Nuanced. - 65. Henry Braun: Mayor of Abbotsford, Businessman & Community Leader

Episode Date: July 18, 2022

Henry Braun is a Canadian politician and businessman. He is the current mayor of Abbotsford, British Columbia. In this interview, Aaron Pete and Henry Braun discuss his family, entrepreneurship, culture, faith, and education. The two also talk about Mayor Braun's work during the 2022 Fraser Valley floods.Braun was born in Paraguay. His parents were Russian Mennonite refugees from the Mennonite colonies of southern Ukraine who fled to Paraguay during World War II. Before entering politics, Braun was a rancher and the CEO Pacific Northern Rail Contractors Corp.Send us a textSupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Well, my name is Henry Braun. I'm the mayor of the city of Abbotsford, and I was born in South America in a country called Paraguay, in the Chaco, which the literal translation of that word is Greenhill. And I don't remember anything, but my parents tell me it has an appropriate name. I came to Abbotsford in September, 1953, and I've lived there for the last 69 years. Incredible. I'd like to start there because I think you have a really inspirational upbringing. It sounds like your family was incredibly motivational and kind of inspired a lot of your journey. Can you tell us about I was doing some research?

It looks like your family faced a lot of adversity coming to Canada. and I think we can get lost in conversations about what immigration looks like. But for your family, I think it's an incredible story. Would you mind starting there and sharing what your family had to go through to come to Canada? Sure. I'm happy to do that. Actually, I'm just about finished writing a book about that whole story. Not about me, but about my parents and their journey.

They were refugees from the southern Ukraine during World War II, fled as 13-year-olds. Five years later, they ended up in. refugee camp in what is today, Germany, ended up on a ship that took them to Paraguay. They met on that ship as 17-year-olds, married in Paraguay a couple of years later. I was born there. I have a brother born there. But they lost everything already through the revolution, actually. Sorry, the revolution of what? The Russian Revolution in the early 1900s. My mother's side of the family was fairly well off, but the communists. took everything away, including parents.

Both of my grandfathers were taken. My mother's in 1938, the Stalin Spurges. And as an eight-year-old, she remembers she wanted protein. Her and her little older brother, who was 12, would go catch mice, field mice, and that's what they had for dinner, because they had nothing, absolutely nothing. So, of course, as refugees, they had nothing but the clothes on their backs, and when they came to Paraguay, they had absolutely nothing. They were dumped off in the middle of nowhere. They weren't dumped off, but they went up to Paraguay River, ended up going 145 kilometers inland on a narrow-gauge railway track that had been used for logging, so the good timber was all gone.

And at the end of that, they got on a wagon with a couple of oxen and went another two, three weeks into the bush, and they were pioneers. There was nothing there where they were. So six years later, they had done better than most, my dad would say, but they didn't have enough for four one-way tickets to come to Canada. They still had to borrow a thousand dollars Canadian from my mother's sister. who was in Abbotsford and sponsored them. In those days, you could not come to the United States or Canada unless you had a sponsor. And not just for a little while, for five years, you had to provide employment, housing, and a job. And if something happened in between that, zero to five years, you as a sponsor were responsible.

Things have changed quite a bit today. But that's what they came here with, two suitcases and $1,000 in debt. and worked really, really hard. I, of course, I was the oldest, so I experienced a lot of things for the first time in my family, not the least of which was being called names. I didn't speak any English. In fact, I started grade one, and I couldn't speak any English, because German is my first language, actually low German, high German is my second language,

and English is my third language. So I struggled through school not being able to understand what are they talking about. But, yeah, bullying, harassment, telling us that we were DPs, that we should go home. I didn't know what that D.P. was until later on, it was a displaced person, but it was a disparaging term. It meant we didn't belong here, go back to wherever you came from. And so that's kind of what I encountered when I came as a young. young boy to this country. Did you have that admiration at the time? Did you recognize the work that your parents were doing in order for you to come here? What was that, what were those early years

like to see the challenges your family was facing? I would say when we first arrived, I was three and a half. No, I didn't recognize that because I, first of all, I don't remember much until I was four or five, but it soon became apparent to me that my mom and dad were work, they were both working to make ends meet and to pay back their debts, some of which was still in Paraguay, the Mennonite Central Committee, or MCC, as they're known, they're in Abbotsford, while they're worldwide relief organization, they had lent money for them to come to South America, which if you left after a certain period of time, I think it was within 10 years. you actually had to pay that all back.

