There is a moment, early on a West Vancouver morning, when the fog begins to lift from the water and the inlet seems to take a breath.
The ferries ease away from Horseshoe Bay. The first lights appear along Marine Drive. Someone turns a key in the door of a café in Ambleside, Dundarave, Horseshoe Bay or Caulfeild. A runner follows the Seawalk. The mountains slowly take shape against the sky as another day begins in this beautiful place.
I’ve always loved that moment, when the fog lifts and everything comes clear. In one way or another, that moment is a metaphor, because I’ve spent my whole working life chasing it by making my living with questions. I’ve asked them in newsrooms in Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton and Vancouver.
I asked them on the morning of September 11 at the helm of CTV News, when fear was moving faster than facts and our responsibility was to determine what was true. I asked them as the CBC’s ombudsman, when my job sometimes was to tell a great institution that it had fallen short of its own truth-telling standards.
And I have asked them of students in ethics and leadership at UBC, where I have taught that an honest question is not an act of aggression but one of respect and of seeking that clarity from the fog. It says: your answer matters. The truth matters.
I never imagined those questions would lead me here. But journalism and public life have something fundamental in common. Both represent the public, and both depend upon something that takes years to build and moments to lose: trust.
A media audience has to trust that what is being told is true and founded on the best available information. A resident has to trust that its government is giving them the whole picture—that it has listened before deciding, considered before spending, and explained before asking people to accept the consequences.
Too many people in West Vancouver have told me that confidence has weakened, that their trust has worn thin or gone.
They look at rising taxes and wonder where the money is going. They watch the cost of a regional wastewater plant rise from hundreds of millions into the billions and ask who was watching closely enough. They see familiar storefronts go dark. They feel that too many decisions arrive fully formed, when what they wanted was a chance to help shape them. They have propelled my plan as a mayoralty candidate.
These conversations have not made me pessimistic. Quite the opposite.
Everywhere during this campaign, I have encountered people who care enormously with their hearts about this place. They want to participate. They want to contribute. They want their government to trust them enough to share the difficult choices as well as the easy ones.
That is the change I want to bring.
Not government by grand gesture, but government built on a simple habit: look after the basics, tell people what you are doing and why, and give them a way to see whether you did what you promised.
That means budgets people can understand before the vote is taken. Major projects with costs, deadlines and progress visible to everyone. A Municipal Hall that sees a merchant asking for help as someone to assist, not a file to process. Infrastructure maintained before it fails. Wildfire protection treated with urgency. Seniors able to remain connected to their community. Young people invited to help imagine the West Vancouver they may one day inherit. A plan built by expertise in our midst.
It means listening not as a ceremony, but as a way of governing.
I am running as an independent because I want my obligation to be uncomplicated. I do not want to owe my loyalty to a slate, a party or anyone with something to sell.
I want to owe it to you.
Because West Vancouver has never been merely its property values or its postcard views.
It is the volunteer who drives a neighbour to a medical appointment. It is the merchant who turns on the lights before most of us are awake.
It is the family stretching to remain here, the senior determined to remain independent, the newcomer discovering the Seawalk for the first time, and the longtime resident who can remember when our shopping villages were locally run touchstones of a community.
A community is not scenery, though. It is memory, obligation, argument, friendship and belonging.
It is a home, and homes endure because people care enough to tend them.
I have spent much of my life holding other people and institutions to account, caring about where I lived to ask the important questions.
Now I am asking you to hold me to the same standard—in public, in plain language, every day I am privileged to serve.
I have the endorsements of community leaders in West Vancouver eager for this change. I also have the support of experienced political and business leaders here and in Metro Vancouver–the only politicians suggesting I do not have the qualities to lead Council are my opponents with something to lose.
On Saturday, October 17, the polls will open as another morning breaks over the inlet.
I hope you will vote. I would be honoured to have your support.
And whatever choice you make, remember that the story of West Vancouver has never belonged to Municipal Hall. It belongs to the people who live here.
The fog always lifts eventually. What matters is whether we are willing to look clearly at what is in front of us—and decide together what comes next.