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It seems like only yesterday I was out trying to hustle votes in the municpal election—but recent changes in East Van politics will see a by-election and no incumbent here in the East End… So I’ve decided to take the plunge, but I need your help!

I’ve put my name forward to seek the BC Green Party’s nomination for the upcoming Vancouver-Mount Pleasant provincial by-election. The seat is currently held by Jenny Kwan, but will soon be vacated, as she’s resigning to run for federal politics.

During the November 2014 Vancouver municipal election,in my first run for office I collected just over 46,500 votes, and was one of the top vote-getters at the polls in and around Vancouver-Mount Pleasant.

I ran for City Council in November because of my commitment to my community, the Vancouver-Mount Pleasant riding, I’ve lived, worked and volunteered in this district for over 25 years. We are a strong, resilient and caring inner-city riding, but we are not without our challenges: the ongoing privatization of BC Housing, unreasonably low welfare rates, poverty and affordability, gentrification, social justice, reconciliation, and the legacy of colonialism.

We need to provide opportunities for immigrants and underemployed; balance regional growth strategies and transit-oriented development with land value and speculation; as well as ensure healthy, safe urban neighbourhoods that respect our physical, cultural and socio-economic heritage. These are all real challenges for our community and provincial government.

I’ve been a local community activist for a number of years and served as chair of the Strathcona Residents Association. I helped lead the community’s response to the City’s proposed viaduct removal, redevelopment and traffic management scheme; and sat on the City of Vancouver’s DTES Local Area Planning process.

I’ve been committed to East Van for several decades. I’ve learnt the importance of Read More

Thanks for the kind words and well wishes everybody..

I had a relaxing morning, walking the dog and hanging out with Dawn in the hood. Of course, I was disappointed not to break onto council, but thanks to so much support from so many of you: we elected an unprecedented number of Greens, and Adriane Carr topped the votes for any councillor.

I feel great. I spent the election day campaigning on the Drive and gotta whole lotta love and validation. I know I topped the polls in most of my immediate East Van ridings, and polled high in most of the urban ridings — if we had a ward system, maybe things would have worked out differently.

I knew going into this that we were underdogs, with limited resources going up against well-greased big money campaign machines with robocallers, paid canvassers and million-dollar ad budgets. But even without those resources, we put up a great fight, raised the bar, and made some awesome gains.

I’m humbled by confidence that 46,500 Vancouver voters had in me.

Down but not out — I’m just gonna dust myself off and get right back into the ring!

Green Party city council candidate Pete Fry, spoke eloquently about how citizens are often given little opportunity to provide their input into community plans, both in terms of density and height.

He urged the architects in the room to join the citizen activists as architect activists, and help communities to understand density and how best to plan their neighbourhoods.

– See more at: http://www.vancourier.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-housing-density-and…

Pete Fry, the chair of the Strathcona Residents’ Association, described the “no-condo zone” proposed for the DEOD as “a bit of a red herring”. He noted that the 60 percent social-housing requirement consists of a 20 percent target for people paying the welfare shelter rate—a goal that he sees as underperforming.
“That said we need to do better city-wide,” he said in a phone interview. “The fact that we have such a lack of inclusionary zoning across the rest of the city puts a great deal of pressure on this neighbourhood, which is obviously subject to a great deal of development pressure because we’re downtown Vancouver.”

Pete Fry rode the train down to Portland in August to take a look at what that city was doing in the way of tackling its homelessness problem. Fry, a Green Party candidate for Vancouver city council, took his bike with him to get around.

Fry, son of veteran Liberal MP Hedy Fry, is one of the most transparent politicians running for office.

He posted his answers to the Vancouver & District Labour Council’s candidates survey on his website, where you can also read his blunt views on housing affordability and development. As chair of the Strathcona Residents’ Association, he was deeply involved in the debate over the future of the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts, arguing that their removal is a good idea but saying not enough consideration is being given to residents east of Gore Avenue. He played a role in the creation of the Coalition of Vancouver Neighbourhoods, which aims to enhance the accountability and fairness of the planning process.

Read more: http://www.straight.com/news/769716/straight-slate-2014-municipal-electi…

I recently travelled to Portland, Oregon, to see how they do things differently, and how that might apply to Vancouver. I met with planners, urbanists, business owners, housing activists, neighbourhood associations and city officials. I could write several articles on what I discovered there: affordable, human-scale housing initiatives; small business incubation; robust multi-modal transportation and genuine place making.
But what really drew me in was the Office of Neighbourhood Involvement.

Twitter: @PtFryFacebookGoogle+LinkedInEmail Me
Strathcona/DTES Disappear on New City Website
September 3, 2012

Like Many Vancouverites, when the City announced it’s new $3million dollar website last month – I was curious to check it out.

But when I went looking, I found that our neighbourhood had been disappeared.

So what does the City’s viaduct removal plan say about traffic calming on Prior Street?

Unfortunately for Strathcona – not a lot. In fact, the map illustration shows a new six-lane Prior Street extension that connects to Main Street, Quebec Street and a new expanded six-lane Pacific Boulevard ends before Gore – with no details about what happens to those six lanes of traffic east of Main. Prior street is identified as the “direct east-west link to the downtown for commuter vehicles and large goods-movement trucks

Like the cobbler’s kids not having shoes – I’ve notoriously neglected to document or promote my own design and illustration work, despite over 25 years of successful and award winning self employment. Poster work was what first got me into design, as a natural extension of drawing comics since my teens. While posters where my first love, I must confess I haven’t done many posters for at least 15 years now. Most of these pre-date cheap color printing and widespread web use, some even pre-date digital output and most are from stacks of undigitized paper archives- posted here as a small snapshot of 1990’s Vancouver indie scene.

I’ll keep adding as I unearth more archives. Here’s a sampler, in no particular order, filed under posters:

Drinking my morning coffee, I listened to the CBC radio follow up on their recently posted story about the scourge of uncollected dog feces throughout Vancouver. According to the CBC, the problem is so widespread that it is set to break the City’s records for the most amount of complaints received in any single year. Of course, no one likes to step in dog shit, and the rant-line messages re-enforce that reality as a second day’s worth of angry callers launch into tirades about horrible dog owners.
A record breaking number of complaints, I think to myself, that must be a lot of dog doo. I watch the CBC report with interest: that record breaking number of complaints? Forty-five. That’s right, 45 complaints – possibly set to break last year’s record of (wait for it) forty-eight complaints.

I created this typeface many years ago for a series of gig posters, as tribute to the comic title. I dug it out of the crates and am releasing it into the wild as an Illustrator eps download
Enjoy.