VanRamblings Makes Its Triumphant Return

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Two year old Elliott, on my bed with Teague the dog
December 2025

Following 7½ months of excruciating pain subsequent to my radical prostatectomy (prostate cancer surgery) on October 31, 2025, after all these months the pain has lessened to the extent that I can actually sit in a chair, in front of my computer, for an extended period of time. Thus, the re-emergence of VanRamblings.

Given what is going on municipally — particularly in Vancouver, with a record number of high profile candidates seeking to become Mayor post October 17th — provincially (with the deepening problems for Premier David Eby, and the provincial New Democrats, not to mention the ascendence of a far right leader of the Conservative Party of British Columbia) and federally, with a decided move to the right by Prime Minister Mark Carney, and his federal Liberal Party, as has been the case for many months, I am desirous of weighing in on all things political.

Although I had thought that I might take a different tack on how VanRamblings would approach covering the upcoming municipal election, perhaps emerging as a kinder, more thoughtful force for good in the writing you’ll be reading daily on this 22-year-young blog, I have of late arrived at the opinion that such change is unlikely to occur, that VanRamblings will continue to be what it has always been: an honest, straight forward, brutally entertaining,  and engaging reportorial accounting on all the “people in the game”, which is to say, those persons who have chosen to enter the political fray by offering themselves for public office.

Monday to Thursday, you can expect to read my analysis of the political scene, Fridays will provide coverage of cinema, Saturdays will be given over to Stories of a Life — long a staple on VanRamblings — and Sundays to the music I love.

All that begins tomorrow.

A great family: the absolutely tremendous Alasdair, Fergus, Meaghan and Elliott

Central to my recovery — not yet complete, but progressing —has been the support of the four persons you see pictured above, rugby and (British) football phenom Alasdair, now 7-year-old Fergus who I cared for during the pandemic and beyond (along with my neighbour, Heather, who I will write about at length in the months to come) — when Fergus’ child care centre closed down and he required care while his parents were at work — and wife, mom, librarian and friend extraordinaire, Meaghan, whose very existence gives my life meaning, and  on the right, 3-year-old Elliott — her name given to her by her brother — who is nothing short of a delight, both Fergus and Elliott, the most zen children I have ever known.

Raymond and Fergus, on a post pandemic walk, when Meaghan asked for a selfie

In the photo at the top of today’s column, Elliott in the bottom left hand corner of my bed, and lying by my side, as he did for three months, Teague (the Schnauzer) dog. At the foot of the bed, and outside the frame of the photo, my friend and personal health saviour, Kelly Ryan, and the aforementioned Heather and Meaghan, all three of whom,  together, have provided care and kindness, working collectively to save my life over the course of the past 7½ unimaginably challenging months.

At one point, Elliott — mature and far beyond her maturational markers — turned to Kelly (with whom I share Teague), and said to Kelly …

“I have a cat. I want a dog. But I have a cat. I have asked my mom and dad for a dog, but they said, ‘Not right now. Some day.’

I have a cat. I like the cat, but I want a dog.”

And with that, Elliott turned to pet Teague, as Kelly, Heather and Meaghan resumed their conversation.

The old, Movable Type VanRamblings header (above) which Mike Klassen — VanRamblings’ webmaster, and current Vancouver City Councillor — sadly,  was unable to recreate when VanRamblings’ Movable Type platform collapsed. Working for 48 non-stop hours, the supremely skilled Mr. Klassen was able to convert this blog he first created in late 2003 leading to its February 2004 début into a WordPress blog

Tomorrow and Thursday, I will begin writing about politics, likely employing the 3rd person — mixing in the 1st person where it seems necessary and appropriate — focusing on the eight well-funded candidates for Mayor of the City of Vancouver, providing an often brutally vicious analysis of their respective candidacies.

Take my word for it, you won’t want to miss tomorrow’s and Thursday’s columns.

Health Update: Raymond Goes Into VGH today for Prostate Surgery at VGH

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Fourteen months after being diagnosed with Stage Four prostate cancer — as is the case with former U.S. President Joe Biden — today I was admitted to the Vancouver General Hospital for a three and a half hour radical robotic prostatectomy, after doctors at VGH discovered — following an MRI, a bone scan and a biopsy (more than one actually — that, like Joe Biden I had a Gleason score of 9 …

For the past 9 months, I have been subjected to a number of biopsies and regular injections, and participated in the Gun Study — a multi-centre North American clinical trial headed up by the Vancouver General Hospital’s Dr. Martin Gleave, the head of the Prostate Clinic at VGH.

