through an understandable decompression. She’s speaking at hyperspeed. And just about every time she tries to make a point or answer a question, Backerman cuts in and answers for her, waxing about how their party is the city’s true political centre, about how COPE is too far left, how the NPA is too far right, how the VCA Team is just right. He can’t seem to keep quiet. So as we walk toward Burrard, Backerman starts talking about the Downtown Eastside. He and MacLean just walked through there the other day, he says, and they seem hardly to believe what they saw.

Backerman grew up in the Bronx, then moved here in the 1970s. He still speaks with a thick New York accent, and he still holds his native city as a point of reference against which all others are measured. So he says the Hastings strip reminds him of how Times Square was when he was a kid. “I couldn’t believe it,” he says. “We walked through there from one end to the other, and people were whacked out on drugs, and people were panhandling, intimidating the tourists—degenerates everywhere, and we didn’t see one cop. Middle of the day, and there’s not a single cop.”

Now MacLean nods her agreement. Backerman wonders aloud how Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York mayor, managed to clean his city up. Then he keys in on the words “zero tolerance.” “Zero tolerance!” MacLean repeats after him, in a tone that says “Eureka!” She’s talking over the traffic on Georgia Street, she’s walking briskly, negotiating a crosswalk packed with office drones out for lunch, smiling a constant candidate’s smile. And she sounds excited.

“Zero tolerance?” I ask. “Is that going to be part of your platform?”

“It very well could be,” MacLean says. The new centrist candidate and her handler are forming policies on the fly, out loud, as they walk down Georgia Street, and they’re using loaded words like “degenerate” and “zero tolerance”—words that not even this race’s supposed right-wing monster, Jennifer Clarke, would use; words the city’s left would undoubtedly deplore.

“Zero tolerance for what?” I push.

“For illegal activity,” MacLean says.

“Well, drug using is illegal,” I say. “Do you mean zero tolerance for that?”

She seems to have to think about this one. It takes her a few steps to answer. “For the pushers,” MacLean says. “For the dealing.”

But in this city, the drug users and the drug dealers are very often the same people. Right about now, that distinction seems lost on these two from this party that would sneak up the centre.

Back out on Hastings Street, Jennifer Clarke is walking again. It’s still hard to say just how much of an impact the fight for this neighbourhood will have on this election’s final result, whether this neighbourhood that has for so long played Vancouver’s strung-out and embarrassing cousin might now play its kingmaker.

Clarke’s strategy, much as it might defy the facts, is to minimize the political differences over the Downtown Eastside, to maximize the differences elsewhere. She’s tired of the debate over semantics, she says, tired of the partisan attacks. “It seems that Valerie MacLean and Larry Campbell agree with the four-pillar approach,” she says. “It is an NPA-developed policy which we initiated, supported and are moving forward on. So we all agree, and that’s a good thing.”

Larry Campbell’s strategy, it seems, is to maximize the parties’ differences over the drug problem and minimize many (but certainly not all) of the differences elsewhere. And somehow Valerie MacLean hopes to stroll up the middle, wherever that may be. But for now, Clarke is headed back past the old Woodward’s building where she used to go as a child, and past the squatters, past the boarded-up blocks, past the junkies with their Emerson microwaves. This is Jennifer Clarke’s election to lose, after all. And for this moment, nobody is giving her grief.