Where was this Sam Sullivan when he was mayor?
On Wednesday night I saw a side of Sullivan I’ve never seen before.
Humble, awed, inspired and inspiring, well-spoken and at times at a true loss for words. This was the Sam Sullivan I saw at his latest Public Salon, an event organized through his Global Civic Policy Society where he gave the floor over to people who have inspired him to be a better human being.
People like marine naturalist Jim Bolger, who in the short seven minutes allotted to him gave back hope for our troubled oceans. Rather than spend his time piling on complaints about the way we treat “Planet Ocean”, as he calls it, Bolger left the audience of 600 with an understanding that we can have hope for something so poorly understood that we are finding new species at a rate of 1,600 a year.
Chip Wilson didn’t offer us discounts to his Lululemon athletic wear. Instead, he offered us an understanding why single-minded super-achievers need to change when ultimately faced with failure. “What got you there in the beginning won’t get you there in the end,” he said. If what you have been doing isn’t working any more, include others and open your minds. Amen to that.
And doctors Unjali Malhotra and Hal Gunn bravely showed me why I cannot let my health be dictated by celebrities with bogus cures or doctors who have lost faith in the system. “We don’t have a health care system, we have an illness treatment system,” Gunn said. “The best way we can contribute to the world is through being happy and whole ourselves.”
Jas Johal, in talking about his travels as a foreign correspondent for CTV and the rise of China and India as global economic powers, showed his humble Williams Lake roots by holding up a small piece of a chandelier he nicked from Muammar Gaddafi’s palace in Tripoli, Libya. It pungently brought back memories of my standing in wonder in the middle of Tikrit, Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s birthplace in the middle of a war, thinking of my parents and how they had inspired me.
I won’t pretend to understand Carolyn Chan and Clancy Dennehy’s weird Butoh dance that took the Playhouse stage, but I’ll tell you I appreciate that it took me out of my depth and caused me to think what else I am missing because I don’t see dance that way.
These were the things that Sullivan offered to me at his Public Salon, an event his friend, thinker and educator the late Abraham Rogatnick warned historically could be dangerous because they offered revolutionary ideas.
Many things came out of that evening of lectures, not the least was an understanding on my part that organized politics nearly wrecked Sullivan and that he has much more to offer now that he’ll never put his name on a ballot sheet again.

Read original article here.

Former Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan is holding a “public salon” Wednesday night at the Playhouse Theatre to highlight people he believes have a passion for their community.

From Lululemon founder Chip Wilson sharing his counterintuitive approach to life to Dr. Unjali Mulhotra describing the challenges in achieving women’s sexual health, Sullivan has asked nine people he respects to entertain people with thought-provoking discourse.

“The idea is to introduce people who are so different that we just wouldn’t see them all together in one place,” Sullivan said Tuesday.

Sullivan’s public salon, which is limited to 500 people, arose out of a private salon he and his companion Lynn Zanatta began holding in their home after Sullivan was dropped as the Non-Partisan Association’s candidate for the 2008 civic election.

“I’m kind of like a chef; I take ingredients and put them together and see what happens,” Sullivan said. “The only theme here is that they all have to have a passion for the community, a passion for creating change.”

He now hosts the event through his Global Civic Public Society.

Sullivan said other speakers at Wednesday’s event include scientist Jim Bolger, who is tracking the mysterious movement of fish in the deep ocean; Aaron Sanderson, “who champions the young professionals who have chosen to work in the social sector”; Dr. Hal Gunn, who combines alternative and mainstream medicine for those with cancer; television journalist Jas Johal on his insights covering the Egyptian uprising at Tahrir Square in Cairo.

Three artists will also perform: Charles Barber and City Opera will share an aria from his new opera Fallujah and jazz musician, Carolyn Chan and her Metal Dog company will introduce Butoh Japanese dance and Hugh Fraser “will prepare your minds to be entertained, provoked and informed,” Sullivan said.

Tickets are $16 at the door. The event starts at 7:30 p.m. and goes to 9:30 p.m.

jefflee@vancouversun.com

Twitter.com/sunciviclee

Blog: www.vancouversun.com/jefflee

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/Former+Vancouver+mayor+Sullivan+bringing+diverse+speakers+together/6626864/story.html#ixzz1v9Kxel8F

Greeting Fluency Mongolian with instructor Batsuren Eenjin

I usually agree with Gordon Gibson, but not with his suggestion that Vancouver should just say no to growth and let him live a quiet life.

