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Vaughn Palmer: The flamboyant top realtor brought down Premier Bill Vander Zalm and dogged him for years
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VICTORIA — No one who met Faye Leung could ever forget her. Or her relentless, high-pitched voice. Or her flamboyant collection of hats.
Leung, who died Nov. 1 aged 92, was one of those incredible characters who crop up on the B.C. political scene from time to time. The kind you could not make up, and fortunately there is no need to do so.
She was a star realtor, a pillar of the Chinese Canadian community, a doer of good works. Her life was well documented in It Ain’t Over Until Faye Leung the Hat Lady Sings, by Vancouver writer Chris Best.
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Leung was also a woman with a mission, one that helped bring down another unforgettable character, B.C. Premier Bill Vander Zalm.
While serving as premier in the late 1980s, Vander Zalm lived in a castle in the midst of his Fantasy Garden World, a theme park stocked with religious statues and circled by a miniature train.
Vander Zalm’s sale of the property to Taiwanese billionaire Tan Yu in 1990 sparked a showdown with Leung. She was the go-between on the deal and later complained that she’d been denied a commission on the proceeds.
“Tan Yu got a good deal, you got a good deal, everybody got a good deal, but I got the bum rap,” she charged in one exchange with Vander Zalm, the tape of which she later made available to reporters.
As details of the sale emerged through leaks and in court, there were questions about whether the premier had mixed public and private business in his dealings with the billionaire.
To clear the air — and believing he had done nothing wrong — Vander Zalm commissioned an investigation by Ted Hughes, then a former B.C. attorney general and future conflict-of-interest commissioner.
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Hughes discovered that when the sale of Fantasy Garden World closed at the Bayshore Hotel in Vancouver on the night of Aug, 3, 1990, Tan Yu handed Vander Zalm $20,000 U.S. in $100 bills for “safe keeping.”
Reportedly the cash was in a “brown paper bag,” though in later court testimony, that was corrected to “a brown envelope.”
The cash transaction was telling because Hughes learned about it from Leung. Vander Zalm neglected to mention the $20,000 handover during his initial testimony. There’s a full account of the affair in the book The Mighty Hughes by my former Vancouver Sun colleague, Craig McInnes.
The Hughes report, released on April 2, 1991, found Vander Zalm had violated his own conflict of interest guidelines. He had been less than forthright and deliberately withheld information.
Leung’s revelation about the $20,000 figured prominently in the findings. Hughes wrote that a “reasonably well-informed person could properly conclude” that Vander Zalm “might appear to be compromised, given the bizarre circumstances in which the money was given to the premier and the lack of any reasonable explanation” for the handover.
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Found guilty by his own hand-picked judge — and under extraordinary pressure from his own caucus and cabinet — Vander Zalm resigned.
“I must live by the guidelines which I initiated,” he said. “There is only one appropriate course of action. I am prepared to resign now to ensure an orderly transition.”
The Vander Zalm-Leung rivalry continued to play out over the years. From time to time and in various forums, she would claim that he still owed her more than $1 million. He generally tried to avoid her.
The Hat Lady book records one memorable face to face meeting between the two at a 1998 memorial service for Emery Barnes, the longtime NDP MLA and a much-loved former Speaker of the legislature.
Leung to Vander Zalm: “I am asking you for our money.”
Vander Zalm turned his back on her.
Leung: “Turning your back on me doesn’t solve the matter.”
Vander Zalm: “Shut up. Let me say something.”
Leung: “I will not shut up. I have shut up long enough. “
Vander Zalm: “You talk too much. You caused a lot of people grief.”
Leung: “You are the one who caused so much grief to everybody.”
There’s no record of Vander Zalm ever conceding to her claim nor of Leung collecting the money that she thought she was owed.
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Still, there were other satisfactions in her long life.
“Faye Leung is a force of nature,” wrote her friend Peter C. Newman, the historian and journalist, in his introduction to the Hat Lady book.
“She will forever be known as the ‘little hat lady’ who brought down a devil-may-care provincial premier.”
Leung was forever popping up at public events and she sought out the reporters who covered her during the battle with Vander Zalm.
When I saw her at an event a few years ago, she told me, “I can’t wait to tell my husband Dean because he is a big fan of your writing.”
An old Socred, overhearing the comment, interrupted to ask Leung, as politely as he could, if Dean had not died some years earlier.
“Yes,” she replied. “He is in heaven. I talk to him every day.”
Here’s hoping Faye and Dean had a happy reunion this past week.
vpalmer@postmedia.com
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