I was assigned my final Globe story — I did not pitch it — last Monday, on October 22. It was a follow to the Vancouver civic election, which had seen the city vote in a nearly all-white council. The assignment came after the bureau’s morning meeting in which the discussion of the new council centred heavily, if not entirely, on its ethnic makeup. The story folder and headline later emailed to me by the assistant editor confirmed this view. Another colleague kindly sent me the names of some people of colour to potentially interview.

I was given five-plus hours to write the story and I set out to speak with some of the people of colour who were on party slates but picked up thousands fewer votes than their white colleagues. The conversations were thoughtful and heartfelt. We discussed their pride at seeing a progressive council but their disappointment in not being on it. We discussed some of the racism they had endured either during the campaign or in the last few years, as the Vancouver area has been consumed by talk of foreign real-estate buyers and money laundering. In one interview we discussed the challenge of being seen as truly Canadian when your skin is not white.

I notified the bureau chief when the interviews were complete and said I was about to begin writing, as there was less than 90 minutes to deadline. The bureau chief soon walked over to my desk with a message: I was to focus less on the issue of race and to focus more on the fact eight of the 10 elected councillors were women. She said this had been a focus of the bureau’s morning meeting (it had not). The bureau chief had also emailed me a second story folder, this one with a headline mentioning only the women councillors.

I had told the bureau chief I would, of course, mention the electing of the eight women. How could I not? How could a story about who didn’t make it to council not mention high up who did? But the public discussion seemed to centre on the fact a city in which 45 per cent of people are of Asian descent did not have a single such person on council. It seemed more a story of who was not represented than who was. I felt we were making a choice that would undercut the voices of people of colour. This, to me, did not seem a story of triumph.

Shortly after the conversation at my desk ended I walked into the bureau chief’s office. I said I did not agree with what she had said. I felt it was a mistake.

She was not receptive. The bureau chief told me what I thought did not matter. The newsroom, she said, was “not a democracy.”

And on those two points, I realized, she was right.