Frances Bula for Vancouver Council

Who am I? I’ve spent the last three decades of my 43-year journalism career writing about urban issues and Vancouver-area city politics, after starting as a reporter in a small town in southeastern B.C. on the first day of the general strike in 1983.

During that time, which includes 18 years freelancing at the Globe and Mail and 21 years as a staff reporter at the Vancouver Sun, along with writing columns in Vancouver magazine and BCBusiness, I’ve covered everything from drug and homelessness issues to billion-dollar developments, along with transportation, garbage and recycling, sewer infrastructure (more exciting than you think), and many other issues that are part of the texture of cities.

I spent a lot of time reporting heavily on the Downtown Eastside. It’s a place that has special meaning for me. My father, from a Ukrainian farm family on the Prairies, ended up living and ultimately dying at the West Hotel there after a tragic lifetime of alcoholism.

I was born in Regina—spent my first year of life living with my parents in a trailer in a relative’s driveway—and raised in North Vancouver (with three rambunctious brothers). My mother, a high-school French teacher who raised us with help from my grandmother, also came from a Saskatchewan farm family, but a francophone one with roots in Quebec. My mother, who was a nun for more than a decade before deciding to leave for the bigger world, was an adventurous and funny soul who took chances on new experiences throughout her life, unintentionally inspiring me to do the same.

So, while getting my honours degree in French literature, I worked as a deckhand in the commercial fishing industry for six seasons. I’ve explored the world since I was 18, cycling around Europe, working on an Israeli kibbutz in the early ’70s, studying at the Sorbonne in Paris a few years later, travelling to China to study the education system in 1990, and volunteering for a reporting stint in Afghanistan in 2004.

I spent a year studying housing and homelessness—inspired by a former Vancouver city councillor—on a special fellowship in 1998/99, resulting in a 15-part series in the Toronto Star and a CBC Ideas documentary. That sparked an enduring passion in me to learn more about those issues.

I’ve lived in east Mount Pleasant for 25 years, where my husband and I had a laneway house built five years ago for his oldest daughter and her family of five—an unforgettable experience in dealing directly with the city. I have two other step-children and a son, all of whom live in Vancouver and for whom housing is a major concern.

Throughout my journalism career, I’ve aimed to provide service to the public by uncovering and exploring the issues that affect their lives in the city. Now, I am hoping to provide service in a different way, by being their advocate and guide on city council.