Another picture here. More pictures as they surface on the web.

But it’s impossible to discuss the NDP’s role in this election without bringing up the uncomfortable topic of to what extent they split the left-wing (and even the centre-left) vote in Canada. Here are the numbers:

Let us leave aside some of the obvious problems here—have no fear, we will tackle this table in an upcoming issue of Who’s to Blame—and focus on one thing: the numbers for the Conservatives versus the rest of the left-of-centre parties. Consider the following table:

As you can see, if you consolidate the left-of-centre vote there’s no contest in the popular vote column, and even the number of seats in Parliament, which is still radically out of proportion to the popular vote, forms a majority for the left-of-centre vote. So the question becomes: who or what is responsible for the split in the left-of-centre vote? And part of the answer has to be that there are four major left-of-centre parties compared to one right-of-centre. Three of these parties—the NDP, the Bloc, and the Greens—showed extremely well, while the Liberals showed extremely poorly.

Does this mean that we can blame Jack Layton and the NDP for being the most important factor in the left-of-centre vote split? Some people, like Ujjal Dosanjh, certainly think so. Dosanjh, a former NDP premier of British Columbia who was elected as a federal Liberal from the riding of Vancouver South, narrowly held on to his seat by 33 votes over Conservative Wai Young. (An automatic judicial recount is pending as I write this.) But the important thing is what Dosanjh said after the election on Tuesday night:

Dosajh blamed NDP Leader Jack Layton for splitting the left-of-centre vote and giving Canadians another Conservative government.

The Liberals, he said, obviously bled votes to the Greens and NDP to no purpose.

“(The) NDP’s irrelevant insofar as the federal scene is concerned except insofar as they have the ability by splitting the vote to effectively elect a Conservative government, which they’ve done twice,” he said Wednesday.

He criticized Layton’s “pretension to the throne,” campaigning as if he could become prime minister when the NDP “didn’t have that kind of support.”

“If you say you’re applying for the job of prime minister and you gain less than one point nationally in the polls, what does that say? Everyone recognizes that was simply a delusional Jack Layton.”

Dosanjh does have a point regarding his own party: the Liberals did bleed—hemorrhage would be more like it—votes to the other left-of-centre parties, especially to the NDP (cf. the aforementioned hold in Outremont). But the thrust of his complaint—that the Jack Layton is to blame for the Liberals’ poor showing and the resulting Conservative government—smacks of sour grapes. The NDP did indeed swing up only 0.79% of the popular vote since the last federal election, but they gained eight seats, while the Liberals swung down 4% and lost twenty-seven seats. And of course, there’s no direct connection between those two pairs of numbers anyway due to a dozen different factors about the way the electoral system works, not the least of which involves geographical distribution. But still, if you’re going to make that criticism, what does that comparison say about the party you ran for?

Furthermore, Dosanjh’s critique of Jack Layton is unfair in that Layton never seemed to me to be actually running for prime minister. Of course he was in a formal sense, and he did focus quite a bit of attention personally on Liberal leader Stéphane Dion, and he did say things like “You go to win the race.” However, given the party’s performance in past elections and current poll results, he certainly realized that his party never stood a chance of actually winning this election. Furthermore, the campaign that Layton ran was not focussed on a nationwide strategy, like the Liberals’, but instead on holding certain ridings and picking up others that they knew they could contest—again, cf. Outremont, the Vancouver east side and metro area, even Edmonton—Strathcona. What’s really unfair is that the NDP got over 18% of the vote and only 12% of the seats, while the Bloc (for example) got less than 10% of the vote but controls over 16% of the seats.

But I won’t totally exonerate the NDP and Jack Layton. Their campaign was marred by missteps and gaffes, with several candidates (especially here in B.C.) having to step down for various reasons (one dropped acid on video, another exposed himself to a group of teenagers, and others said unforgivable things about 9/11 and U.S. conscientious objectors). This forced the campaign to do a lot of clean-up work and play a lot of defence. Layton also did a poor job of fighting a two-pronged campaign against both Stephen Harper and Stéphane Dion, even though he had some memorable zingers in the English-language debate.

If things had been different, perhaps the NDP could have displaced the Bloc as the third largest party in the House of Commons. As things went, the vote was split and nobody really ended up getting what they wanted. As to whether Layton’s job is secure, I would say that it probably is—after all, he did pick up eight seats for the party. But questions are definitely going to be raised about what lessons can be learned from the NDP’s campaign and this election in general for the future.

