Davies, Libby. Outside In: a Political Memoir. Toronto: Between The Lines, 2019. 320 pages. 9781771134453 (pbk) $26.95

Here in this Trumpish era of self-glorification, people measure their value by Facebook followers. Many persuade themselves they are progressive by advertising their moral superiority in tweets—as if that constitutes a social action.

Libby Davies is from a different era. Never mind that she can now be viewed as Canada’s first openly lesbian MP. From age nineteen onward, inspired by politicians Harry Rankin and Bruce Eriksen—with whom she later had a son—Davies worked tirelessly as a city councillor for Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, running for mayor in 1993.

In Outside In: A Political Memoir (Between the Lines $26,95), she says her biggest challenge as an MP, serving as Jack Layton’s House leader, was always maintaining her stalwart activism within her community, working with the likes of Downtown Eastside poet/activist Bud Osborn to help establish the Insite safe injection site way back in 2003.
As a city councillor from 1982 to 1993, and as an NDP MP for Vancouver East from 1997 to 2015, Davies rolled up her sleeves, talked to people face-to-face, and did stuff, with perseverance and integrity and no-bullshit idealism, non-stop. Libby Davies never made herself into the story—not until she retired. 978-1-77113-445-3