Early on, it  was determined that I must have my prostate removed employing the radical robotic prostatecomy procedure.

Over the past months, I have taken a variety of medications — Apalalutamide, Zytiga and Prednisone — which has effectively removed my sexuality and turned me into a eunuch, which is to say a male who has been chemically castrated, and with the removal of my prostate surgically castrated.

This morning after being transported to Vancouver General Hospital by my friend, Susan Walsh — spouse of my friend, the late Michael Walsh, who for 50 years was the lead film critic at The Province newspaper — who accompanied me to Admitting, after which I was escorted to a bed in a ward in the south tower of the Jim Pattison Pavilion, on floor T6.

As you read this, I will be in surgery, a three and a half hour major surgery where an extensive, complex procedure will see my abdomen “opened up”, which is to say, my surgery involves entering a major body cavity ( in this case the abdomen). My anaesthesiologist told me that, under his supervision, I will be given a general anesthesia that will require an at least initial 72-hour long recovery period, requiring an overnight stay tonight, or if complications arise, an extended hospital stay. In any event, my anesthesiologist told me that, “Raymond, you will be ‘stoned’ for at least 72 hours.” Fun times ahead, I guess.

I will be left with three incisions — a three and a half inch vertical incision at the bottom of the public bone, and two more somewhat lesser incisions, top right and top left. I was told I must not lift anything heavier than 10 pounds post surgery, less the incisions rupture, creating wound dehiscence, which occurs when a surgical incision reopens, where internal organs might protrude through the wound.

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/59ee0eecb10598d866c226de/1530884809264-3QUPXRQ5V372MQSDFE8K/Pubic-Bone-1.jpg?format=1500w

Should things to well with the surgery — which my family physician, Dr. Brad Fritz, Dr. Mannas, my surgeon (and other of his colleagues in the Prostate Clinic), and my anesthesiologist believes is most probable — I will be picked up from hospital at 10am on Saturday, by my friend the every beauteous, incredibly bright, politically astute, accomplished and loving Meaghan (and her incredibly great football (British football) loving husband Alasdair, and their two children, Fergus and Elliot, who are the most zen children I’ve ever met — needless to say, I love both children (a reciprocal affection, it would seem), as I do Alasdair and Meaghan.

Count me as one very lucky and grateful individual.

I will spend the weekend in bed at home, attended to by Susan, by my Co-op neighbours — again, count me as the luckiest man in the world that Jason, Heather, Laurie and Kevin, Tatiana, Judi, Jette, Alex, Alexandra and Jordan, and all of my other fellow Broadview Housing Co-op members are possessed of an uncommon humanity, and a dedication to building a better and more loving world.

Post surgery I will have a catheter inserted, for a period of one week — rather than the five plus weeks I had a very painful catheter inserted in March and April. Like ouch. Julia, the registered nurse who has given me regular injections over the past 9 months (“Pants down, Mr. Tomlin. Bend over now.”) will remove the catheter on Friday, November 7th. My friend, and personal health saviour, Kelly Ryan (we provide “co-parenting” of Teague) will travel with me to the Gordon and Leslie Diamond Centre for removal of the catheter, and then ferry me home.

Teague the dog, only the most loving dog in the world

There will be a one-year post surgery recovery period during which I will have to wear incontinence underwear. Friends of mine who have had prostate surgery tell me that the worst of the incontinence occurs during the first three or four months.

Now that I’m off the prostate medication, it is likely that my energy and vitality will return, affording me the opportunity to provide more intensive coverage of next year’s Vancouver municipal election.

My support for 46-year-young Vancouver Liberals Mayoral candidate Kareem Allam — Vancouver’s Zohran Mamdani (ssshhh, don’t tell anyone) remains strong, as I hope to write (extensively) in the months to come.

Kareem Allam Launches Campaign to Be Mayor of the City of Vancouver

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Video provided courtesy of Bob Mackin / The Breaker News.

The information below is excerpted from an article by Nathan Caddell — son of Ian, one of VanRamblings’ best friends dating back to 1970, through until Ian’s untimely passing in 2012 at 63 years of age, far, far too young for him to leave the planet — the article published in 2023 in BC Business.