Previously featured on Who’s to Blame: Stéphane Dion (Part 1 and Part 1a), Stephen Harper (Part 2).

1. 143 Conservatives
2. 76 Liberals
3. 50 Bloc Québécois
4. 37 New Democratic Party
5. 2 Other

The numbers are still bouncing around quite a bit, and I’ll post the results tomorrow when the final counts are in. [Edited to add: the final results have been posted.] But for now, I’ll just give three thoughts, two national and the other local:

Nationally, the question is what is going to happen within the ranks of the Liberal Party. They have shown that they cannot be an effective opposition party either within the House of Commons itself or in the context of an election taking on a generally unpopular leader and government. With a whole slew of things going for them, the Liberals managed to shoot themselves in the foot terrifically. “The Liberal Party has got to do a lot more than think that saying ‘Harper!’ in a really sharp voice is enough to get you elected,” said Rex Murphy just now on the CBC, and he’s absolutely right. Dion relied too much on animosity towards Harper to win the election, and the voters handed his ass to him.

Locally, the Liberals appear to have held the riding of Vancouver Quadra, in which you may recall the Liberal candidate barely squeaked by in the March byelection. This time Joyce Murray held it by at least three thousand votes, so it wasn’t even close. Other Vancouver-area races are of course still being counted, but the major story would seem to be that the Green Party was not as effective as they might have been. They had a legitimate shot at taking a few ridings—especially Vancouver Quadra and Vancouver Centre—and if the polling results hold up, they don’t appear to have been a significant factor, coming in third in Quadra and not even registering in the top three in Centre. (On top of that, Elizabeth May, the Green Party leader, failed to unseat current government minister Peter MacKay in her Nova Scotia riding by over five thousand votes.) This is a real shame for the Greens, who looked like they were ready to burst onto the national stage, only to have their dreams fizzle out. At least for now.

I will leave you tonight with what Rick Mercer said just now on the CBC:

I think everyone’s being very polite about Stéphane Dion. He’s done, he’s gone, and [former Liberal leadership candidate] Michael Ignatieff right there [in an interview], he said Stéphane Dion’s name once. Once. That was it, and it was a Herculean effort to get it out of him. He wasn’t even going to mention the guy’s name. The earth is now salted. That was a speech by a guy who’s now running for leader, and that’s what’s happening inside the Liberal Party right now.

This has been a very odd night. We’ve spent three hundred million dollars, and no one has achieved their goals. The Prime Minister hasn’t achieved his goal, Stéphane Dion certainly hasn’t, [NDP leader] Jack Layton hasn’t. The only federal leader with any job security is [Bloc Québécois leader] Giles Duceppe, and he’s a separatist. And we just spent three hundred million dollars.

Absolutely true. The Tories don’t have a majority, the Liberals are going to have a leadership crisis in the next couple of days, the NDP didn’t establish themselves as a viable primary opposition party, and the Greens didn’t even really come close anywhere.

I guess we can just all get back to focussing on what really matters: destroying the oil sands destroying the senate destroying the stock market and our investments bashing Sarah Palin.

One of the commenters on YouTube put it best:

As a member of the Vancouver Aquarium, I’m deeply saddened by the death of Nyac - what a sweetheart. Every time I went to see her at the Aquarium, she would always look right at you as if she knew you and understood you. Her mate Milo will be so lonely. If you’re in the Vancouver area, drop by and say hi to him.

As another member of the Vancouver Aquarium, I promise I will.

The B.C. Court of Appeal ruling on Thursday said that while the right to oppose abortion is constitutionally protected, the purpose of the provincial law to protect vulnerable women and those who provide for their care justified limiting protesters’ rights.

“The purpose or objective of the [Access to Abortion Services] Act is sufficiently important to justify a limitation on the way in which freedom of expression is exercised in an area adjacent to the facilities providing abortion services,” it said.

The protesters are lamenting their loss of free speech: “You just heard a judge say you don’t have freedom of speech in British Columbia,” one of them said. “That’s what that means.” To such sentiment, I have this to say: Boo friggin’ hoo. First of all, there is no such thing as unfettered freedom of speech anyway—you can’t make hateful remarks about ethnic group x or burn crosses on Jews’ front lawns. Rightly or wrongly, there are limitations on your “free” speech, many of which have long and storied political histories, and I have no doubt that some of the same people who engage in these kinds of protests would oppose these other restrictions on speech. But that’s the reality of the matter. Even so, this case recognizes the individual “right to oppose abortion” but also recognizes that the other consideration (allowing women to go to an abortion clinic without harassment) justifies the limitation imposed by the law.

