The Sullivan Show

Sam Sullivan's election as mayor capped a remarkable story of personal achievement. But one year into office, his performance has left many reviewers scratching their heads.

By Steve Burgess

SOMETIMES, SAM SULLIVAN IS CAPABLE OF MOVING QUITE FAST. On this late summer afternoon, for example, he’s sailing along in a little skiff that holds one comfortably and two in a pinch, steering the boat out towards the giant freighters that idle in Burrard Inlet. The mayor is zipped into a foam jumper described as a “Sam suit” by the staff at Jericho Sailing Centre’s Disabled Sailing Association. Underneath the foam, he’s wearing a business suit. “It’s exhilarating,” Sullivan says, nudging the joystick that swings the sails about to catch the breeze, directing the little craft through the waters off Jericho Beach. “On the water I have the same mobility as anyone else.”

Speed can be dangerous, too. A few weeks earlier, at the Granville Island ferry ramp, he almost set sail on a farewell cruise. “The ramp has about a 30-degree angle,” Sullivan says. “Lynn told me not to do it. But I tilted the seat back as far as it would go and went ahead.” Moments later Sullivan’s 400-pound, high-tech wheelchair was a one-car runaway train. Limbs flailing, he lost control as his partner looked on in helpless alarm. “My groceries were flying,” Sullivan recalls. “I watched the pilings rush past. I thought to myself, ‘I worked so hard to get that 6-5 majority, and here it goes.’”

Facing possible death, Sam Sullivan sees his council majority flash before his eyes: the mayor is clearly a wonk’s wonk. Unless you’re inclined to a more cynical view. Perhaps a man whose final thoughts on a trial-run demise were of his political enemies is more properly described as vindictive. Or perhaps he’s simply a man who knows how to craft a dramatic tale for a reporter.

Politics is about definition. The trick is to define yourself before your opponents do; and, conversely, to define your opponents before they succeed in defining themselves. Sam Sullivan? A year into his first term as mayor, the guy’s a one-man dictionary. Open the book and pick a definition. His surprise victory last December was the crescendo of a series of unexpected triumphs that began with the defeat of the ward system in a civic referendum and continued with the upset of Christy Clark for the NPA nomination. Through it all, friends, foes and observers have painted Sullivan portraits of bewildering variety.

The mayor’s Yaletown condo merely adds to the array. When Sullivan sits in his home office, looking south across False Creek, he likes to put his slender legs up on the desk, shifting them from time to time. Technically a quadriplegic, he has significant use of his arms, wielding his hands like blunt instruments to nudge and sometimes lightly grasp. On his desk is a folder marked “Burgess Shale.” Sullivan and fellow quadriplegic/politician Steven Fletcher, the Conservative MP for Charleswood-St. James-Assiniboia, undertook an assisted journey up perilously steep terrain to visit North America’s most significant fossil cache. It was a trip fairly bristling with definition—Sam the Student, Sam the Adventurer, Sam the Inspiration, ascendant.
Sam the Wonk is here, too. Throughout the condo, drawers and drawers are filled with videocassettes, every one of them educational or instructional—finance, accounting, the great composers, Renaissance masters, physics. Not a Hollywood blockbuster or a Werner Herzog documentary anywhere. He is a man who takes a book to a movie theatre—“in case I get bored,” he admits.

“That’s okay,” laughs his partner. “I have other interests.”

By his own account, Sullivan has carried a torch for Lynn Zanatta all the way back to East Van, where they grew up, he the son of an auto parts supplier and she the daughter of a truck painter. When Sam was nine and she was 10, “I adored her,” he says. “She tolerated me. I had to learn to skip rope. I had to make myself useful.”

Dark-haired, pretty and unflappable, she’s a catch. But it was no sure thing. Both Sullivan and Zanatta had failed marriages behind them before they re-connected in the late-’90s. The rest was a matter of unrelenting persistence—Sam Sullivan’s strong suit.

The skiff bears to port as Sullivan adjusts the sails, hunting breeze. “We designed these sailboats so the TABs would have to stay near the back,” Sullivan says. “TAB” is an acronym for Temporarily Able-Bodied, a wry nickname used by the disabled for those lucky enough to proceed from cradle to grave with the use of all their limbs. “If the TABs are near the controls, they tend to want to help you out with them. We wanted to prevent that.”

TABs have their uses, though. The Disabled Sailing Association, which Sullivan started in 1989, depends on its staff to hoist sailors into boats, set up the gear and rigging, launch the boats and monitor them from inflatable Zodiacs. To board, Sullivan had been attached to a hoist and lifted out of his chair, like livestock being loaded onto a cargo ship. “One thing you learn is to let go of your dignity,” he’d grinned, when the hoist positioned him over the cockpit. “It’s not useful.”

Sullivan still has a sunburn from his journey up to the Burgess Shale. Employing the TrailRider, a single-wheel conveyance he helped design, and accompanied by his “Sherpas”—trail guides and bearers who carried him up the slopes—Sullivan was able to complete the climb. (Fletcher, unfortunately, developed TAB trouble—one of his helpers had back problems.) The trip was captured on film, some of which showed up on BCTV. Definitely inspirational. Great PR, too.

Here on the water, it’s tempting to collect more evidence of Sam the Wonk—who the hell goes sailing in a business suit? But for Sullivan, getting dressed is a lengthy and laborious process, a practiced dance of tug, slip and roll. A quick change into sailing togs is not an option. He’s squeezing this sail in between public appearances and an evening meeting of the NPA board. For Sullivan, politics and sailing have always gone hand in hand. “Everything I know about politics,” he says, “I learned at the Disabled Sailing Association.”

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