They didn't realize that until it got to Canada that, oh, it's not just $1,000 to my brother and sister-in-law, but we still had to pay that back. But I could see very early on, as far as back as I can remember, the work ethic of my father in particular, but my mother as well, we eventually, I have six siblings, so there was nine of us in the family, and we did whatever. I started picking berries when I was eight, nine years old. And every summer started with strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, then beans. Then it was time to go back to school. So, yeah. Really? So I recall that I think it was either your grandfather or your father also worked on

railways and was involved in that. And you ended up working for a lot of your life in that industry. Can you talk about that? Sure. Well, when we first got here, my father, or his brother-in-law had secured a job for him on a chicken farm, and the commitment was he would stay for a year, and he did, but he didn't like, he soon became acutely aware that he was not a farmer, and he did not like farming. But he had made a commitment, given his word, that he would stay for a year, and so he did. Then we ended up buying, or dad ended up buying a place at the end of Bradner, what is today, Bradner Road, very close to the border, 300 block. And the neighbor across the street

was working for Blackham Construction, which was a railway construction company. So he went over and asked him if, and he was, he spoke German. He was also a Mennonite. But he spoke English. So he says, can you ask your boss if he needs another worker? And to make a long story short, he got a job, worked his way up from a labor to a foreman to a superintendent. By 1961, he was kind of the general manager doing all of the bidding. My dad, even though he only had a grade six education, was very smart. He had an entrepreneurial spirit. That already came out when he was 13 years old working on a dairy farm in Germany during and after the war. But it didn't take him long to know what he wanted to do. And eventually, he left and they had a bit of a falling out. Of course, Alberta was just coming into its own with oil in LaDucke. And so the owner wanted to open up an office in Alberta. And my dad said, and he said, if you go and open up an office in Alberta,

I'll cut you in for part of the profit, which he did for six months. I don't remember him being gone. And, you know, I was 10. My mom was always at home, and with six other siblings, we had lots of things to do. I don't remember him being gone that long that year, but obviously he was. At the end of the year, lo and behold, once the lawyers and accountants got no disrespect to lawyers, got through with the books, there wasn't any profit to share. And so my dad was so mad. He quit, and he had a call from Vancouver Rolling Mill.

which is Western Canada Steel today in Vancouver. He said, George, I phone the office. They say, you don't work there anymore. What's going on? So he told them the story. He says, well, what are you doing? He says, nothing. I'm picking berries with my wife and the kids.

He says, if you're not doing anything, why don't you come out here? We've got a new steel contract. We need to rework our rail yard. And I'll buy a lunch and you can do a budget for the board of directors. So he says, sure. So he did. gave him a price, you know, a week later or something, just an estimate. It wasn't a bid. And a month later, he got a phone call from the same fella at the plant and said,

George, did you make a mistake? And he says, no, I don't think so. Why? Well, he says, we went out to bid in the nearest, or the lowest bid is twice what your budget is. And he said, well, I can't explain that. If I was still at my former employers, this is what I would have bid, and I would make money doing that job. Well, he says, what are you doing? He says, well, I'm still trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. In the meantime, I'm picking berries. He says, well, why'd you come over and do this job then? He says, I don't have any money to go buy tools and a pickup truck. So I guess he must have known him well enough that he says, I'll make you a deal, George, I'll advance, or the company will advance you, $5,000, which doesn't sound like much,

but in 1960, that was a lot more money than $5,000 by you today. So he says, that's enough for a pickup truck and the tools, and you know where the men are. So he says, oh, I got to think about that. So a few days later, or maybe a week later, he phoned him back and says, okay, I'll do it. And he did and bid a number of other jobs. And within a year to a year and a half, half. Most of the men that he had worked for at his former employer came over to work and he took every job, basically. And the other fellow went out of business. In the rail business, he didn't go out of business, but he had other avenues of business. And the rest is history. Well, my brothers and I bought it in 1979, took it from what was basically a Fraser

Valley B-C. company sometimes like Prince George, Colonna, Kamloops, and took it across the country and went into transit after SkyTrain actually was the first job we had for Expo 86 and then went into Calgary, opened up an office in Calgary and Gulf, Ontario, and worked across the country. And in 1999, we had an American firm that made us an offer that my two brothers and I who now own the company, thought we couldn't refuse. So make a long story short, we sold. And then my wife and I were going to do some other things, third world countries. And in the meantime, all sorts of people were trying to convince me I should run for public office. And my answer was, why would I want to do that? Fair enough. One, this is a bit of an aside. I'm just,

it doesn't feel like we make kind of commitments to people in that way anymore. It feels like we've moved a lot more towards credentials and expertise and maybe we're missing a piece of it. Like you say, your dad didn't have this formal education, but he was a smart man. I'm just interested, as we've sort of developed over time, it seems like we place more and more weight on these credentials. Like him or hate him, Elon Musk is saying he's not as interested in credentials anymore. He wants hardworking people who want to do the good job and make a difference. I'm just interested in your thoughts.