And that really cuts to the heart of the matter: this case isn’t so much about the desire of individuals to protest abortion, it’s about their desire to further their own political agenda at the expense of vulnerable women’s health. Renee of Womanist Musings makes a similar point: “They are angry because the government will not allow them to assert control. This is about power.” Kudos to the B.C. Supreme Court for making exactly the right decision.

Pride was terrific as well, as usual, but there were two things I noticed that deserve special attention: (1) the commercialism and (2) the politics. Commercialism, of course, is going to be rampant at Pride celebrations most anywhere, and it’s easy to understand where much corporate presence comes from. Corporations know, for the most part, which side their bread is buttered on, and know that there’s lots of money to be made by self-promotion and advertising in the gay community. To that end, you get lots of things like banks handing out promotional literature and coffee companies offering samples of new concoctions. (This also reinforces my suspicion that the only thing you need to do—indeed, the only thing usually done—to advertise to the gay community is to put the word “gay” in front of anything, as in “gay credit card” or “gay holiday to Europe”. Also, sometimes there’s a shirtless man in the advertising.)

As for the fact that this was one of the most political Pride celebrations I’ve seen in a long time, I’m referring specifically to domestic politics. What with a possibly looming federal election come this fall, all three left-wing parties are trying to brand themselves as the “gay party”, with varying degrees of success. This is especially evident in Vancouver, where there was a recent by-election which the Liberals won by an extremely slim majority. The Greens and NDP are threatening to make a strong stand again in the riding of Vancouver Quadra, as well as in Vancouver Centre, and to this end all the potential candidates showed up to Pride to promote their political parties. It’s also interesting to note that in the United States, you often see the Republican Party or Log Cabin Republicans at Pride celebrations—another example of knowing which side your bread is buttered on—but the Conservatives were nowhere to be seen in Vancouver, at least this time. A similar effect was evident with the two organizations running candidates for mayor of Vancouver, Vision Vancouver and the Non-Partisan Association. At any rate, it was interesting to see this phenomenon at work, and it’ll be interesting to see which of these parties emerges as the “gay party”, if any, or at least the best on gay issues.

(Two brief side notes. First, if the Single Transferable Vote system were implemented—as there was certainly very strong support for doing in evidence at Pride—the fact that there are three major left-wing parties in Canada (four, if you count the Bloc Québécois) might not have such a negative impact on actual left-wing representation at the provincial—and hopefully, one day, the federal—level. Second, I was chatting briefly with Hedy Fry, the Liberal MP for Vancouver Centre, when one of the 9/11 Truthers, who had a strong presence as well at Pride, loudly interrupted and started making a scene at her. I felt kind of bad for her, but she is the MP…)

At any rate, you can check out all my photos from Vancouver Pride at the Xyre Gallery. Enjoy!

Also, I now have a new computer after Apple very graciously decided simply to replace my old, broken MacBook after having replaced both the hard drive and the logic board several times each. So I apologize for my absence for the last few days—but I’m connected once again, and back to writing all those essays I had promised to post. Whee!

(X-posted to Feministe.)

At least it’s supposed to get sunny and bright and happy this weekend (hopefully), just in time for the gay pride festival. Until then, enjoy the drear.

The old policy, adopted a year ago, caused a public outcry after it was learned through a Freedom of Information request that transit police had deployed a Taser on non-violent passengers, including a person who had not paid his fare and tried to run away from an officer.

The old policy stated: “A Taser may be deployed…to gain physical control of a non-compliant, suicidal or potentially violent subject.”

But it’s not at all certain just how much real change this alteration of terminology is really going to bring about:

Inquiry counsel Art Vertlieb asked [deputy transit police chief Ken] Allen if the new policy would allow a Taser to be deployed on a person fleeing police during a “fare blitz”—a check to see if passengers had paid fares.

“It would depend on the extenuating circumstances surrounding why the individual was fleeing,” the deputy chief replied.

In other words, Canada’s only armed transit police force not only gets to keep its Tasers, they get to keep using these potentially deadly weapons on “actively resistant” human beings who make the bad judgment not to pay their transit fare and the misfortune to get caught. If TransLink is so concerned about revenue loss from non-compliant individuals, they should install some fucking turnstiles on the SkyTrain instead of Tasering their riders.