In the 1880s Canada decided to make Vancouver its “terminal city.” A monumentally expensive railway was built which functioned like a giant funnel, delivering people and products from across the country. This led to another funnel as 100 years of public investments in the port brought more people and products from the rest of the world. A freeway system from across Canada and another from the U.S. west coast contributed additional funnels to our terminal city. More funnels were added when our International Airport was built and Vancouver became the financing and servicing hub of our resource industries.

It is unfortunate that Gordon chose to find a peaceful and idyllic life in the place where our biggest city was placed, and after so much public and private investment in infrastructure. He no doubt benefits from the vitality that comes from the density of people and experiences. They are what brought all of us here in the first place.

The world is experiencing a powerful tide of urbanization. This is fortunate because high-density cities do far less damage to the environment per capita and provide a strong foundation to the new knowledge-based economy. Many people live in Vancouver because they love the advantages that come from urban places. People who want no change should go to the 99.9 per cent of the province that is non-urban and people who embrace change should go to urban places.

In fact, Gordon’s idea has already been tried and has led directly to many problems. In the 1960s a wave of social change swept Canada resulting in anti-urban ideals becoming official policy. The natural densification that was happening in the West End and pockets throughout Vancouver was stopped dead. The city was downzoned and economic activity was pushed to the suburbs. BC Tel, for example, was asked to take its plans for a new building elsewhere. It reluctantly located a few feet past Boundary Road. There was an unofficial moratorium on densification in all suburban inner-city neighbourhoods. Gordon’s recommendations have been city policy for the last 40 years. As a result, many neighbourhoods of Vancouver have lower populations now than they did in 1970!

Growth was pushed out of the city destroying many natural areas of our valley and the price of housing rose dramatically. Gordon might notice that many of the homes in his neighbourhood increased in value last year alone by about $500,000. Let me repeat: the increase in value for one year is more than many families can afford for a home in their lifetime. The strategy of pushing growth to other places has been a good one financially for homeowners who have located beside the funnels. Even better considering it is the only investment where capital gains are not taxed and are therefore subsidized by everyone else.

The ability for people to locate beside funnels and then freeze development was made possible by a variant of “participatory planning” which essentially gives megaphones to the most politically sophisticated interest groups. Shaughnessy and other neighbourhoods like Kitsilano were once filled with affordable rooming houses. After the 1970s, this version of participatory planning helped demolish or convert these buildings and a great segregation began. The Downtown Eastside, which had many middle-income people, became the place for only the poorest.

The urban reform that swept Canada in the 1960s was the third in the country’s history. We need a fourth wave of urban reform to overcome the problems created by previous waves. The anti-urban ideals that currently dominate municipal governments need to be replaced by a new model that unapologetically embraces the urban. The Vancouver Urban Forum will take place on June 6 and will consider new ideas for a fourth wave of urban reform. The sprawl meter on its website (www.vancouverurbanforum.org) indicates that nine square feet per second in our region is swallowed up in suburban sprawl. The environmental, economic and social health of our city depends on our ability to overturn destructive elements of third-wave urban reform.

No one has suffered more from anti-growth policies than young people who are not able to live in the neighbourhoods they grew up in. They are forced into long commutes, driving daily past the people who have required them to live in developments that destroy our natural areas and generate up to 10 times more greenhouse gas emissions. Turning this around will be extremely difficult and will require the efforts of many people. Join the Fourth Wave Center for Urban Reform and participate in the Vancouver Urban Forum June 6 to begin this process.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Photograph by: Glenn Baglo, PNG, Vancouver Sun
Berta Lopera is a BertaColombian-born Canadian who is learning Farsi and greetings in other languages as part of former Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan’s greeting fluency program.

————————————————

When Colombian-born lawyer Berta Lopera first arrived in Vancouver to study English, all she wanted was to be understood. But the challenge of communicating in a new language threw her into clouds of anxiety.

Her self-consciousness reached its pinnacle one evening when she attempted to order a hamburger and Coke.

“I was saying ‘Coke, Coke,’” she says. She didn’t understand why the waiter and a growing group of observers were laughing hysterically at her.