You've kind of seen this development over time. What are your thoughts on how we kind of weigh credentials in our society? Wow, now you really want to get me into trouble. Yes, I do have some thoughts, and part of it comes out of my own upbringing. I struggled through school through the first seven grades, because if you don't understand the language, it's hard to understand the concepts that teachers are trying to teach you. So every other year for the first seven grades, I passed on trial to the next.

They don't do that anymore, but in those days they did. My marks, my mother kept all of my report cards. So whenever I go to a grade five class or a grade eight class or grade 11 class, I bring my report card just to show them that I was not a great student. C minus C, once in a while a C plus. but I did get straight A's in physical education, so I was a great athlete. And anyways, that's another story. But I am, yes, I am concerned that today we seem to be more interested in the marks.

And instead of, are the students learning? And by learning, I mean, it's not just the – and you see so many – look how it's what happened. I'm sure in Canada there's examples too, but the one that comes to mind is all of the university – or so many of the university students whose parents bribe professors to get marks, good marks. And so these people, they come credentialed, but they struggle to fit in into, especially a private sector workforce. because there, you will be graded. Did you, you know, and your compensation may be tied to that grading. But in the school system that we have today, everybody's a winner and there's no, I actually think we, you know, dumb down is probably the wrong word, but I am concerned about it because

our rankings in OECD nations is not what it used to be. The Japanese and the Chinese and other countries are way ahead of us. They spend more school days as well. You know, 228, I think. I just read something recently about this. 228 compared to ours like 180 or something. They're surpassing where we once were leaders. We're way down.

And that concerns me because it has implications for not only our society, but how we compete globally. But there are students, that doesn't mean everybody. There are exceptions. But it's rarer than it used to be. And so it's concerned. And so when I hired some people, if you ask them pointed questions or challenge their thinking, it can come off from,

and I understand, I've tried really hard to work at this in the public sector. because I think it's amped up in the public sector. But some people have told me when I ask a question, it can come off as, well, you're kind of harassing me. No, I'm not. I'm just trying to keep you accountable. If you make statements or you say you're going to do this, did you actually do that? And if you didn't, why didn't you?

And so I do a half hour section segment for new employees, and I ask them. I said, don't be afraid to make mistakes. we seem to have people now who are afraid to do anything until their boss tells them what to do. Well, that's not the kind of employee I wanted in my company. I wanted an employee who viewed that company and made decisions as if it was their own company and gave them the freedom to do that. And I said, if you mess up, you're not going to get fired. My question to you will be, what did you learn from that experience?

Now, if the answer is I didn't learn anything, it was somebody else's fault. that's a signal to me that maybe this person isn't going to be a leader because it's somebody else's fault. But many of them would tell me right away. I wouldn't do it this way. And I try to enforce or reinforce in the public sector employees that all of the serious life lessons that I learned came in failure, not at the top of a mountain. And so we have to learn from that. I think somehow we have lost that along the way, and we need to get it back, because it has enormous consequences, I think, for our economy and even our civil society.

I couldn't agree more. I often talk about this, but I get nervous when I hear people say, I'm not a math person, because often we label ourselves based on things that happened when we were in grade 10 or in grade seven and there is so much other things going on in your life you're developing as a person maybe your family's going through a divorce maybe there isn't enough food on the table to think that during this period of time you have a good representation of whether or not you're good at math or science or physical exercise it's you're not getting you're not dedicating yourself the way you can when you're 20 and you're able to really focus on honing a skill or developing

yourself. So if people leave the educational institution, and I certainly know people who said, I hate learning, like what a terrifying thing to leave an institution with that feeling that, like, I don't enjoy learning new things. When so many people enjoy watching nature documentaries, they like being outdoors, like this is all learning. And when you're learning to fish or learning how to golf, this is all learning. But it's in a less formal environment where it seems like people are more comfortable. And And from my understanding, the Montessori kind of educational style is really coming through because people are realizing, wow, we're missing out on people's potential if we just have this standardized approach where the teachers are expected to focus on the grades.