• From Failed Messiah: Ashkenazic chief rabbi of Israel: Real Haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews) don’t abuse children; child abuse is a problem only among ba’alei teshuvah (naturalized ultra-Orthodox Jews). Reason? Haredi children don’t call their teachers by their first names.
• From the Slog: University of Washington College Republicans are holding an odious and racist event on Tuesday: ‘Find an Illegal Immigrant Tag’. Stated purpose: ‘to send a a “clear statement that we need to get serious and crack down on illegal immigration and secure our borders.”’ Unstated purpose: to be huge white-privilege racist dicks.
• From The Province: A good summary of the problems surrounding this year’s Vaisakhi parade and festivities in Surrey, B.C. A what point does it stop being a family-friendly religious celebration and start being political, especially when you throw photographs of Sikh men who committed violent terrorist attacks against Indians in support of a Sikh homeland into the mix?
• Finally, from the Onion:
  
  

  

  Mead Releases New Grad-School-Ruled Notebook

  The pages, in addition to having extremely narrow ruling, will be triple-perforated and seven-hole-punched, to meet the modern grad student’s requirements. I’ve been wanting something like this for years.

Edited: photos removed.

Also, check out Adam Abrams’ blog post, with which I express my complete agreement, as well as his photo album from the event. Also, if you have Facebook, check out the event page for the nationwide protests, as well as the Facebook groups for classical music at the CBC and for the CBC Radio Orchestra. Also make sure to check out the web site for Stand on Guard for CBC.

The decision to disband the orchestra—formed in 1938 when radio orchestras were common—comes down to dollars and cents, a CBC executive in Vancouver said Thursday.

“We know for example that for a concert that we fund through our CBC Radio Orchestra, we can extend our reach to three by doing it through other musical organizations,” said Jennifer McGuire, executive director of CBC English Radio.

In other words, it’s too expensive to fund classical music, since nobody listens to it except old fogies and you can’t compete with the private sector that way. Needless to say, this decision has many people—not least the musicians—ticked off. From today’s Globe and Mail:

“It is a travesty that this decision has been made. It’s a travesty that the government continues to cut the funding to the CBC. But it is also a travesty that bureaucrats that occupy the top echelons of radio don’t have the guts to stand up for this orchestra,” said violist Andrew Brown as he emerged from the meeting, receiving an impromptu standing ovation from other musicians who had gathered in the hotel’s lobby.

“Just bafflegab,” said Brian G’froerer, who has played principal horn with the orchestra for 30 years, when asked how CBC executives Jennifer McGuire and Mark Steinmetz had responded to the musicians’ concerns inside the meeting.

“Yesterday has been a very good day for Liberals,” Mr. Dion announced at a Toronto news conference.

Okay, sure, that’s where the spin is going, I see that. But it gets crazier:

Mr. Dion seemed particularly pleased about the win in Vancouver Quadra, B.C., where former provincial environment minister and onetime tree planter Joyce Murray took the vote, despite heavy losses to the Green Party.

Conceding that “the main point in Quadra has been the Green vote,” he dismissed suggestions the increase in Green support was a concern for the Liberals, who have sought to distinguish their environmental policies as more far-sighted than the Conservatives’.

Just have another look at those numbers from yesterday’s elections returns. The Liberals scored 36% of the vote, down from 49% when they last took the riding in 2006. Meanwhile the NDP and Greens took 13–14% of the vote each. The whole platform of the Greens has been that neither the Liberals’ nor the Conservatives’ positions on climate change and the environment were far-sighted or aggressive enough enough. Joyce Murray’s laughable assertion that ‘The public has spoken and it’s about the environment’, as we discussed on Monday, is flatly contradicted by the polling numbers. When 13% of the voters choose the Green Party over yours, you can bet your boots it’s about the environment. Just not in the way you think.

The Liberals saw their share of the vote in Vancouver Quadra fall to 36% from 49% in the 2006 election, despite devoting weeks in the House of Commons to questions on the Cadman affair, which the party hoped would resonate in the riding.

Oh, so that explains why the Liberal leadership have been wasting time during each and every Question Period to asking the same questions and getting the same non-answers from Harper and Moore and other Conservatives about the Cadman affair. I’d wondered about that: why were they letting the Bloc Québécois and the NDP ask real question about real matters, such as NAFTA-gate or, y’know, the environment. These then end up looking like pet political issues because the official ‘opposition’—if the Liberals truly deserve that moniker—won’t take them up. Instead, they devote their time to making the Conservatives repeat the same half-truths about ‘financial considerations’ because they think this will resound in Vancouver Quadra.

