At 74, Darlene Marzari is a dynamo: attractive, vivacious and afire with activities of all sorts. Heads turn when she enters a room because she walks fast, laughs a lot, wears classy, colourful clothes and exudes a cheerful energy.
From her earliest years, Darlene has welcomed new challenges. A runway model at 16, she graduated with a degree from the University of Toronto at 20. Two years later, she completed a social work diploma from the London School of Economics and went on to a distinguished career as a community development worker and social planner. In 1972, she was elected “alderman” in Vancouver; in 1986 she became MLA for Point Grey and in the election after that she became Minister of Tourism and Culture and then Minister of Municipal Affairs for BC.
Darlene brushes off her distinguished political career by claiming to have been at the right place at the right time.
“I’ve been very lucky,” she says. “It was a miracle to be elected to Vancouver City Council in that Golden Age when Art Phillips was Mayor, Dave Barrett was in Victoria, and Pierre Trudeau was in Ottawa!”
After leaving politics, Darlene took up a new career as co-founder of the Vancouver toy store Kaboodles. Twice married and twice widowed, she has a daughter, a stepson, two sons, and four grandchildren. She continues to live in her long-term home in Point Grey, a busy meeting place for family and friends. She’s excited to have now moved down to the basement suite.
“We call it the Garden Level Suite, although my granddaughter Rosie calls it ‘the Iris Penthouse.’” Her two sons occupy the upper floors with the agreement that Darlene can take over the main floor “mother of all kitchens” on demand!
When I ask what her work is these days she says, “I don’t work! I have fun, avoid stress, and look after my health.”
It’s true that health is a priority for Darlene – Aquafit classes at the aquatic centre almost every day, walking and cycling around the waterfront – but her definition of not working is different from most. Since her retirement from public office, Darlene has served on many boards and committees including: Chair of Georgia Basin Network; Honorary Director of the Big Sisters Society of BC; Director of the Vancouver Art Gallery; Elected Member of the UBC Alumni Association; and Member of the Vancouver Folk Festival Society Board.
She still serves on the Board of Headlines Theatre because “It’s important and truthful theatre that gets inside people’s heads and changes their thinking.” She’s enthusiastic about the Columbia Institute, an agency that provides training and support for school trustees and city counsellors and is still Chair of the Civic Governance Advisory Group.
Although she claims not to be active politically these days, Darlene remains passionate and outspoken about social justice issues.
“It saddens me that we have settled for so little when there’s so much to be done.”
She’s concerned about the disproportionate number of people with mental health issues who end up in jail. She’s outraged by the lack of a universally accessible day care system. She’s frustrated that there is “a growing Canadian sentiment that politics is not working for us.” But, she says, “Anger is an under-rated emotion. With intelligent anger, you can reach inside and come up fighting.”
“Governing at the local level is where you can make a huge difference, so I want to encourage young women to become involved in local politics.” she says. “I especially like mentoring political hopefuls at my breakfast table.”
Does she adhere to that old motto that we must think global and act local? “Of course! How else can you get out of bed in the morning?”
Over the last several years, Darlene has been increasingly active as an artist and says a day of painting in the garden is an ideal way to spend time. She’s a prolific artist, producing still lifes and landscapes in watercolours and acrylic, as well as oils and collage techniques.
Recently, in the Artist in Our Midst’s exhibition at Vancouver’s Roundhouse, she had two works on display: an evocative oil painting called “River Boats in St. Petersburg” alongside “Poem by Yeats,” a quixotic collage based on Yeats’ poem “I Made My Song a Coat.”
At the 2017 West of Main Art Walk, she exhibited many oils and watercolours, including a large oil painting called “Grilled Cheese on a Saturday.” The titles testify to the range of her interests.
“After I left politics in 1996, I turned to painting, along with a few other things to bring me back to basics; not that I was returning to an old passion, simply that the local community centre had a watercolour class and I jumped at it as if this is what I should have been doing years earlier. It was.”
“I have painted with the Vancouver Art Guild before it knew it was a guild. Fran Alley taught art at the community centre before she got a day job and I was one of the lucky number that she couldn’t avoid every Wednesday afternoon in the North Room at the Jericho Building we call home.”
“I like splashing colours, and thanks to Fran, I now know a little about how to splash. I’m a social painter and need the group around me, laughing, gossiping, critiquing each others’ work, to do anything remotely interesting.”
“I do still lifes and landscapes in watercolour and acrylic and conduct a tiny flirtation with oils at my cabin which is, to say the least, well ventilated. People tell me I am prolific, and I take that as a compliment. My pleasure is in playing with techniques and paints and losing time with a canvas until someone tells me ‘it’s done.’ The Guild is such a wonderful group to lose time with!”
In addition to artistic and volunteer activities, Darlene devotes time to her friends. When MP Margaret Mitchell was failing for some time before her recent death, Darlene was part of her care team. Her dinner party group has been dining and caring for each other for 45 years, and her home is always open to friends and family who pass through to chat, eat meals, and spend the night or the week. When I tell her I have a new book coming out, she instantly responds, “Great! I’ll organize a launch at my place!”
What does she hope for in the years ahead? “More of the same! Each day is a gift. I just want to keep my body in shape and my mind alive.”
And, clearly, she’s doing it! She treks up to Sonora Island for holidays at the dilapidated “heritage” cottage she shares with family and friends, spends a month each year on a beach in Mexico, and remains ready to respond to any new adventure that comes her way.
When asked about her key concerns, she laughs and speaks of technological challenges. “I don’t know how to return online forms to senders and I can’t sort out my many files of digital photographs. I’ll be found one day collapsed over my Mac because I haven’t mastered how to change a password!”
She has, however, mastered the art of being fully alive in the world, staying curious about and engaged in every passing moment and paying attention to whomever and whatever is present in it.
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