And that's why I wanted to hear that because you have someone you admire who didn't follow this standard approach but had the work ethic and a mind that was capable. It just didn't check boxes within an institution. And I do worry that we have continued to kind of institutionalize ourselves to thinking we need to go check a box rather than thinking, how can we make a difference? How can we think bigger and change a system that isn't working as well? Like I just interviewed Farhan Muhammad. I'm sure you've worked with the Fraser Valley Current. Well, he's the CEO of the organization that controls the current.

And he's trying to reimagine what journalism can be. And we need those people. And he talks about how he didn't get the best grades in school. but he had a mind for how can we bring communities back together? How can we reduce some of the divisiveness that we see and really build up a sense of community where people can learn about what's going on, but they don't have to scroll social media for hours to find out what the community is up to. You've talked a bit about the Mennonite community.

And I think another hard conversation that people struggle with is being able to talk about their faith and how that shapes their perspective right now. I feel like I'm able to talk from an indigenous perspective and share how I see things and how my culture shapes my viewpoints, but it's become less popular for people to be able to talk about how their faith has influenced them for the better and how the sense of community that their faith offers, the values that their faith instills impacts them. Can you tell us, it sounds like your community was able to help in a situation where you needed to leave the country and be somewhere else, help your family?

How did that shape you? And how is your faith kind of shaped your perspective? Sure. And I'm happy to do that. Can I come back to something you said? Absolutely. Because it was going through my mind. You mentioned I'm not a math person.

So this is my own theory. But math and science seems to be, or not seems to be. It is an area of learning where the answer is either right or wrong. There's no in between. A lot of other things that are taught. can be subjective in the eyes of the person who is teaching. And so maybe we need to focus more on the math and science, especially for critical thinking.

That's another component that I, so many people are just, oh, well, that's what everybody's doing. Well, okay, maybe it is. But is it the right thing to be doing? And what are the consequences if they're wrong? Have you thought through? why do you believe what you believe? And if you've come to peace with that, I'm totally cool with that. I may still say, Aaron, I disagree with you. And we're going to have to part

company saying we agree to disagree respectfully, which is a whole other issue that's missing. But anyways, I just, because I really think that our school systems are going to have to change both in the United States and Canada, or we're going to get left behind. Yeah. I'm going to pull at you a little bit more, though, because I think you're right. The idea of agreeing to disagree, even the willingness to hash an issue out now seems perhaps unpopular, difficult for people to do. It's easier to go along, bite your tongue. It seems like certain perspectives are rather unpopular right now. What are your thoughts on that landscape?

Has that changed over time? Speaking from someone who's only 26 years old, it seems like it's been that way most of my life, where you kind of just, okay, sure, or you don't say anything. But now it's becoming where I interviewed Bud Mercer, who you might know. A lot of things are being hashed out on social media, and they're not even founded in what is actually taking place when it came to Chilliwax just switched over, so no reusable plastics. And they went through a lot of surveys at the mall and calling people and polls, and they tried to process that. And then somebody posts on social media, wow, there was no community consultation for this decision. and there's a whole threat about it. So it seems like our understanding of reality and what's going on,

it seems like we have weirder ways of expressing our displeasure. What have you seen over the years? Oh, totally. I would say especially in the last 20 years, well, no, probably goes back further, but not as pointed as it is today. But the change I've seen in the last 10 years is, and especially in the last two or three is dramatic. I think the change was coming gradually,

and what would have taken place maybe over 10 years got compressed into two. And I can't actually believe where we are today because it is hard to have a civil conversation. And even myself, I shouldn't be doing this, but I've disengaged with some people. Like I've tried. Most people, when they're critical on social media about certain subjects, I will actually have my executive assistant phone them,

which shocks them to begin with that I would call. And I said, would you come in and let's have a conversation for half an hour? But so often their mind is so made up. It's like I feel when it's over, you know, don't bother me with the facts. I've made up my mind and there's so much dis, I don't even like that word, disinformation, but that's the word everybody uses, especially on social media. I mean, if people thought through the critical thinking part of what they're supporting, they'd say, well, that doesn't make any sense.