Well, the Cadman affair didn’t resound in Vancouver on Monday. The environment did.

Turnout was abysmal: 28,165 of 83,121—a mere 33.9%—of registered electors voted. Still, this is a higher turnout than any of the three other elections held today, none of which even hit 28%.

Joyce Murray takes the seat for the Liberals, but by a margin of only 151 votes. This is a stunning result because the seat was considered so safe for the Liberals, even with many voters expected to vote for the NDP and the Greens, thus causing a spoiler effect. Furthermore, the counting showed a clear and consistent lead for Joyce Murray right up until the end. As this CBC article makes clear, the election was called before the results got really close, and the celebration was a hair’s breadth from being premature.

Murray said Monday night’s victory in Vancouver, and Liberal wins in byelections in Toronto, will make the Liberal Party more effective in holding Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper accountable in the next weeks and months.

“The public has spoken and it’s about the environment,” she said, promising to be a tireless advocate for the reduction of greenhouse gases and to push for social housing for those in need.

Yeah, not quite—if the Liberals had owned the environment issue, 28% of voters wouldn’t have voted for the NDP or the Greens. As I pointed out in my previous post, this should send a stunning message to Stéphane Dion and the Liberal leadership. The fact that over 28% of voters who might have voted for the Liberals did not do so stands for a stunning repudiation of the Liberal Party. There are a zillion issues on which he and his party appear not to have connected with voters, especially here in liberal (small l) Vancouver, B.C. The environment. Government transparency. Western alienation. The opposition’s failure to be effective against the ruling Conservatives in Parliament. These combine to give enormous appeal to parties like the NDP, and especially the Green Party, which finished only 0.2% behind the NDP in Toronto Centre.

Here’s another good quote from Joyce Murray:

“Tonight we are sending a very clear message to Stephen Harper: The Liberals are strong.”

The Liberals’ failure to own any of these issues—especially the environment, which Murray cited as the reason she won so, er, resoundingly and convincingly—is spoken to by the huge percentages of the vote being split by the NDP and the Green Party. If the Liberals are smart, they’ll take these issues far more seriously in the future, especially before they plunge the country into another federal election. Losing a seat in Saskatchewan to the Conservatives is a blow—not a huge one, but a noticeable one nonetheless. Coming within 151 votes of losing in Vancouver Quadra, a heretofore reliable Liberal riding in the wealthy heart of the Vancouver west side, is a victory, but only in a narrow technical sense. Today, the Liberals did not demonstrate that they ‘are strong’, in Joyce Murray’s words. This victory is one that must make the party leadership sit up, take notice, and take a good hard look inside themselves.

Basically, these election results allow all sides to claim (read: spin) victory. The Liberals can claim that three out of four is a good hold, they held on to traditionally Liberal territory, this election sends a clear message to Harper’s government that people are fed up with its lack of transparency and distance from the common people, and is a good recovery from the Liberals’ failure during the by-elections in Québec last year. The Conservatives can claim that the Saskatchewan pickup is a vindication of their policies and their government, the Liberals should have run the table because the candidate there was hand-picked by Stéphane Dion, and if the people were really so fed up with the Conservatives, the Liberals should have picked up the seat. The NDP and Greens can claim, especially with the very high numbers they received in Vancouver Quadra and Toronto Centre, that both major parties are flawed and incompetent. For my part, I think Stéphane Dion really needs to take a long, hard look at himself and his leadership of the party.

More on this later. Analysis and actual numbers when Elections Canada finishes counting the votes, and I (and the rest of the country) have had a chance to sleep on it all.

Anyway, I’ll have some updates later in the day about the results of the by-elections. Look for the Liberals to make a few pickups, especially in urban areas like Vancouver and Toronto, due to dissatisfaction with the current government. Meanwhile, a few interesting links:

• How do you prove you’re gay when applying for refugee status?
• Religious groups are trying to shut down a Russian television channel because they show programming that is ‘anti-religious, violent as well as promoting homosexuality’, such as South Park.
• The hilarious malapropisms of Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley, such as ‘I deny the allegations and the allegators.’

The Canucks sure aren’t making it easy to be a Canucks fan these days.