When she tried the words out on a friend the next day, he blushed, then explained that her pronunciation of “Coke” sounded like a slang word for part of the male anatomy.

Lopera was mortified. She did not want to be misunderstood. Even as she mastered the language and earned a second law degree at the University of B.C. in 2004, simple things like answering the telephone panicked her.

Now she is enthusiastically reaching out to other newcomers – and her clients – by learning basic greetings in their own languages.

“When you hear some words [in your own language] from a person that does not speak it, it means to me: ‘I accept and embrace difference, and I acknowledge and accept you.’” Lopera is particularly proud of mastering a few simple Farsi phrases. “It’s a wonderful way to approach people. They smile.”

Lopera is becoming “greeting fluent” with the help of former Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan’s Greeting Fluency Initiative.

Sullivan became a minor celebrity in Turin, Italy, when he dusted off a few simple Italian phrases – which he’d learned growing up on Vancouver’s east side – while accepting the Olympic flag on behalf of his city.

Now Sullivan is helping other Vancouverites become “greeting fluent” with Greeting Fluency Day this month.

On Saturday, March 31, Sullivan and his Global Civic Policy Society will hold a public forum to teach basic greetings such as “Hello, how are you?” “Goodbye,” and “I’m sorry,” in a variety of different languages.

The society’s greeting fluency initiative is a lighthearted approach to resolving deeper issues of communities divided by ethnic differences.

“We are trying to find ways to make a more inclusive community and demonstrate respect for newer citizens,” Sullivan told The Vancouver Sun.

When he travelled to Beijing as an Olympic torchbearer, Sullivan was stunned that his televised interviews in Mandarin created a media frenzy.

“It certainly was a great icebreaker,” he said. “People pay attention when you honour them by even spending a little bit of energy trying to reach out.”

Sullivan taught himself to speak rudimentary Cantonese beginning when he was a teenager.

“Some people have said the reason I was elected was because I could fumble my way around in Cantonese,” he said.

Cantonese is just one of the 10 languages he can use to give a cheerful greeting.

“It’s the first words that give you the most benefits,” said Sullivan. “You wouldn’t believe what happens when you walk into a Thai restaurant and greet someone in their own language.”

In a city like Vancouver, where more than 100 languages are spoken, the benefits of greeting fluency go beyond charm and politesse.

Sullivan points to a recent Vancouver Foundation study that identifies isolation, ethnic divisions and lack of neighbourly connection as the No. 1 social concern for the region’s city-dwellers.

A staggering 75 per cent of participants in a discussion project aimed at identifying areas of concern for Metro Vancouver spontaneously identified “isolation, its consequences and the craving for connection” as a theme.

In the foundation’s 2011 Our Community report, community leaders expressed deep concern about “a lack of connection between the many diverse cultural and ethnic groups that now reside in Metro Vancouver.”

Learning just a few words in several languages is a small investment with big returns, said Sullivan. “People won’t buy into multiculturalism unless they are invested in it.

“Language is a really important piece of self-identity. You can really make someone feel like a valued member of the community, build bridges and open doors by greeting them in their language.”

The point is not to become an expert in the language. The greeting-fluency initiative, and Saturday’s event, will be more of a global communication party than a lecture. The event includes a lunch sampling of a variety of cultural foods to go along with phrases in Chinook, French, Mandarin, Farsi, Korean, Russian, Japanese, Punjabi and Tagalog, which are on the fluency menu.

“We are not teaching language,” Sullivan said. “We are teaching respect.”

.

The event will be held from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Woodward’s building, 149 W. Hastings. Admission by donation. Pre-registration recommended by email at lynnzanatta@gmail.com

(You can brush up before-hand by checking out the videos on globalcivic.org.)

.

Do you speak a second language? Make a video of yourself or someone you know saying “hello,” “thank you” and “goodbye” in a language other than English. Then upload the video to YouTube with the title “Vancouver Sun Fluency Challenge” and identify the language spoken. We’ll stitch all your clips together and feature you on our web-site in the run-up to Greeting Fluency Day.

dryan@vancouversun.com
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Vancouver is one of the most multicultural cities in the world and is the home of remarkable individuals with unusual stories. The Greeting Fluency event promises to be a fast-moving and culturally rich experience. It will be free for those who register in advance at lynnzanatta@gmail.com.