Funny.

“The people that live here, they just want their little world the way it is,” said Malkin. “They paid five, seven million dollars to buy a house in the community. Do you think they should have to have it changed because our mayor wants to have the missing middle show up?”

I seem to remember that sentiment being what conservatives were excoriated for.

West Vancouver, in John Reynolds old riding, is currently represented by Liberal Pamela Goldsmith-Jones who won a majority in her riding in 2015 with 55%.

The average house price is $2.7M.

Flashback: Memories of the Annex.

29 Replies to “Funny.”

  1. Oh, they paid that much money, did they?

    If a rich uncle left me 2.7 million dollars, the absolute last thing I would buy is a McMansion in Hongcouver.

    What I’d buy is a Russian passport, allowing me to live happily ever in a real country with a history its people can actually be proud of. And pay much lower taxes to boot.

    1. You could start a GoFundMe. My usual response to those things is go fund yourself, but helping you escape Canada seems like a good cause.

    2. Well…I wouldnt go that far…. but I’d sure as hell pick up a nice Blind Bay (Shushwap Lake – the one with the 1100 mile forested costlien, crystal clear Mountain stream run off with summer water temps in the mid 70’s), waterfront property…??
      Now THAT would be awesome sport fans.!!. Far better than latte sipping Kelowna where I’m sure many of those same West Van residents keep a “summer” home.
      The Okanagan being simply too damned crowded for my tastes.

    3. Russia is a real country with a history its people can actually be proud of? And the much closer U.S. is not?
      Russia was a backwards country on the fringe of Europe, both geographically and culturally. It was conquered and ruled by the Mongols for almost two hundred and fifty years, until 1480. So it only 450 years between rules by foreign despots (in the case of the Communist, foreign ideology). Russia was still backwards with its serf system, despite the efforts of Peter the Great, until about mid nineteenth century.
      I happen to really like Dostoevsky, whom I think is one of the greatest novelists. I also like Russian classical music, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky Korsakov, Mussorgsky, but not above German composers. If I were Russian, those would be Russian things I would be proud of. Not its political history. I am American, and I am truly proud of the Founding Fathers who created the best country in the world. I am also ethnic Chinese, and I am proud of Chinese literature and art, but not Chinese political history, and I detest the present Chinese regime. But I don’t think the present Russian regime is much better.

  2. I’m sure that’s not the only part of Lotusland where that thinking prevails.

    When I was a grad student at UBC nearly 40 years ago, I saw some pretty fancy barns near the campus. Go along SW Marine Drive and you would have seen a lot of high-priced houses well-hidden from the public traffic.

    I eventually lived in the Endowment Lands right next to the uni. I was often in serious danger of being run over by Rolls-Royces, Bentleys, and Jaguars when I walked along the street.

    I’m sure that those neighbourhoods weren’t the least bit interested in having any middle-class riff-raff moving into their areas.

  3. Oh, they paid that much money, did they?

    If a rich uncle left me 2.7 million dollars, the absolute last thing I would buy is a McMansion in Hongcouver.

    What I’d buy is a Russian passport, allowing me to live happily ever in a real country with a history its people can actually be proud of. And pay much lower taxes to boot.

    And never have to hear another fucking word of the jabber that passes for Canadian French.

  4. Leftists are the loudest, and most strident NIMBY’s in the SF Bay Area. Yet they talk, talk, talk, about the “middle class” (all but gone in the entire region). They talk, talk, talk, about the homeless and “affordable” housing. They talk, talk, talk about the high cost of property … then … do everything in their power to make housing costs rise. Regulations out the wazoo … including mandatory solar panels. And they fight every new project as it will generate more automobile traffic which will increase fine particulate air pollution, which will kill their children … kill em deader than Roundup sprayed on their garden … *snicker*

  5. West Van has always been the ELITE expensive community, I love how the Red Star says it used to be a normal community…..normal my ass.

    1. Indeed it was. Back in the day, lower W. Van was working class. This predates the Upper levels Highway. I remember as a kid taking family drives along Marine Drive through neighbourhoods of small bungalows strung all the way from Ambleside to Whytecliff.
      The wealthy pretty much confined themselves to the British properties.
      That was then and this is now, eh?
      https://www.animationresources.org/pics/norris03-big.jpg

  6. This is also an area under attack by the Greendp, on a multi front battle.

    The Greendp has taxed these ritzy homes with extra school taxes, so teachers can go on more expensive vacations.
    The Greendp is also regulating the Foreign Buyers harder. This has resulted in a stalled Real Estate market, prices are falling, particularly the multi-million dollars homes. The goal is to help the poor millenials afford a home.

    Does reducing house values from $4 million to $2.5 million, help a millenial buy a starter home???.? Greendp math anyone? This is not an ENDP riding by the way…….

    1. The greens will slowly expropriate the houses and then build some “Moscow housing” for the masses. Throw in a couple of safe injection sites and housing prices will fall further.

      Then even more Moscow housing can be built.

  7. This is great, finally some pushback. I don’t care what town anymore, all these mayors and councillors are always pushing making people nuts. Need to come up with a way to take them to task for wasting money on pet projects, hate those bastards.

