‘It’s been the highlight of my life’: Ken Sim reflects on his run as Vancouver mayor

I also want to congratulate everyone who was elected tonight, look it's regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, putting your name in the hat and doing the work and being under the scrutiny and being away from your family, it's a long haul, it's a tough haul and so for everyone who ran and for everyone who was elected, my hat goes off to them. Public service is a privilege and I hope every person that was elected tonight remembers the enormous responsibility that comes with earning the trust from Vancouver residents because at the end of the day we all want Vancouver to succeed. I do want to thank my family so I can't see you anywhere here but I know they're here by the way that wasn't a joke that's a they bailed on me what's going on uh no um but uh to tina and uh and the boys thank you it's it's been a journey you know there there were a lot of times uh i felt like i wasn't a very good dad it's kind of ironic the reason i ran was because we wanted tina and i we we wanted to create a place where our kids could call home and wanted to call home and in this role you know there are a lot of times you know I wasn't there and wasn't present to the conversations and you know for that boys I totally apologize I love you and you're going to see a lot more of dad over the next little while I hope you like that you know public life does ask a lot of the people that are closest to us so anyways i'm pretty i'm pretty grateful for that to our incredible candidates our team members our volunteers our supporters i want to say something directly to each and every one of you i'm so damn proud of you and every single one of you you showed up you knocked on doors you stood in the rain you made the calls you spent time away from your families you gave us your energy and more importantly you gave us your heart and you know because you truly believed in the mission that we were on and no election result can take that away from you and so obviously tonight voters wanted to go in a different direction not just in the mayor's office but with Council Park and school board as well and I think it's you know it's important that we acknowledge that although tonight marks the end of my time as mayor actually that's not true I think I have a couple more weeks left so yeah all right let's make some changes now we got two weeks left yeah yeah we have to get back to work tomorrow morning guys we only have two weeks oh there's a council meeting okay it's gonna be a long council meeting we got a lot of work to do anyways I just want to say thank you that being uh elected to the office of mayor you know it's been the highlight of uh my life and i know on my my deathbed i know there will be a lot of other adventures out there i can tell you i will look at this uh sorry i missed that oh yes wendy's yes uh that's close second let me tell you um but uh this is uh you know when i'm on my deathbed i'll look back at this time and it's probably the most meaningful thing i've been involved uh with and uh with that look um thank you again and uh you know we'll we'll see you out on the street somewhere i'm sure