Kareem Allam was born in Vancouver to immigrants from Cairo in 1979. He spent a few years back and forth between Canada and Egypt before his family permanently moved to Richmond. After high school, he studied history at Simon Fraser University, where he found himself thrown into the political fray as a young man.

In 2005, Kareem played a pivotal role in helping Dianne Watts get elected as Mayor of Surrey, a popular and populist Mayor, and perhaps Surrey’s best Mayor ever. After that mayoral election win in 2005, Kareem worked for a number of organizations, including Terasen Gas (now FortisBC), the Vancouver Board of Trade and Fraser Health.

In 2011, Kareem took on the task of serving as Kevin Falcon’s deputy campaign manager for a BC Liberal leadership campaign in which Falcon narrowly lost to Christy Clark. “That was a bit gutting,” he recalls, noting that it was his first big loss.

About 10 years later — after Allam had spent some more years working at the aforementioned organizations as well as some time in Indigenous relations, Falcon called again. Andrew Wilkinson had just stepped down as leader of the BC Liberals after the party was trounced by the BC NDP.

“I think the party really didn’t do as well with Andrew as the leader — there was definitely a lot of intellectual capacity there, Andrew is brilliant,” says Allam. “But that ability to sort of connect was lost, which people in the party took for granted. That was what Christy [Clark] was really good at — one-on-one, she’ll make you feel like the most important person in the world.”

There was also what Allam refers to as a policy drift within the party, and he was worried that the caucus didn’t look or act like the rest of the province.

“The discussions I had with Kevin went right up the start of the race,” he remembers. “I’m like, Okay, if you run, we’ll put together a good team, we’ll win. The question is what’s going to happen next. Are you prepared for that with your family and everything?”

So, very quickly, I reached out and built the most diverse team I had ever been part of.

We wanted to signal where the party wanted to go. If you watch his campaign videos, he’s walking across rainbow crosswalks, talking about how his values haven’t changed, but his perspective has.

“It was the remaking of the image. I think it appealed to the party — let’s become younger, more urban, more progressive. It resonated in the Chinese and South Asian communities, too.”

Many Vancouverites only first heard of Kareem Allam’s name in the aftermath of the 2022 Vancouver municipal election, but current City of Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim had actually tried to recruit him for his first shot at the mayor’s chair in 2018.

“Ken asked me to run his campaign three times, I said no three times,” says Allam. “I was at a point in my career where I just wasn’t ready to take it on.” He also had his worries about the NPA: “The party had drifted to the right, and that’s just not where I or Vancouver voters were and will never be.”

In 2022, with three of the former NPA councillors joining Sim under a new party banner ABC, or A Better City — some of Sim’s closest friends, who had helped on the Falcon campaign, started calling Allam. “I was like, No guys, I’m really burnt out,” he says with what can only be described as a perpetually exhausted laugh.

Living downtown, the “sense of urban decay” encouraged Allam to eventually take on the job.

“Just starting to see people in mental health distress on the street,” says Allam. “A lot more needles, excrement, windows being shattered, all signs of a mental health crisis. Because of my time at Fraser Health, I recognized immediately what the solution was: Car 87, a mental health programme run by Coastal Health and the Vancouver Police Department that partners police officers with mental health nurses. These programmes work, there’s no doubt they work. So I went, Okay, I’m going to take this campaign on and this is what I’m going to bring to the city—100 cops, 100 mental health nurses.”

There were also key promises around housing permitting and child care.

“We played it dead centre in terms of ideology,” says Allam. “At least that’s what we tried to do. We acknowledged immediately that nine of the 11 Vancouver ridings are NDP ridings. If we didn’t get people who voted for John Horgan, no way were we going to win the election … We won almost the entire city, we won Oppenheimer Park, which nobody predicted.”

Asked whether there’s one thing that binds his campaigns together, Allam cites his status as a perceived outsider.

“This is a space that’s dominated by rich white people from the west side,” he says. “When I started in politics in the early 2000s, Arabs weren’t the most popular people. When some of the bigger campaigns were getting pulled together, they’d go, What are we going to do with Kareem, oh, you can manage the ethnics. I made the decision early on that, okay, I will do that. I built great relationships with the South Asian and Chinese communities… You want me to be in charge of the ethnics, okay great, now the ethnics are in charge of you.”

Vancouver Liberals Mayoral candidate Kareem Allam in his own words.

VIFF Experiencing a Time of Renewal While Bringing in New Audiences

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In 2025, VanRamblings makes our 44th annual foray to the Vancouver International Film Festival, where the regulars we’ve attended the festival with all these years once again find themselves in attendance to enjoy the best in world cinema.

