Solomon Yi-Kieran, Vancouver’s new city councillor, is bounding down the Arbutus Greenway, seeking out a picnic bench for us to chat.
They’re over six feet tall, though, with long strides and a youthful energy that defines both their walking pace as well as their campaign style. I struggle to keep up. At 21 years old, Yi-Kieran has a vibrant enthusiasm that can be hard to match.
It’s also part of how Yi-Kieran has been elected as the youngest city councillor in Vancouver history. It’s immediately clear, as we pace down the Greenway, that they’re driven to make actual change for the people of this city, dealing specifically with the affordability crisis.
“It’s true for people in their 30s, 40s and 50s — so many people are truly scared about whether they’ll be able to stay in this city, especially people who’ve lived here for years,” they say.
“We have to propose something better than the state we’re in, and it can’t just be proposing to manage the crisis. It has to be genuine.”
Not only is Yi-Kieran the city’s youngest councillor — breaking a record held by Jenny Kwan, who was 26 when she was first elected to council in 1993 — but they’re the first non-binary person to serve as well. They’re also still an active university student, in their fourth year at the University of British Columbia (UBC).
They were swept into power in the latest municipal election, along with every other COPE candidate, including Sean Orr, who won a 2025 by-election.
“We ran a campaign focused on people’s material concerns, on anxieties that haven’t been addressed over decades of civic government, and we ran with a record of actually fighting on these things,” Yi-Kieran says.
Their foray into civic politics began in 2025 when they campaigned to extend the SkyTrain Millennium Line to UBC while they served as VP External at the UBC Alma Mater Society (AMS). The campaign helped put the long-stalled extension back into public discourse, and Coun. Orr and Lucy Maloney tabled a motion, written in consultation with Yi-Kieran, asking Mayor Ken Sim to press the premier and the prime minister for a timeline and for funding.
“I kind of thought they were a young keener urbanist type, focused on one issue,” Orr says of his first meeting with Yi-Kieran to discuss the SkyTrain extension.
“I was blown away by how much they knew about Vancouver’s history. I was like, whoa! It was really interesting to see how much they understood the systems and mechanisms behind [how Vancouver politics operate]. It wasn’t just, ‘I want to bring the SkyTrain to UBC.’ It was much more of an understanding of city-building and the responsibilities around that.”
After that meeting, Orr suggested Yi-Kieran attend the COPE AGM to collect signatures for the petition.
“I instantly fell in love with it,” Yi-Kieran says. “I joined the party mid-meeting.”
Born to a progressive family, Yi-Kieran says they’ve always been politically oriented, and volunteered on election campaigns as a high schooler in Victoria. They grew up in an era dominated by Donald Trump and watching the progressive left, including Bernie Sanders in 2016, lose repeatedly.
“It’s not a very politically optimistic time to come of age,” they say.
“I’ve definitely felt that hopelessness and cynicism a lot. I think it’s a common experience for young people in this city: Will I ever find the job I want? Will I ever find a place I can actually rent and stay in? Will I ever be able to start a family here, or a career here?”
At that COPE AGM, they found a community that was rallying to fight for that change at the grassroots level. Getting involved, Yi-Kieran says, helped fight their own disillusionment.
“Solomon is someone with strong convictions,” says Gagan Parmar, who was elected AMS VP Finance at the same time Yi-Kieran became VP External.
“It’s very easy to come into the role [at the AMS] and do only what’s required. The rest is on the individual. Solomon always stood by the principles they ran on. The SkyTrain to UBC was a big one, and it faced a lot of challenges, but they saw it through.”
Yi-Kieran approached Orr after the AMS’s campaign push ended, proposing to run for city council as a COPE candidate. The SkyTrain experience taught them that to really see an idea through, from campaign to implementation in the real world, required effort at the municipal level.
“You need a city government to push for this,” they say. “I realized it couldn’t keep falling by the wayside, relying on student unions and activists to bring it forward.”
But it wasn’t just about the SkyTrain. Yi-Kieran’s father moved to Vancouver in the mid-1980s, when rent was affordable and he could fund his entire education — plus concert tickets and weekend trips away — while working at the PNE.
Now, they say, young people are working two jobs and can barely afford food and rent. Yi-Kieran saw themselves as the next step in helping COPE engage with “people in their 20s who don’t feel a sense of belonging or security, who don’t feel like they can stay here, and who don’t feel like any level of government is looking out for them.”
“It can feel very powerless when you’re young and you’re seeing the world fall apart around you and so many things backsliding,” Yi-Kieran says. So they wanted to do something about it.
Orr, meanwhile, says he tried to talk Yi-Kieran out of running.
“I was like, ‘You’re young, there’s no rush. Finish school,’” Orr says. “COPE wasn’t the machine that we are now. It was almost a protective thing. I didn’t know if we’d be able to recreate the successes we had in the by-election.”
But he says Yi-Kieran was undeterred, and ended up campaigning with an energy and conviction he’d never seen before.
“They didn’t let off the gas the entire campaign,” Orr says. “We’d be walking down Commercial Drive and they’d be running into cafés talking to everyone. I wouldn’t even do that.
“I’d say, ‘I’m going to take some time off today,’ and Solomon would be like, ‘I’m knocking on 300 doors.’”
Election night was a monumental win for Vancouver’s progressive left, which included Pete Fry defeating Ken Sim for mayor. It was an especially big night for COPE: In four years, COPE went from a single school board trustee to all 12 of its candidates elected across three boards. Orr posted the highest vote share of any Vancouver councillor ever, beating Ken Sim’s total mayoral vote.
“For so many people in that room [on election night], it was the culmination of years of organizing and pouring so much effort into this. It was an optimistic moment, when there are very few optimistic moments in politics,” Yi-Kieran says.
Yi-Kieran caught flak on social media for their election-night speech, which denounced “the cruel austerity of capitalism” and stated “we will win” the class war.
Yi-Kieran shrugs the controversy off.
“I’m obviously going to try to prove that I can be pragmatic on city council. But it's also true that we’re a socialist party, and we won a strong mandate as a socialist party,” they say.
“Yes, I’m 21, but the way that manifests, among everything else, is looking out for the interests of younger Vancouverites, people in their 20s, and how that intersects with housing and transit. It isn’t just about being a loud, radical youth organizer.”
