Month: August 2008

From Ken MacQueen, Maclean’s magazine

Ran into Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan in Beijing today. He’s here for some meet-and-greet, followed by some sightseeing and then his participation in the upcoming torch relay for the Paralympics. You might think it would be a challenge for Sullivan, a quadriplegic, to hoist the torch, but the gritty mayor has it figured out. He tells me he’s reusing the device he’d had attached to his motorized wheelchair to wave the Olympic flag during the closing ceremonies of the Winter Games in Turin. It was his role, of course, to wave the giant flag as the mayor of the host city for the 2010 Winter Games–now just 18 months away.

By David Chircop and Yoshiaki Nohara, Everett Herald Writers

Photo gallery link

VANCOUVER, B.C. — Massive Olympic and Paralympic flags fly from a seven-story flagpole outside Vancouver’s city hall.

On Cambie Street to the west of the Depression-era government building, heavy machinery and jackhammers chip away at a tunnel for a rapid transit rail line that will link the city’s bustling downtown with Vancouver International Airport by late next year.

Photos from Mayor Sam Sullivan's recent trip to Beijing, China.

By Cassidy Olivier, The Province
Vancouver is slowly becoming a safer city to live in with crime rates dropping steadily since the peak crime years of the mid-90s, according to the Vancouver Police Department’s (VPD) 2007 annual report on crime.
Released today, the report shows significant decreases in violent crime numbers between 2006 and 2007 with the total number of violent offences reported to police dropping approximately 6 per cent from 7,971 to 7,498.
Similarly, the report shows property crime levels have dropped by roughly 11 per cent from 49,736 in 2006 to 44,310 in 2007. The only increase related to property crime was fraud, with the number of reported fraud incidents rising from 2,160 in 2006 to 2,362 in 2007.

From flag bearer to torch carrier, Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan is in Beijing to represent Vancouver and tell us what he's up to. Listen to this interview. (** requires Real…

ROD MICKLEBURGH
The Globe and Mail
BEIJING — Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan may have been dumped by his own party back home, but here in Beijing he’s in his element. It’s Mayor Sam at his best.
Sitting in his wheelchair in the midst of the busy main corridor at the Main Press Centre, Sam has a thick English-Mandarin dictionary on his lap. The big red book is open and the mayor is studying it, oblivious to the global hacks streaming past.
The first word he’s written down is dao xing, meaning “back up.” The phrase is important when you’re in a motorized wheelchair and you want the Mandarin-speaking driver to help you back your chair out of the van.
The next word is zhi yuan zhe, the word for volunteers and the unsung key of these ultra-successful Olympics. And on and on, word after word. Maybe even Mandarin for “eco-density” is somewhere on the list.

In a bittersweet bookend to his single term as Vancouver’s mayor, quadriplegic Sam Sullivan will participate in the torch relay at next month’s Paralympics in Beijing.
Sullivan, who left for the Chinese capital on Tuesday, came to worldwide attention in 2006 when, as the new mayor of the host city for the 2010 Winter Games, he accepted the Olympic flag in Turin.
The image of Sullivan joyfully spinning on stage in his powered wheelchair, the fluttering flag secured to a special holder, was a highlight of the Turin Games.