As you might well imagine, like VanRamblings, a few of us are getting on in age, despite looking young, vital and, as long has been the case, committed to VIFF: Eileen broke both her knees three months ago, requiring emergency restorative surgery; Ed’s wife (who worked for the festival for many years) passed on, as did former volunteer David who chose MAID as a way to leave this life; Lorne is here once again, as is VIFF  VanCentre programmer Tom Charity, looking all hail and hearty (both Lorne and Tom are on the younger side of the regular attendee contingent); in his 80s, former CBC producer and film critic Volkmar has made his way to VIFF once again, as have Barbara and Len (who told us The Ivy, which screens on Tuesday for a second time, is his favourite film of all the films he’s attended at VIFF this year).

Unlike VanRamblings, each member of the group above has attended five screening each and every day since the commencement of VIFF 2025 this past Thursday.

Although seniors make up about 20% of those in attendance at the 44th annual VIFF, the majority of audience members at each screening that we’ve attended would seem to range in age from approximately 25 to 45 years of age, some younger than that (university students in the main), some a wee bit older.

VanRamblings experiences this new, vibrant and younger VIFF audience as a hopeful sign that culture and love of international cinema still exists in this city, which means that even in these meanest of post-pandemic times would seem to mean that it is entirely likely VIFF will persevere through the troubling social and economic times many of us are experiencing, long, long into VIFF’s illustrious future.

Clicking on the underlined title links below will take you to the VIFF webpage for the film, and will allow you to order tickets, if you are a mind to do so.

Orphan. B+. Set in Budapest in 1957, one year after the failure of the Hungarian Revolution at the hands of a brutal Soviet regime, a young Jewish boy, Andor, whose mother has raised him to believe that his father will return from the death camps, where Andor’s father was taken near the end of the Holocaust, as  locals hid Andor and his mother — has his hopes shattered when a brutish stranger appears on the doorstep claiming to be his father. The film’s powerful earth-toned, sepia-drenched visual style, including its desaturated colour palette and dynamic camerawork recalls director László Nemes earlier work on the Oscar-winning Son of Saul. Hungary’s nominee for a Best International Feature Film Oscar.

John Candy: I Like Me. A-. A major audience pleaser, this moving-picture, sentimental love letter to one of Canada’s greatest comedians, as directed by Colin Hanks offers an unabashed celebration of John Candy’s life and work in a tale told by friends, reinforcing Candy’s reputation as a prodigious talent and kind-hearted soul, who, in spite of a deep insecurity, was still ultimately a great and loving man. Make no mistake, this is not a hagiography. While the assessment of Candy’s life and legacy provides ample cause for laughter, it also provokes plenty of tears. Residing just beneath that easygoing, eager-to-please, every man exterior was a chronic anxiety that reached a crippling peak during his final years. John Candy passed much too early at age 43. Set to screen a final time at VIFF, at the Cineplex International Village, on Wednesday, October 8th, at 12:45pm in Cinema 10. Arrive early to guarantee yourself a seat.

Sentimental Value. A. Here’s what VanRamblings wrote on social media after the screening of Sentimental Value …

Not hard to see why people are going gaga over Joachim Trier’s latest film, this Grand Prix winner at Cannes in every way a triumph, both Renate Reinsve and Stellan Skarsgård’s performances each a revelation, although the whole cast is simply beautiful and humanely perfect. Sentimental Value — about an estranged father and daughter really resonated with us — opens wide on November 14th, on its way to a raft of well-deserved Oscar nominations. It’ll be so good to see Mr. Trier, Ms. Reinsve and Mr. Skarsgård as fixtures on the upcoming Oscar campaign trail. If you don’t know much about them now, you soon will.

A guaranteed lock for the following Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Screenplay, and Best International film, for which Norway, in respect of the latter, has submitted the film for a Best International Feature Film Oscar nomination. Set to screen one last time at the Vancouver Playhouse, on Wednesday, October 8th at 5:30pm. At this point, standby only.