And I'm not sure where that's taking us in the future, but I don't know that's a good place to be. Absolutely. So it sort of brings me back, though. when you have a community, often, like, you can't know everything and you can't be an expert on every topic. So we do to a certain extent agree to have like maybe a hive mind where we kind of, we don't debate now whether or not the earth is flat. We've settled that. And although I can't pull up the facts on that and whip that out, I trust the evidence and the information and it seems like it's pretty settled. Within communities of belief, there's so much shared values.

that seems like what social media seems to be disrupting is real people in a room together, having a cup of coffee, reinforcing the idea that we can all just be in a room together and agree on the majority of things. We may have 10% disagreement on whether or not this is true or that is true. But the majority is peaceful. We care about each other. We care about the real things, whether or not you have food on the table, whether or not you have shelter, whether or not you're being taken care of and everything's good in your family life so there's a sense of peace that you can leave that institution that building with how has that shaped you has that helped ground you in your decision making you the tools to say this is sort of how I go through making

your decisions how has your faith impacted you well it well for the first probably 302 plus years not so much. Because, and maybe it goes back to, well, it goes back to a couple of things. So I need to be forthright on that part. So when we came here, I knew right of ways we were different and we were poor. And I was exposed to things where people had like go-carts and fancy cars. But they'd been here for, you know, at the time I didn't know how long, but some of them won two generations already.

but we came with nothing. And, you know, the bullying and the Rassman in grade school, you know, kids can be mean to one another. And they still are. They were back then, too, 70 years, or not 70, but 65 years ago, they were mean. But I determined at a very early age, I did not want to be poor. And that set me on another road that took me to some dark days. And I can touch on that later. But the one thing that I had was our family, not only our family, but aunts and uncles who also were refugees who came here.

So my mother's side of the family, my dad's side of the family, they had six, seven kids. So they're all here now. So we would get together every week for dinner, whether it was Saturday at lunchtime or Sunday for lunch, after we went to our communities of faith. And you would hear the stories about what had happened in communist Russia going back because their forefathers had been there in the Ukraine for 150 years before the Russian Revolution. In fact, one of my grandfathers was actually a guard for one of the czars, the princes of the czar. But they told all these stories. But we were so close. we would, you know, nowadays you're even scared to say you butcher an animal, but, you know,

we had a couple of pigs and a couple of steer and quite a few chickens. So we were very self-sufficient in providing for our own food. We had gardens. So I learned all sorts of things in the camaraderie around those events and the shared values and stories through the generations, just like I'm sure. sure your family passes on knowledge through the generations. This is how it used to be. We're losing that big time and we're going to all be poor for it. And these things have shown up that are very distracting, especially for young people. I've been in a booth my wife

and I for dinner and there's four looks like teenagers, you know, later teenagers and they're all on their devices. My wife one day, because she's a little more forward. than I am. She says, why are you guys are together? You should be talking to one another. They said, oh, we are. We're doing it by text. And I said, you're kidding. I says, I'm a little afraid of the social interaction between that that's not happening because it's all on our devices. And we say things on our devices. And I really have to work hard that if I'm, if I've got a tough email or text message to send out, I don't send it out after I'm finished it. I'll sleep on it and look at it in the morning and say,

maybe I need to change this a little bit. But those are, but what I did learn, even though, so I always say it this way, the church and I parted company when I was 16. Because what I saw and heard, or sorry, what I heard and what I saw were two different things. So I come from a tradition where you shouldn't be smoking, you shouldn't be drinking, and in some families, not mine, my dad wasn't that way, you shouldn't

be watching TV. So it sounds harmless. But what did I see on Sunday? After lunch, the men would go to the barn. And I was a pretty inquisitive kid, even when I was eight years old. I'd go to the barn to see what's going on over there. What did I see there? A TV, some of them are smoking. and the things they told me I shouldn't do they were doing. And so I said, this is a bunch of baloney. And so I really parted company, and I was in search of other things. And it would be another 20-some years before I would return to those roots. And why?

Because the teachings, what I heard and learned actually was true. It's just I was judging what I heard by people's behavior. And those two things didn't match up. And I've since come to know that none of us actually match up to that. We all have faults. And I sometimes say warts. Some are just more visible than others. Their aspirations to point to not necessarily the end goal, because I've heard that too,

which is so many people are good church-going people on Sunday. And Friday and Saturday, they don't reflect any of the values. And I think it's an easy out for people who have atheistic tendencies who say religion is sort of useless or unnecessary. It's an easy look at those people. They're not even living up to their own claims. But the claims call you to be more than you are. They ask more of you than maybe you have to offer at the time. That's why I think it's important.

