By Andrea Vacl
Former city council member and current Member of Parliament Olivia Chow announced today at Ryerson that she is still deciding whether she will be running for mayor.
Chow received a round of supportive applause after visiting practitioner Cathy Crowe mentioned that members of the audience were tweeting about the talk with the hash tag “#Pleaserun4mayor.”
Olivia Chow was speaking at Ryerson to promote her new book, a memoir entitled “My Journey.”
The George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre was packed with onlookers who listened as Chow answered questions from a panel mostly of students.
Among them was Matthew Jonah, a politics and governance student.
“Very compelling read, and what amazed me was it was how personal it was. She doesn’t tread lightly around ideas of domestic violence and discrimination and what it means to make meaningful change,” said Jonah, who praised the books personal content and ability to inspire change in students and youth.
“I think its important to share stories where there is grieving or overcoming adversities and the importance of public service and how wonderful love can be,” Chow said when explaining what motivated her to write the memoir.
Throughout the panel discussion Chow discussed her views on the power of people coming together and the need for more collaboration and change in politics and society. She stressed the need to provide affordable housing, effective mental health treatment, integrated transit systems and support for new immigrants.
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