Marpole

Marpole is a south Vancouver neighbourhood of roughly 24,000 people, bounded by West 57th Avenue to the north, the Fraser River to the south, Angus Drive to the west, and Ontario Street to the east. The area's human history stretches back roughly 4,000 to 5,000 years — the c'esna'em (Marpole Midden), an ancient Musqueam village and burial site on the Fraser River, was declared a National Historic Site in 1933 and is one of the largest pre-contact middens on the Pacific coast. Named after CPR General Superintendent Richard Marpole in 1916, the neighbourhood industrialized around sawmills and canneries before being transformed by the opening of the Canada Line SkyTrain in 2009. Today roughly 42 percent of residents are Chinese-Canadian, with 37 percent speaking Mandarin or Cantonese as their mother tongue and 59 percent born outside of Canada. About 59 percent of households rent — one of the higher rates on the south side — and the housing stock is predominantly low-rise stucco walkup apartments built in the 1960s through 1980s, with single-family detached homes making up only about 20 percent of dwellings.

Marpole voted decisively for Ken Sim, who took 64.5 percent of the vote — 3,598 of 5,582 valid ballots — to Stewart's 19.0 percent. Sim dominated the Marpole-Oakridge Community Centre polling station, winning 1,053 to 240 on election day and 1,865 to 353 at the advance poll. The Scottish Cultural Centre, which draws from a slightly different catchment area with more older rental stock, was more competitive at 498 to 359. Provincially, Marpole falls within Vancouver-Langara, a BC Liberal stronghold held by Michael Lee from 2017 until BC United suspended its campaign in 2024, after which the NDP's Sunita Dhir narrowly won the seat by 419 votes over the Conservatives. Federally, it was within Vancouver South, held by Liberal Harjit Sajjan from 2015 until his retirement.

Municipal Issues

The Marpole Community Plan, approved in 2014, permitted densification with mixed-use towers of 4 to 12 storeys and projected 30,000 additional residents by 2050. A key condition was a promised 10-acre waterfront park along the Fraser River to address Marpole's longstanding park deficiency. By 2022, the waterfront park was effectively dead — TransLink had developed the entire Fraser River frontage west of the Canada Line's North Arm Bridge for a transit centre, and council's 2021 Marine Landing Policy Updates had dropped the waterfront park requirement. The broken promise was a source of significant local frustration. Meanwhile, Marine Drive station had catalyzed major transit-oriented development, including Marine Gateway with towers reaching 35 storeys, transforming the streetscape around the station area.

The Heather Street modular housing controversy remained a raw memory in the neighbourhood. In late 2017, Mayor Gregor Robertson announced plans for 78 modular homes for homeless residents at 7430-7460 Heather Street, near three schools. Residents formed the Caring Citizens of Vancouver Society and staged protests to physically block construction; the city obtained a BC Supreme Court injunction in December 2017 to prevent blockades. The 78-unit complex opened in February 2018, designed for people over 45 with mobility issues or chronic disease. A year later, CTV News reported that community fears had proven largely unfounded, and the Supreme Court of Canada rejected the residents' appeal in 2019. But the episode — and the perception that the city had imposed the project without adequate community consultation — reinforced both public safety anxieties and scepticism toward top-down housing decisions that ABC's platform channelled effectively in 2022.

Before World War II, Marpole was home to almost sixty Japanese-Canadian households, including the families of environmentalist David Suzuki, who grew up behind his family's dry-cleaning shop on Selkirk Street, and author Joy Kogawa, whose childhood home is now listed on the Vancouver Heritage Register. The community was forcibly removed under the War Measures Act in 1942. The neighbourhood's history as an immigrant landing point continues — the large Chinese-Canadian population made anti-Asian hate crime a potent local issue, and Sim's identity as the first Chinese-Canadian elected mayor carried particular weight.