There's so much wisdom in there. And it seems like, as I said before, we're sort of in love with intelligence right now that we forget that beyond making a lot of money, there's a way to live a good life that leaves not only you better off, but your family members, your community members and not just your community members, future community members of your community, because you can have effects that last longer than you're alive. You can leave a legacy that allows others to go and succeed as a consequence of how you develop things. Like we say the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that are important, but what people don't understand is that there's people who helped develop that that aren't here anymore, that left a legacy that we now take for granted. They built something that lasted longer than themselves. And I think we need to, as you said, slow down and hear those stories more. And I think hopefully this form, this medium of communication allows for that because we, my peers take photos with their grandparents. But they don't ask their grandparents, what was it like to go through World War II?

What is the Great Depression? Like, we are seeing inflation rates. We are seeing another war developing in the Ukraine. We're seeing a lot of the problems that we faced similar ones previously. And how do we approach this? And it feels like we don't know where to go. But we should go ask the people who have seen similar things in the past. And it doesn't seem like we need like a guideline.

First, we go ask our elders how they endured similar situation. then we start to try and hone in on what they said and build upon that or something. We need like a process that's different than what we're doing now. And I think that those communities, there's so much knowledge in there that we can kind of overlook. And to your point, I struggled with going to church as well because they were talking about like turn the other cheek while I had bullies who had knives held to my, held to me. And it was like, what you're telling me and how I have to deal with these situations have nothing to do with each other. And so I did leave the church for a long time. Now I'm trying to bring the Roman Catholic belief system and indigenous belief systems together so I can get the best of both worlds and hopefully be a better person as a consequence.

You've talked briefly about the bullying you experienced. And it seems like we don't want people to face too much adversity where they're out of the game. But it seems like the adversity they face helps shape them. It helps forge them. Like being bullied as a kid for myself, it really motivated. me to be like, I want to go be successful. I've experienced extreme poverty. And so how can I never be in that situation again? And it's very hard for me to take my foot off the gas because I never want to go back to no food in the fridge kind of experience. How did that shape you?

What fuel did that provide? What weight did that put on your shoulders? How did those moments sort of shape you? Well, my parents with all of our kids, gave us a lot of freedom. Like, you know, my dad I drank, my dad drank beer. Not much. He might have, you know, six bottles in the summertime, especially on very hot days. He let me play sports on Sunday. Some of my friends couldn't play sports because that too was frowned upon. So it, we were rambunctious kids. We got to experience a lot of things that helped shape us into who we are. But the, But the critical part of it was I didn't see the hypocrisy in my father because he says, well, yes, we come from a tradition where this is frowned upon, you know, even sometimes wearing buttons, wasn't allowed. But he wasn't in that camp. And so I'm thankful for that.

And that's why I'm writing a book because you are about their experiences because I did that. I sat down for, well, I started in 1985 and I. Now it's 2022 and I haven't finished the book, so it shows you what a book writer I am, but I finally engaged somebody to help me. I fleshed out the skeleton, but it's all of those stories and the stories that his mother and father for the few years that he knew him because he lost his dad when he was 14 in the war, and my mother was eight when they took him, so they didn't have dads. But their grandfathers and grandmothers and the stories from their grandmothers,

mothers. They have all come down to us. And so I'm trying to capture that all in a book. Now I forgot where I was going with this. Just really quickly, in indigenous culture, we have this idea of seven generations. We're called upon to look at the past seven generations and then look forward based on that information forward seven generations. It seems like that was the process. I'm just interested. What has that been like for you to really look in detail at your family and see the adversity, see the hardships, but also see the perseverance. Well, and the resilience that they had. I could see that in spades with my mom and dad, the stuff, the hardships that they faced.

I don't know if we could, how we would do if we were having to face the same things. My mother is 92 years old. She's still alive. And she tells me, you know, when what's happening in the Ukraine, she says, you know, I've seen this movie once before. and it just breaks her heart to see the destruction and everything else. But yeah, it's hard to describe how it affects you. But yes, I love the seven generations. I'd forgotten that until you just mentioned it.

