Politics
Rankin ran for office more than a dozen times before being elected to Vancouver's city council in 1966 as the sole independent alderman on a council dominated by the conservative Non-Partisan Association. Vancouver's aldermen were elected through an "at large" system rather than by ward meaning voters from wealthier neighbourhoods were able to monopolise council elections and that only candidates who could afford a city-wide campaign had a chance of being elected. Rankin helped form the Committee of Progressive Electors (COPE) as a left wing civic political party and it subsequently pushed for a ward-based electoral system to be introduced in Vancouver, culminating in a referendum in October 1973, at which the ward proposal was defeated.
Rankin was a 20 year veteran of city council when he ran for Mayor in 1986 losing to Gordon Campbell. He returned to city council as an alderman in the subsequent election and remained on the body until his retirement from politics in 1993.
He died on February 26, 2002 from a heart attack, aged 81.
Rankin's widow, Connie Fogal, is the former leader of the Canadian Action Party.
Read more about this topic: Harry Rankin
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“In politics people give you what they think you deserve and deny you what they think you want.”
—Cecil Parkinson (b. 1932)
“One might imagine that a movement which is so preoccupied with the fulfillment of human potential would have a measure of respect for those who nourish its source. But politics make strange bedfellows, and liberated women have elected to become part of a long tradition of hostility to mothers.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“The [nineteenth-century] young men who were Puritans in politics were anti-Puritans in literature. They were willing to die for the independence of Poland or the Manchester Fenians; and they relaxed their tension by voluptuous reading in Swinburne.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)