Login / RegisterVision Vancouver’s Aaron Jasper suggests Trillium North site for Jim Green Park
Vancouver park board vice chair Aaron Jasper says he’s heard opposition to the idea of renaming CRAB Park at Portside in honour of Jim Green, the former Vision Vancouver councillor and mayoral candidate who died of cancer on February 28.
Jasper has his own suggestion. The Vision park commissioner wants to see the planned park next to the Trillium sports fields, at the corner of Malkin Avenue and Thornton Street, named Jim Green Park.
“It’s an East Side park,” Jasper told the Straight by phone today (March 20). “It’s close to the Downtown Eastside, where Jim spent his time as an activist, and the Strathcona area. So I personally think that—whether or not we rename the entire park or some form of commemoration—Jim’s definitely worthy of more than just a plaque in a plaza.”
On February 27, the park board unanimously approved a motion, put forward by Vision’s Sarah Blyth, to work with Green’s family to “develop an outdoor space that recognizes and tells the story of Mr. Green’s tremendous contribution to the city”.
The motion noted that Green “actively participated” in the planning of CRAB and Hastings parks.
Construction of the one-hectare Trillium North Park is expected to begin in 2013 and wrap up in 2014.
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Under Vision Vancouver, park re-naming has become a denigrated political consideration. Although Vision Vancouver Park Board Commissioners hearts may be in the right place in wanting to pay tribute to Mr. Green -- a man who contributed much to our community -- there's an unseemliness to a re-naming process that is generated by Park Board Commissioners who are themselves affiliated with / elected members of a municipal political party for which Mr. Green ran as mayoralty candidate in 2005.
To make matters worse, in their usual non-consultative manner, the majority Vision Vancouver Park Board members propose to permanently politicize the park naming / re-naming process by taking the process out of the hands of the citizens, turning over what has always been a democratic process to Park Board staff (http://is.gd/Wyhl4Q), a staff that acts on the orders of elected officials (i.e. Vision Vancouver Park Board commissioners).
All very anti-democratic, unseemly, and hardly a function of the community will, no matter the well-intentioned motivation.
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