From 1997 to 2005, the riding of Surrey North, in Metro Vancouver, was represented in the House of Commons by the independent MP Chuck Cadman. Independent MPs are somewhat uncommon in Canada, given the dominance that the three (in Québec four) major parties have over the system, but they can wield considerable power given that several major parties means frequent minority governments. Cadman was a former Conservative Party member, who lost the party primary, ran as an independent anyway, and won (think Joe Lieberman). In 2005, Cadman voted with the Liberals and New Democratic Party in favour of a budget proposal; the vote was eventually tied which meant the Speaker of the House of Commons had to cast the deciding vote. He voted with the Liberal bloc, which allowed the government to survive confidence. At the time, Cadman was terminally ill with cancer, and he died later in 2005.

Cadman stated that he voted with the Liberals because he didn’t want to put his constituents through more election turmoil only a year after a tumultuous election in 2004 that handed the Liberals minority control of Parliament. However, his wife Donna stated (before the vote), and his daughter Jodi has since reiterated that the Conservative Party offered Cadman a life insurance policy to the tune of a million dollars if he would vote against the Liberal budget and thus bring down the government. What is more, an audio tape has surfaced in which Stephen Harper, who was at the time the Leader of the Opposition, and is now PM, appears to give the plan his approval, in an interview with a CTV reporter in the driveway of Chuck Cadman’s house.

This appears to be attempted bribery, and as such a criminal offence, under Canadian law. But now Harper is moving to sue the Liberals for libel over their allegations that he personally was involved in this scandal. If you go to the Liberal Party website today—surely this will be gone in a few days’ time—you can see the ‘libellous accusations’ for yourself. The big headline: ‘Harper Knew of Conservative Bribery’. The problem for the Tories, of course, is that audio tape doesn’t lie, so they’re trying to turn the argument around and reframe the discussion: the Liberals are trying to slander my good name and the good name of the Conservative Party, oh poor me, you can’t possibly believe the Liberals because they’re lying cheats only trying to parlay this into their political advantage, and by the way Stéphane Dion should apologise both in English and French so that in Québec they hear a French-from-France accent (the equivalent to North American English speakers is a British accent) reading obsequious submission copy to the Conservatives. What’s weird, though, is that most of what’s on the web site consists of quotes from Question Period in the House of Commons, which are protected by parliamentary privilege and therefore not prosecutable as libel. The CBC is supposing that Harper wants to sue over the headlines, which are not so protected. Yay for legal hair-splitting.

I have a feeling that this could be more dangerous to the Conservatives than any of the other current issues, such as the military mission in Afghanistan and the federal budget and the environment. The issue, as Nik Nanos rightly points out, is that the Conservatives like to portray themselves as more trustworthy than the Liberals, but even the allegations of high-level bribery, even if nothing comes of them, could do great harm to the Tories’ image of trust, and harm the Conservatives when they have opportunities to pick up votes in minor byelections like in Vancouver Quadra, or in today’s snoozer provincial election in Alberta (which the Tories will win anyway, no doubt, but they seem to be suffering in turnout rates), or also in an impending federal election, if such comes to fruition.

Anyway, Question Period in Parliament is coming up in a few minutes, so I’ll put this topic to bed for now and watch the Liberals get outraged, as one MP told CBC just a few minutes ago: ‘How dare the Conservatives sue the opposition for doing their duty as the opposition’ (or words to that effect). It’s sure to be a goodie—CPAC will have it live, streaming, and in easy-to-swallow podcast format, as usual.

I went over to Chinatown to see the lunar New Year celebration and parade for the Year of the Rat. There must have been a hundred thousand people there: along parts of the route, spectators were packed in like sardines three or four deep with two-way traffic trying to pass behind them between the crush of humanity and the storefronts. Also, it was chilly and raining (as usual). But those who braved it were rewarded with a spectacular event: dancers, marching bands, more dragons and lions than you could shake a stick at, and of course zillions of flags, banners, and streamers. Various politicians (and their staffs) were handing out the traditional red envelopes filled with chocolates: I collected some from the Honourable Gordon Campbell, premier of B.C. (whom I met briefly), His Worship Sam Sullivan, mayor of Vancouver, the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, prime minister of Canada (who, I believe, wasn’t actually there, but his lackeys were), and Gregor Robertson, MLA for Vancouver-Fairview. Not a bad haul, as these things go, I guess.

See the gallery of photos from the celebration.