One of the most influential politicians in B.C. history has fallen short in his attempt to get re-elected to the board of B.C.'s largest credit union.

Bob Williams came fourth behind incumbent Virginia Weiler, Niki Sharma, and Rita Parikh in the Vancity directors election. The credit union has more than 500,000 members and oversees $19.8 billion in assets.

Williams, 83, was an NDP MLA for Vancouver East from 1966 to 1984 and from 1986 to 1991. In the first NDP government from 1972 to 1975, he was the resource minister who spearheaded the creation of Robson Square. He also prevented logging on Blackcomb Mountain and played major roles in the creation of ICBC and the Agricultural Land Reserve.

Williams received 6,543 votes. That put him 801 votes shy of Parikh, a strategic planning and communications consultant who came third. The top three finishers were elected. Parikh is a former chair of the MEC board and is on the board of the Victoria Immigrant and Refugee Centre Society.

Weiler was re-elected to her fourth term with 8,902 votes, followed by Sharma, a lawyer and former Vancouver park commissioner who attracted 8,859 votes. Weiler is a former Vancity chair who has been a consultant to various international aid and financial agencies, including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria; the World Bank; and the Canadian International Development Agency.

Williams also left a lasting imprint on the Lower Mainland after his political career ended. As the chair of ICBC, he oversaw a transformation of the Surrey Place Mall into Central City. It's anchored by a Bing Thom-designed tower that's home to SFU's Surrey campus and Fraser Health offices.

In the 1980s, Williams led a progressive takeover of the Vancity board while serving as an MLA. He was also owner of the Railway Club in Vancouver at that time.

He was on the Vancity board from 1983 to 1995 before returning in the 2007 board election. A long-time supporter of the arts, Williams collaborated with Italian researcher Pier Luigi Sacco and then Vancity research associate Elvy Del Bianco on a trail-blazing report, The Power of the Arts in Vancouver: Creating a Great City. It provided a blueprint for the credit union to nurture the creative economy.

Williams is a former city planner and former Vancouver city councillor and he chairs the Jim Green Foundation. In recent years, he's been working with the Vancity Community Foundation to convert the former Vancouver police station at 312 Main Street into a community hub for social and entrepreneurial innovation.