Philip Owen, former Vancouver mayor who championed harm reduction, dies 'peacefully'
Former mayor of Vancouver Philip Walter Owen died Thursday night at the age of 88.
Owen was mayor for three terms, having served from 1993 to 2002 as a member of the right-of-centre Non-Partisan Association.
In a statement, Owen’s family said he had been living at Point Grey Private Hospital in Vancouver for three years and passed away peacefully from complications related to Parkinson’s disease.
Under Owen’s leadership, the city began to favour less-punitive methods of managing drug use, choosing to see it as more of a public health issue than a criminal one. After hearing the calls of activists, drug users, and researchers, Owen championed the Four Pillars Drug Strategy, an approach to drug use and addiction that emphasizes prevention, treatment, enforcement, and harm reduction.
Owen’s approach to drug users was at odds with many of his colleagues and his political party. In 2002, the NPA selected a different person to run as mayoral candidate in the city’s municipal election. That candidate, Jennifer Clarke, lost to COPE’s Larry Campbell, ending 16 years of NPA control of the mayor’s office.
The policies passed under Owen enabled the creation of Insite, North America’s first legal safe injection site for intravenous drug users, which opened in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in 2003.
In a statement on Owen’s passing, current Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart spoke to Owen’s collaborative approach.
“Though a challenging idea at the time, Mayor Owen learned from talking with those living with addiction that harm reduction was the only way to address the overdose crisis of the mid-1990s and early 2000s,” Stewart said.
“(Owen) worked side-by-side with grassroots Downtown Eastside leaders to push for change,” he said.
In January 2021, the Philip Owen Professorship in Addiction Medicine at the University of British Columbia was established to honour his legacy.
Owen is survived by his wife of 63 years, Brita, their children, Lise Owen Struthers, Christian Owen, Andrea Owen, and his many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
The family says that funeral and memorial details will follow in the days ahead.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Quebec nurse had to clean up after husband's death in Montreal hospital
On a night she should have been mourning, a nurse from Quebec's Laurentians region says she was forced to clean up her husband after he died at a hospital in Montreal.
Cuban government apologizes to Montreal-area family after delivering wrong body
Cuba's foreign affairs minister has apologized to a Montreal-area family after they were sent the wrong body following the death of a loved one.
What is changing about Canada's capital gains tax and how does it impact me?
The federal government's proposed change to capital gains taxation is expected to increase taxes on investments and mainly affect wealthy Canadians and businesses. Here's what you need to know about the move.
'Anything to win': Trudeau says as Poilievre defends meeting protesters
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is accusing Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre of welcoming 'the support of conspiracy theorists and extremists,' after the Conservative leader was photographed meeting with protesters, which his office has defended.
Northern Ont. lawyer who abandoned clients in child protection cases disbarred
A North Bay, Ont., lawyer who abandoned 15 clients – many of them child protection cases – has lost his licence to practise law.
Boeing's financial woes continue, while families of crash victims urge U.S. to prosecute the company
Boeing said Wednesday that it lost US$355 million on falling revenue in the first quarter, another sign of the crisis gripping the aircraft manufacturer as it faces increasing scrutiny over the safety of its planes and accusations of shoddy work from a growing number of whistleblowers.
Bank of Canada officials split on when to start cutting interest rates
Members of the Bank of Canada's governing council were split on how long the central bank should wait before it starts cutting interest rates when they met earlier this month.
Fair in Ontario, flurries in Labrador: Weather systems make for an erratic spring
"It's a bit of a complicated pattern; we've got a lot going on," said Jennifer Smith of the Meteorological Service of Canada in an interview with CTVNews.ca on Wednesday. "[As is] typical with weather, all of these things are related."
Police tangle with students in Texas and California as wave of campus protest against Gaza war grows
Police tangled with student demonstrators in Texas and California while new encampments sprouted Wednesday at Harvard and other colleges as school leaders sought ways to defuse a growing wave of pro-Palestinian protests.