The last time I heard from former NPA councillor B.C. Lee was via email.
That was way back in May 2009.
Here’s what he wrote:
“I am doing it! I am playing the role of a stubborn father. I am singing, dancing and performing in a musical (At least I tried!!! Director said I am good…well occasionally!!!) Different stages in my world. Different presentations of my life. Come! Have a good time with us! It’s fun. It’s beautiful. It’s a good show.”
That was Lee’s way of saying he was performing in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song at the Waterfront Theatre. The timeless Asian-American musical featured Lee as a father who was “fighting a losing battle with his kids against rock ‘n’ roll, baseball, sports cars and the typical trappings of the modern American lifestyle.”
Quite a leap from fighting Vision Vancouver and COPE during his days as a city councillor under Sam Sullivan’s administration, which ruled city hall from 2005 to 2008.
When Lee decided not to seek re-election, the news really upset some of his colleagues, including Coun. Elizabeth Ball who described him as “amazing.”
“I cannot imagine council without him and I will grow teary — as (then-councillor) Kim Capri did — at the thought,” Ball said during a speech at an NPA function in June 2008. “So if any of you can do anything to bring him back…”
Well, Lee is back … sort of.
Lee — whose initials in his first name are short for Bar-Chya — was elected Monday night as the NPA’s new president. He replaces Peter Armstrong, who led the party through the two previous elections and spent more than half a million dollars of his own money to fund the campaigns.
“I don’t look at it as some kind of a crown, or whatever,” said Lee, who is the vice-president of business development for Fireglo Strategic Marketing and Communications and vice-chairperson of the College of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture. “For me, it’s just something that if I can be of help, then I will do something to help the NPA. That’s all.”
Lee said he accepted the presidency because he heard from the party’s board, which includes the NPA’s former mayoral candidate Kirk LaPointe, that it wanted to work between elections to connect with neighbourhoods rather than organize a few months before the big vote.
“And I just feel that a healthy democracy also needs to hear from more different voices,” said Lee, whose role on previous campaigns was to reach out to Asian communities and other ethnic groups to educate them about the party and city government. “But you can’t build a relationship in three months.”
Lee was one of the quietest NPA councillors during his term at city hall, rarely getting himself involved in the to-and-fro his colleagues participated in with opposition councillors.
He was a booster of the city’s then-proposed 311 phone system, the multicultural task force and the need to educate more newcomers about city politics. At the time, Lee was council’s only fluent Mandarin speaker.
He is a former community liaison officer for the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Vancouver and was a news commentator on Fairchild radio and television programs.
He was also one of the few Vancouver city councillors in history to agree to a polygraph test, which was conducted in 2009 by Vancouver police investigators in a probe related to the Olympic Village and a leaked financial document.
Lee passed the test.
His next real test is the fall of 2018 when voters go to the polls again.
As for his acting career, Lee said he still performs when the right play comes along.
One other thing: Lee now lives in New Westminster, a municipality he moved to so he could help his elderly parents. As he pointed out, Vancouver is only a short SkyTrain trip away — a comment that will undoubtedly generate a collective groan from Vision Vancouver and other local parties looking to take a shot at the NPA.
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