Philip Owen, who served as Vancouver’s mayor from 1993 to 2002, has died at the age of 88.
He passed away peacefully on Thursday from complications related to Parkinson’s disease, according to a family statement.
“As a family, we have always been proud of our father,” son Christian Owen said.
“He loved this city, every part of it, and you could see this in how he found the right balance, even when it came to the toughest issues. He was a gentleman and a devoted Vancouverite, right to the end.”
Owen was first elected to the Vancouver Park Board in 1978. In 1986, he was elected to city council where he served for seven years before becoming mayor.
As mayor, Owen championed the Four Pillars Drug Strategy, which focused on prevention, harm reduction, treatment and enforcement.
“He didn’t do the easy thing. He did what was right,” Dean Wilson of the BC Centre on Substance Use told Global News earlier this year.
Owen also helped establish Insite, North America’s first supervised injection site.
He was made a member of the Order of Canada in 2008.
— with files from The Canadian Press