We need to be doing that and to take into consideration when we remove things that were placed there for, in their lifetimes, or let me use a ranching term, which I use. So when you remove fences on a big ranch, you should always ask the question, why were those fences put there in the first place? Were they there to harm you? No, they were there probably to protect you from something or the animals from something. And so you just need to do a little digging to find out, why is that fence? there. And so before you do it, and I think we've removed all sorts of fence posts that or fence lines that helped our society look to the greater good of the community more so

than what I see today. Today it's where we're such an individualistic society, both sides of the border. It's all about me as opposed to what can I do for you? you, my neighbor, like your literal neighbor, but also I always say my neighbor is whoever comes across my path today. Today it's you. What can I do for you? And when we, it does something to us when we give things to others at our expense sometimes. It gives us a feeling of gratitude that doesn't come any other way. It's better to give than to receive in some ways. But, yeah, my mom and dad, I remember eight years old and I, Centennial Poo,

I said this at the reopening of Centennial Poole in Abbotsford. I was there for the opening when I was eight. I wanted a bathing suit because my friends were going. And I couldn't afford, or my mom says we can't afford one. So I thought, well, my underwear doesn't look much different than a bathing suit. So I tried that and found out very quickly as an eight-year-old. They're not one and the same. And so I was embarrassed.

I cried and I went home. But that shaped me again. And it drove me probably too hard to become successful. Well, that's where I was going. So I think you and I, just from the little bit I've interacted, we probably have similar in some ways personalities because you didn't want to be poor. But there's other people when the bullying comes, they retreat inside and they crawl into a shell. And we need to keep an eye out for them too to help them get out of that shell.

And so my wife is better at this than I am because I am a type A personality and sometimes I don't see what's going on beside me, left or right. But we need to keep an eye out for people who are retreating inwardly because that can take them down. down a totally different path that is destructive for them at the end as well. And so, but this all comes back to we see, but we don't see. We hear, but we don't hear. And part of it is there's so much noise in the world now. And by noise, I mean so much stuff coming at us that you can't digest it. And if you spend most of your evenings on devices and television, you don't have time.

It's, I think sometimes it's a distraction from real-world problems that we don't want to face, so we get entertained. Absolutely. Going to the swimming pool experience, mine was going skiing and having no idea what to expect. I showed up in jeans and a jacket, and I had no idea what people wore when they went skiing. It was my first experience. And I had to do the whole day in jeans because I didn't own any other ski gear equipment. I had no idea what the norms were around going on a ski hill. And those moments, they lit a fire under me to never want to show up to an event unprepared.

And there's always a ringing noise of like, what are people wearing at this event? How do I make sure that I don't stand out or embarrass myself or look the wrong way? And so there's like a fuel that's constantly stirring underneath me of like, I don't want to go back to that place. I remember my mother not having enough money all the time for the grocery. so we'd have to be, oh, we'll put that back and, oh, how much is that? We'll put that back. So now I never want to go through a grocery line and ever think about how much it costs. It's we're eating. That's the top priority. We're eating food. I don't care. I'm not going to let those things weigh me down. Was there a process? Because I felt like I need to maybe let a little bit

of that go at certain points. There's a benefit to the fuel, but it can also maybe cause fires at some points. It can be a detriment. It cannot be helpful in certain circumstances. Has that been a process throughout your life where you've had to kind of figure out how to hone it as a tool rather than having it always be need to go, go, go? Or how has it impacted you? Okay. So we're going to head down a road now that I very seldom go down. But in order for me to answer that question, I actually need to do that. So as I said, I didn't want to be poor. So everything I did for the first 35 years of my life was to climb ladders. I refer to it as climbing ladders, and I did.

But what I found out is all the things that I thought were going to make me happy once I'd acquired this stuff, money, cars, plowses, whatever, I still wasn't happy. There was, I think it was Frances Schaefer's that said, there's a vacuum shape or, a vacuum-shaped void in our lives that can only be filled with God. And that kind of was, I mean, I heard it until I was 16, but I kind of dismissed all of that. But I came to a place in 1983 or four, I think it was, when interest rates hit 21 and 3 quarter percent. When I tell young people that today, they think I'm crazy. I said, you go check the history.

I said, that's where they were. I thought I was going to lose everything I had worked for for 38 years of my life. And if it wasn't for my bank manager, I would have gone broke. But to make a long story short, I got on my knees. I was desperate because I could see everything. I could see bankruptcy. And I got on my knees one night. And when the kids and my wife were out at the park or something.

And I said, okay, Lord, if you. get me out of this mess, I'll do whatever you ask me to do. And I left it at that. And he did, there was a way that was open. Now, some people say that's just good luck, good fortune, whatever. I don't believe that because I had a very dramatic conversion, probably about 18 months after that. But I, so I found myself getting out of that, and it was really through my banker. But I completely forgot or dismissed what I had said. And all of a sudden, my daughter looked me square in the eye one day and said, Dad, how come you don't come to church with us? Because I didn't. They went. I didn't. I came Christmas and Easter and if there was something special for the kids.