  8. Margaret Atwood, some are more equal than others apparently.

    Doesn’t the FruitFly guy have a mansion in West Van? Another one that is more equal.

    1. One of St Fruit Fly’s large, luxurious homes in in Kitsilano, in the west end of Wangcouver.

      West Van is across the end of Burrard Inlet, on the way to Whistler, where the Ferry terminal is to Nanaimo. Its a very hilly, mountainous area, where homes are typically waterfront with the rock cliff above them, or, on top of the rocky hills with 180 ocean views, with no yard.

      Not that St Maggot couldnt afford a taxpayer funded home there…….

      1. Actually, Dan – my memory of West Van is that there is a thin layer of waterfront homes with most of them up the mountainside. the Lions Gate Bridge – Stanley Park to North/West Van was built in late 1930’s to provide easy access to the British Properties, and they are certainly not waterfront. Do know the area because my boss – way back in the day – lived in West Van and I had occasion to take some forms up to him for signing.

        1. North Van is the area you described, Lions Gate Bridge, Hollyburn, Taylor Way. Its the more populated area on the north side.

          West Van is the Horseshoe Bay area, Cypress, etc, they put the west in west

      2. I thought Fruit Fly’s house was somewhere in the Endowment Lands, next to Kits.

        Depending on one’s location in that part of Hongcouver, the real estate prices or, for that matter, rent in that area could be quite high because one pays for the view. Where I lived in the EL, I could see the ferry coming out of Horseshoe Bay from the entrance to the basement suite I was in. If I stepped outside and walked a few paces, I had a view of the harbour and part of the downtown area, which, at night, was something to see….. if it wasn’t raining, of course.

  9. You know it is always amusing when rich idiots, who probably voted Liberal or NDPee their whole lives, finally discover what not having any property rights actually means.

  10. According to a newspaper report from 2013, his main house in the Kitsilano area (beach front or near offer) of Vancouver and was valued at approx. $8.2 million

    1. As I recall, Dr Fruitflie’s place in Kits is a double wide beach side property; and he also has a place on one of the Gulf Islands

  11. I’d like to see safe injection sites and homeless shelters in West Van personally. Also a 100% carbon tax on gas and mandatory bike only streets. Let them eat their own garbage for once.

  12. I’m torn.

    On the one hand, human nature makes it difficult to be sympathetic towards the wealthy who don’t want to deal with the kind of changes that affect lesser mortals. OTOH, I and my neighbours have been dealing with a local parks planning dept. that has been absolutely intransigent and unwilling to consider our concerns over the course of an entire decade.

    All of us have lived there for twenty years or more, on the slope of a mountain at the end of a rural road. Historically, small numbers of people would park along the road to climb to the summit. Ten years ago, the top of the mountain was designated a regional park and the local authorities – with no consultation – built a 24 car parking area (basically a widening of the shoulder allowing diagonal parking) and a bridge across a little lake. On busy weekends, as many as 75 cars would jam up the cul-de-sac with all the attendant problems of noise, litter, drugs and dogs running free.

    For ten years we lobbied and finally the planners bought a piece of property 7/10’s of a km. down the road and built a parking lot for 100+ vehicles at a cost of over a million dollars, with a promise to close the old lot and remove the bridge.

    Now they’ve ‘re-visited’ their plan and intend to keep the old lot and bridge in place for a year in order to “do a study” – meaning that after a million buck was spent and ten years of frustration for local residents, they’re going to discover that people prefer to park as close to the trail head as possible, hew parking lot and residents peace and quiet be damned.

    You cannot get any reasonable response from those whose jobs are independent of their ‘customers’ and whose job security is solidified by churning projects and studies until complainants die of old age.

  13. Atwood, now there’s a misnomer.
    An unoriginal writer with unoriginal pretences and unoriginal hypocrisies.
    Funny strange that we haven’t heard from her so much. One must wonder if a hard reality hasn’t crept into her like a cold speculum. Women dressed as handmaids demand the right to end life where Atwood’s handmaids were envious of the ability to give it. This irony is reflected in her own little rising Gilead. The self cannibalism has begun. She cares not for the trees but longs for her complacent perspective from the top of the very hill she grinded down.
    She’ll never let on.
    B!tch.

    1. Professor is your name Plus the Ninth One time Only?
      After the pope? There’s a street in Montreal that runs North-South named Pie ix. Just curious.

      1. One time; in reference to Atwood’s klever name for the fictional professor who gives the epilogue (lifted from Ann Frank’s diary) of The Handmaid’s Tale. She does refer to Pius IX backhandedly as he promoted the virginity of Mary. This way she understands implicitly that she is literally reaping what she has sewn.

  14. Well, these millionaire socialists ain’t gonna stop voting socialist, so let them be eaten by their own leviathan.

    All the “refugees” they keep voting to let in have to be housed somewhere; I vote that they have some rape gangs forcibly shoved down their useless throats.

    I will care about nothing that affects their lives, till they get a pipeline built.

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