Beyond the Rhetoric

Wow, talk about a blast from the past. A good friend of mine, Joseph Planta, recently posted up some pictures in his Facebook account. But these aren’t recent snapshots. They date all the way back to February 2000 during my senior year at Tupper Secondary (high school) in Vancouver. A group of students, myself included, applied for accreditation to attend the NDP leadership convention. At the time, the provincial political party was looking for a new leader and some of the front-runners included Gordon Wilson, Corky Evans, and eventual winner Ujjal Dosanjh.

The plan was to go around and soak in the political convention, listen to the debates, and eventually produce a report that we could send out to the students back at our high school. We did the first two parts, and I wrote my article for publication, but the report unfortunately never came to be. It’s a shame, because my article was pretty kick ass, especially considering that I was only 17 and had no political knowledge whatsoever (Joseph is pretty savvy, however). While there, I had the opportunity to shake hands and chat with such local figures as Mike Harcourt, Corky Evans, and Shane Foxman.

In any case, if you’re wondering what Michael Kwan looked like in 2000, wonder no longer, because here I am.

From left to right are Michael Kwan (that’s me), Joseph Planta, Mi-Jung Lee (of CTV), Maneesh Puri, and Brian Nguyen. The awesome thing is that all of us, including Mi-Jung, are Tupper alumni. Well, that’s assuming that Brian graduated.

Filed under Stuff.