Coming November 20*: The Wit and Wisdom of a Canadian Legend
Vaughn Palmer Brings us our Neighbor’s View on the US Election
This program may sell out; please purchase tickets in advance by 8:00pm Sunday, November 13, here.
Vaughn Palmer, one of City Club’s favorite speakers, returns with observations on the 2024 presidential election. Palmer has been the Vancouver Sun’s provincial affairs political columnist, based in Victoria, since 1984.
In 1973 the Vancouver Sun hired 16 summer interns. Vaughn Palmer chuckles. “I was number 17-–gives you an idea about my credentials.”
But number 16 decided to go to a rival publication and the stage was set for number 17 to begin a 50-year career with the Sun. Palmer began as a reporter, then became their rock critic, then the City Editor, and after a journalism fellowship at Stanford moved to the paper’s legislative bureau in Victoria where he has covered the rise and fall of eight premieres and become a well-regarded commentor on B.C. affairs.
In 2006, he won the Bruce Hutchinson Lifetime Achievement Award, the highest journalistic award in British Columbia.
Patricia Graham, the Sun’s editor in chief, said she could not think of a more apt recipient. “I consider him the best political commentator in Canada for his encyclopedic knowledge, his prodigious memory, his ability to get the story and keep the ideas coming, his terrific contacts, his fine, incisive writing — and he’s got a wicked sense of humor to boot,” she said. “The man is unbeatable; simply a superb journalist.”
Mr. Palmer made several visits to Bellingham City Club before the pandemic and we are happy to welcome him back for his take on our election and the future of US and Canada relations.
*Scheduled one week earlier than usual due to the Thanksgiving holiday.
Land Acknowledgement
The Board of the Bellingham City Club has adopted the following land acknowledgement to introduce its public programs:
We begin by acknowledging, with humility, that the land where we are today is the territory of the People of the Salish Sea. Their presence is imbued in the waterways, shorelines, valleys and mountains of the traditional homelands of the Coast Salish People, and it has been this way since time immemorial.
For information about the land acknowledgement adopted by the Lummi Business Council, click here.
For a video about the Ferndale Public Schools land acknowledgement produced by Ferndale School District, Children of the Setting Sun, and the Lhaqtemish Foundation, click here.