One of the more embarrassing moments in BIV’s history was when we published one of our first lists of “most expensive private clubs.”
Under the “criteria for membership” section for the Vancouver Club, an inside joke slipped past the proofreader, and “must have balls” came out in print.
A lot has changed since then, not just in BIV’s proofreading department, or in the gender equity policies at the Vancouver Club. I recently attended a stylish and heartfelt gay wedding there, bursting with rousing young energy and good vibrations.
I thought back to the days when my father, then a senior partner at Ladner Downs, used to have lunch in the club’s formal dining room with Corny Burke, his best friend, both highly decorated naval veterans. I tried to think what they would have said if I had predicted that one day the club would host a gay wedding, and that one of the grooms would be my father’s grandson, the best man would be Corny’s grandson and the other groom would be a high-level executive in a major Vancouver company that spun off billionaires making yoga tights. They might have accused me of smoking something. But it happened.
I recently met a door-to-door campaigner for gay marriage rights in Oregon, where gay marriages are still illegal. I asked him how he pitched his message to people adamantly opposed to gay marriages. He used an economic argument: “This is going to happen, no matter how much you may dislike it,” he would tell them, pointing out the wave of legislative changes in many states.
“Why not spend your energy coming up with a business strategy to take advantage of the inevitable? It’s the prudent thing to do.”
Those are exactly the sentiments that came to mind when I saw the Surrey Board of Trade’s (SBOT) recent announcement that it opposed the legalization of marijuana because of “the potential of loss of production, disruption in the workplace due to the risk of impaired machinery operation, the impact on interpersonal relations in the workplace and the potential increased costs of absenteeism and health programs.”
My first reaction was, “What have they been smoking?” Maybe they were just drinking heavily. Or maybe they were channelling the interests of Surrey’s newest major employer, the billion-dollar RCMP headquarters, which runs a booming business investigating and arresting pot growers.
But the case for ending the absurd criminal prohibition that generates the largest source of funding for organized crime in B.C., that keeps one of B.C.’s – and no doubt Surrey’s – major industries in the hands of gangsters, is being championed by the past presidents of Colombia and Mexico, former Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, a coalition of current mayors from the Interior, Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland; four former B.C. attorneys-general; and John McKay, the Washington State U.S. attorney who imprisoned B.C.’s most outspoken marijuana entrepreneur, Marc Emery.
Just south of Surrey’s city boundary is a jurisdiction that’s about to open 334 stores that sell recreational marijuana, under a plan approved by the state’s Liquor Control Board and given a green light by the U.S. federal government. B.C. is headed for its own referendum on diverting police resources away from charging pot users.
Shrewd business operators get their facts straight, get out in front of inevitable changes and take advantage of them. How long will it be until the Vancouver Club has an official pot-smoking section on its rooftop food garden?
Our grandchildren will think it’s completely normal, and just might be smart enough not to operate machinery while impaired. •
