The Hero Next Time: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 4)

Chapter Seventeen: Sunny, Wednesday

The Downtown Business Improvement Association was Sunny's first stop along the campaign trail, and they were holding their regular meeting in a private banquet room in the Boston Pizza restaurant, on Columbia just before it became Stewardson Way, which was good for him, because it was on his way home from work and he could stop there for a meet and greet. 

Tori accompanied him to make sure he didn't stick his foot in his mouth and stayed on message, and they left work together in separate cars so they could split up after. Tori lived in Sapperton, which was in the eastern part of the city and the oldest part too. The neighbourhood was named after the "Sappers," the British Royal Engineers who first set foot on land already occupied by the Qayqayt Nation, and decided it would be a strategic base to intercept ships sailing up the Fraser River, enable trade with Fort Langley up the river, build industry, and subtly inform Americans travelling north that this was British territory, never asking the Indigenous people already there what they thought of the idea (not that they would have welcomed the Americans either, necessarily.) They razed the forest and built roads, levelled ground and erected custom houses and trading posts, planting the seed that would grow into what would soon be called New Westminster, named by Queen Victoria after the centre of government in London. 

The Downtown area was the centre of business for the city until Uptown, along Sixth Avenue, came into existence, causing a slow and painful decline in the fortunes of the businesses along Columbia Street. When the Skytrain was completed in the Eighties, with its original terminus the New Westminster Station on Eighth Street and Columbia Street, people from outside New Westminster began to notice the decrepitude of Downtown, and subsequent mayors and councils decided the time had come to revitalize it, joining with enthusiastic, committed residents of Downtown to put the focus back on the area as a place to live and do business. The Downtown BIA was the inheritor of that legacy, and they were a creative, trendy bunch who loved their neighbourhood and visualized walkable streets filled with diverse businesses and fancy restaurants on the ground floor, with homes big enough for families on the floors above them, looking out over the Fraser.

Sunny gave a version of his speech from Saturday from the small podium they'd set up in the room, putting more focus on his vision for Downtown. "The library used to be downtown," he said. "If Queensborough can have a branch of the library in its community centre, then I don't see why we can't open a branch in a similarly paired space, such as the new Anvil Centre. A library anchors the neighbourhood, and when it left Downtown for Sixth Avenue, I think it ripped out the soul of Downtown and started its decline. I want to work with the Library Board to make that happen."

The applause was polite but not overly enthusiastic for that and for other planks in his platform. He wondered if they were looking for promises like lower taxes or utility bills for their member businesses. He sympathized; his firm was a medium-sized business operating Downtown, and they also faced financial challenges. It wasn't that he wouldn't vote to lower them; if it wouldn't leave a hole in the budget that would have to be filled with cuts to vital services, he was fine with it, but he knew there were candidates who already had that in their platforms, and he wanted to run on a grander vision and differentiate himself from those candidates.

He was encouraged that the audience wasn't homogeneous. Almost half were women and a third of them weren't white. He hoped they wouldn't make assumptions about him just on sight.

He answered questions at the end of his speech, was thanked by the president of the BIA, and he and Tori took their leave while they got down to the rest of their meeting.

"What did you think?" he asked her once he closed the glass door behind them.

"I'm not going to lie," she said. "It could have gone better. Don't get me wrong, you were completely on message, I just don't think that was the message they wanted to hear."