Straight Talk

Burnaby councillor Nick Volkow dies after leaving a large footprint on the city

by Charlie Smith on June 22nd, 2020 at 5:44 AM
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      One of Metro Vancouver's more colourful and outspoken politicians has succumbed to cancer.

      Burnaby councillor Nick Volkow was 67.

      The blunt-speaking and riotously entertaining Safeway truck driver sat on council for 24 years, most of that time as a strong supporter of former mayor Derek Corrigan. 

      Prior to that, he was a member of the city's parks commission—and he was proud of the city's decision to dredge Burnaby Lake to improve water quality and make it more hospitable to birds and fish, as well as boaters.

      Volkow was a fierce critic of corporate media concentration, a huge supporter of the Burnaby Blues + Roots Festival, a voracious reader, and a voice for blue-collar New Democrats in local politics.

      Because he spent so much of his time on the roads in his working life, he developed a deep understanding of transportation issues. Many years before other politicians jumped on this bandwagon, he supported lowering car speeds in certain areas to create safer road conditions for cyclists.

      "In my previous role as chair of the Transportation Committee I worked hard to improve and expand cycling opportunities, and I continue to advocate for better connections across the city," Volkow stated in his council profile on the City of Burnaby website. "With projects like the Central Valley Greenway, the 24-kilometre cycling and walking path that runs near the Millennium Line SkyTrain through Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster, we are making progress in linking parks, shopping, workplaces and major transit hubs." 

      He was also sometimes a thorn in the side of TransLink. In 2011, he voted to ask the regional transportation authority to suspend implementation of an increasingly expensive smart-card and fare-gate system.

      "If the fare gates are now going to stop all the fare evaders, what are we going to do with all these cops?" Volkow once said in an interview with the Straight. 

      In 2016, Volkow expressed skepticism about the planning department's desire to turn Metrotown into the city's downtown core.

      This was the case even though he was part of a council that promoted the concentration of development in Metrotown and three other town centres—Edmonds, Brentwood, and Lougheed.

      “Does it make a city any less of a city if you can’t point to a proper downtown?” Volkow asked in a phone interview with the Straight. “I don’t think so.”

      He grew up in East Vancouver where he met his wife Shirley, who died in 2016. They raised three children—Nicole, Suzanne, and Michael—and Volkow was a grandfather to seven.

      In the late 1990s, true to his East Van roots, Volkow remained loyal to former B.C. NDP premier Glen Clark when critics were calling for him to resign in connection with the awarding of a casino licence to the North Burnaby Inn. Clark was later acquitted in B.C. Supreme Court and went on to become president and chief operating officer of the Jim Pattison Group.

      In recent years, Volkow became increasingly annoyed about money laundering from mainland China.

      “The housing market here is completely off the hook,” he told the Thinkpol.ca website in 2018. “The sense of community is being lost in all our cities.” 

      Here's what people who knew Volkow are saying about him on social media.

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