Scores of people gathered outside the Vancouver Convention Centre on Wednesday evening to mark the first anniversary of former NDP leader Jack Layton’s death and celebrate the life of the man who led his party to official opposition status for the first time in its 50-year history…Earlier in the day, Vancouver East MP Libby Davies commented by phone from the larger-scale memorial outside Toronto city hall, where Layton had his political roots as a city councillor in the 1980s. “The compassion and the care that he had for people really came through in his politics and the way he worked with people,” she said over the strains of a memorial concert. “I really feel that he was like a mentor and a guide to us, to MPs and to Canadians generally.” Davies sat next to Layton in parliament for eight years as NDP house leader and then deputy leader.