A Loving Send-off for Jim Green

Hank Bull played people into the Orpheum theatre seats on a grand piano. There was a bar beside him onstage to which speakers would retire for a drink, until all the chairs were full. A coat and a fedora hung alone, stage left. Downtown Eastside activist and former city councillor Jim Green was well remembered Saturday afternoon by a thousand friends and family and fans.

Jenny Kwan opened the event by lauding both Green's commitment to his causes and the inspiration he provided. And then she broke the ice when she quoted her mentor as telling her: "Hey, kiddo, try not to fuck up."

Gerald Green talked about Green's faith in him as a student in and advocate for Bladerunners, the youth employment initiative that Green spearheaded. He remembered running into him one night on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, where they had gone together to promote the program's virtues. He recalled Jim Green's imposing, purposeful presence striding toward him, and then when they met: "Aren't you supposed to be in bed, kiddo?"

One of Green's own heroes, Ken Lyotier, the once-homeless founder of the binner-run bottle depot United We Can, told the crowd it's our imperfections that make us human, make us lovable -- and that's what makes change possible.

Condo marketing king Bob Rennie listed all the people who say the Woodward's redevelopment, the lynchpin of the Downtown Eastside's renewal, is theirs. Including himself. The mixed-use building, which brings homes for the almost-rich, the middle class and the poor together with businesses, social enterprises, and Simon Fraser University's satellite arts campus, may well have been Green's greatest professional passion. It was his own home during the last years of his life. "Woodward's," Rennie concluded, "belongs to one man -- Jim Green."

Aramis Padmos talked about Green's love of art, and said opera was his gift to her. "It isn't just a privilege thing -- education, art, culture."

Loved in Skidegate

David "Stinker" Crosby talked about encountering a white stranger reading the newspapers in a Skidegate bar, and how his Haida relatives came to adopt Green into their family.

Dalanna Gail Bowen sang "Nature Boy," which was a hit for Nat King Cole: "The greatest thing you'll ever learn/ Is just to love/ And be loved in return." Joey Shithead sang "Folsom Prison Blues" with the Bughouse Five.

More than once, Jim Green was called the best mayor we never had. It was a reference in part to his defeat in the 2005 mayoralty race by Sam Sullivan and the mysterious candidate James Green, who siphoned off about as many votes as Jim needed to win. Rennie recalled a dream he had of carrying a bouquet through a cemetery, looking at name after name. "I came across two headstones: one said Jim Green and one said James Green. We all know who should get the flowers."

More than once, Jim Green was called a man who got things done. He spent 39 years living in and around Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, after coming to Vancouver from Alabama to avoid the Vietnam draft. He worked as a longshoreman, and a cab driver. He was a shop steward at Canron, and literally wrote the book on the history of the Seafarer's union. He studied at the Sorbonne, and earned a masters degree in anthropology. He came to political prominence fighting evictions from downtown residential hotels during Expo 86 as an advocate for the Downtown Eastside Residents Association. And he spearheaded the creation of more housing for the dispossessed in his neighbourhood than pretty much anyone.

In a video tribute to Green, assembled by George Orr with help from Stephen Quinn, Green himself offered the afternoon's simplest motivational message: "To know something is wrong and not to try and change it is the worst thing you can do."

'Va Pensiero'

His partner in recent years, Vancouver East Cultural Centre executive director Heather Redfern, said Jim also knew that there is a time for protest and a time for cooperation. "You can do anything you want," she added, "as long as you don't care who gets the credit for it." (Redfern knows. When the Cultch's restoration fundraising efforts were foundering, it was Green who booked a meeting for himself and Redfern with then-finance minister Carole Taylor, who in turn put $9 million in the 2008 provincial budget for the job.)

The afternoon ended with the same music that concluded the farewell party for Green at the Cultch back on Feb. 26, two days before he died of lung cancer in his Woodward's apartment, in his Bladerunners t-shirt, at the age of 68.

The Woodward's Community Choir sang "Va Pensiero", the chorus of the Hebrew Slaves, by Temistocle Solera, from Guissepe Verdi's Nabucco. It's about freedom, and rights, and longing for home. Then the choir drifted into the audience, and with them -- together -- sang the brief and moving lyric "Let Us See the Beauty", about finding beauty where none might be apparent, and deriving strength from that insight.

Afterward, the crowd spilled out into the same glorious Vancouver sunshine that Green enjoyed in late February, and some among the crowd retired to the Railway Club for the Saturday afternoon jam, where Green himself often found repose. (Sundays, of course, were for football.)

We are lucky, in Vancouver, that Jim Green made a home here, and was among those who showed by great example how we can care for each other. I think Jim Green felt lucky, too, that he made a real difference for people who needed a little respect in their own home. Maybe that's why, in Redfern's words, "Jim was happy right to the end."

To share in the event that took place Saturday, please view the Jim Green Memorial Tribute. A Facebook page for the event is here. Legacy contributions in Jim's memory can be made to the Jim Green Fund, Vancouver East Cultural Centre, 1895 Venables St., Vancouver, V5L 2H6.