Sirât. A. Spain’s submission to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for a Best International Feature Film Oscar, and earlier this year, winner of the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, about 15 minutes in, we thought we might leave the screening to go home and spend time with our dog. We’re glad we didn’t. As the film moves along, Sirât turns out to be outstanding cinema, unsettling, tragic, violent, humane, explosive, empathetic and completely unexpected at every moment, Óliver Laxe’s new film is a lightning bolt of a film. The film’s narrative summary: a father (Sergi López) and his son arrive at a rave deep in the mountains of southern Morocco. They’re searching for Mar — daughter and sister — who vanished months ago at one of these endless, sleepless parties. Surrounded by electronic dance music and a raw, unfamiliar sense of freedom, they hand out her photo again and again. Hope is fading but they push through and follow and eventually join a group of ravers heading to one last party deep in the Moroccan desert. As they venture deeper into the burning wilderness, the journey brings unexpected, heart-breaking tragedy. A kind of contemporary, grimly sublime Wages of Fear, Sirât is at all times visually transportive as it focuses on simple plots and conflicts that provide ample space for philosophical and existential contemplation. Laxe’s most fully realized film to date, Sirât folds in the visceral pleasures of contemporary genre and blockbuster cinema. Set to screen at The Rio Theatre on East Broadway at Commercial Drive, on the last day of VIFF, 8:45pm Thanksgiving Sunday evening, October 12th.

Young Mothers. A+. Winner of Best Screenplay at Cannes back in May, and Belgium’s submission for a Best International Film Feature Oscar, Young Mothers is yet another tour-de-force from multiple Cannes winners, the Dardennes’ brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc, and our favourite film thus far that we’ve screened at the 44th annual Vancouver International Film Festival. Deeply moving from beginning to end, this is the brothers’ best film in more than a decade, captivating when it’s simply taking in the quotidian responsibilities of new parenthood — feeding, diaper changing, bathtime — or when it catches an expression of wonder or joy as a mother gazes into the tiny face of the child she has created. With dignity and intelligence on screen in every scene and every character portrayal, Young Mothers is  another fine addition to the Dardennes’ film canon, with a comfort in the familiarity of their methodology, and their ability to coax tremendous performances from even the youngest of actors — the cast of Young Mothers is uniformly excellent. Young Mothers screens twice more at VIFF, on Thursday, October 9th, 12:30pm at Fifth Avenue Cinema, and Sunday, October 12th at 8:30pm at Alliance Francaise.

Nouvelle Vague. B+. The opening night film at VIFF 2025, director Richard Linklater’s latest film is filmed in exquisite black and white, the dialogue almost entirely in French, clearly a labour of love and a product of considerable craft chronicling the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, the film a valentine to the French New Wave. There’s so much joy in this telling, so much sophistication of craft on display, and such a delightful ode to this exemplary era of creativity, Nouvelle Vague is nothing less than a bold, muscular act of caring, a shout of joy and a call to arms. As Owen Glieberman writes in Variety …

The film reminds you that the real salvation of cinema will always come from those who understand that making a movie should be a magic trick good enough to fool the magician himself into believing it.

A cinephile’s film through and through, Nouvelle Vague is also breezy and entertaining, never taking itself too seriously while highlighting an extremely serious moment in film history. A film that delights in its characters’ rule-breaking and playfulness and experimentation, for devoted film lovers, Nouvelle Vague is a must-see — a joyful homage to the art of cinema that should have you queuing up at the Vancouver Playhouse for the film’s final screening at VIFF, on Saturday, October 11th, at 11am. One final note: we thought Zooey Deutsch was a revelation as Jean Seberg, her performance reason enough to see Nouvelle Vague.  Arrive early.

No Other Choice. A-. South Korea’s Oscar submission this year, No Other Choice isn’t just director Park Chan-wook’s funniest film, but his most humane, too — and that’s quite something for a comedy as violent as this one, the film a masterful work of cinema, bleak, brilliant, and mordantly hilarious. The film’s summary: After being unemployed for several years, a man devises a unique plan to secure a new job: eliminate his competition.

As the VIFF guide says …

After giving the best years of his life to a paper mill, Man-soo (Squid Game star Lee Byung Hun) has been axed. Standing to lose everything and fearing too much competition in his niche sector, Man-soo hits on an ingenious scheme to guarantee the kind of position he so richly deserves: He will invent a fictitious paper company, invite his peers in for a meeting, and dispatch of his rivals, one by one.

Park’s filmmaking is as elegant as ever, in a wildly enjoyable picture that balances psychological tension against giddily hilarious comic set pieces, in this stunningly energetic and endlessly creative film that delights the mind and the eyes. One more VIFF screening: Thursday, October 9th, 8:45pm at the Vancouver Playhouse.