And what's going to happen to you when you come to the end of your life? And I'm thinking, Hokey smokes. This is it. My 10-year-old daughter asking me this, I didn't have even thought about that. And I'm 36 years old now. So I didn't answer, but I started a journey of faith that took me to a place where I had a dramatic conversion and my life changed. It wasn't that I was a crook, but if I had you over a barrel in a contract, I would lever that and say, well, that's your tough luck that you lost money. It's not my my problem, that's your problem, where I would now go to somebody and say, you sure, you can do it for this? Because based on my experience, I don't think you can do this for this amount of money. And sure enough, they come back and say, yeah, you're right, I made a mistake, and it shouldn't be this. But that was a foreign concept. So now it was thinking of the other person more than about me and trying to get up this ladder to success, whatever success means to you.

And that profoundly changed my life. And my kids saw it, my friends all saw it. I lost friends because some friends thought I'd become weird. But that's who I am. That's my experience. And I read a book, A Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis that had a profound impact on me. And I actually think I, well, no, I won't go down that road. People will think I am crazy.

But it was a dramatic conversion for me. Now, not everybody has that. But when asked, I just, I cannot say it. I have to confirm. I have to say it. Otherwise, I feel like I'm turning my back on God. That's what I worry about. We're in this really weird time, particularly, I think,

partly because of Indian residential schools, they've caused people to, no doubt that, again, no doubt that atrocities took place at Indian residential schools. I think Keith Carlson, who I interviewed, did a good job of showing why Indian residential schools were somewhat unique. You set up a school and you say you're going to be isolated with children. I think that that has great risks. The people who want to go to those schools are not going to be good people. I think the challenge that the Pope and any leader of religious organizations can have in terms of apologizing is going to be linked to the fact that that is not what's in the Bible.

That's not what they believe in. That's not the values that they preach every day. So it's hard to apologize for something that they've never overtly said that they support something like that. Now, I do think that certain religious organizations have moved those people around. and I think there's a few good Netflix documentaries, but it's created this weird relationship people have to have with their belief systems. I think indigenous belief systems are somewhat off the hook right now in an interesting way because you can start off with a prayer in terms of an indigenous person starting with a prayer,

but if you were to do the same thing with a different belief system, that wouldn't be acceptable. I don't like that. I think that when we say we're multicultural, we have to be able to come to the table and share our belief systems and our values and how our perspectives are shaped in an honest and open way. I think it's tragic that we always have to preface, I prayed on something, I hoped for something and then, but we can't prove it, so I'm not saying that it's 100% fact. Like the fact that we have to go through those kind of leaps is unfortunate because the idea of prayer is perfectly accepted within meditation. Like if you were to say I went and meditated on something. People would be like round of applause, that's perfectly acceptable.

But you put the word God in there. People curl their toes and they start to get reactive. And I think that that limits our ability to have honest conversations. Because I do think that we're shaped by our belief that there is something greater than ourselves. The reason that it's called Bigger Than Me is because there's this rapper from Detroit named Sean Anderson. And he made it triple platinum on the billboards. he was making music that everybody loved. He was rich, famous, everything that you could want.

And he felt absolutely empty inside. And he went down a similar journey of like, my music is meant to inspire the people struggling most in their lives. So that's what my job is. It's not to go make another record that goes triple platinum. And that's a part of it. But the point of life is to go and rebuild the community. He lost his, because of so much drug trade within the theater,

they shut down the theater because there was guns being moved around in there and terrible things. He was working on bringing a theater back to his community because that's where the community got together. And the fact that they had to let that go for such a surface level reason, he viewed as unfortunate. And I think, I just, I think it's unfortunate that I know when I'm asking the question about somebody's faith, that it's so difficult for people to be able to answer honestly because there's so much, as you said, noise. There's so much judgments and prejudgments on which church, what value, where do you go? How is that? Well, they made this mistake 10 years ago. And so how can you, like, I think that that all just

detracts from the idea that people are humble enough to say that they don't know everything and that they are in their own ways insufficient and that they're trying to be better. And I think that I think it's really unfortunate that people like yourself, brilliant people who, as you've seen, are well respected in our community, have to be hesitant on. those things. And I totally understand why. I just think that that is concerning to me as someone who admires you, who knows that you've done so much in the community, who's changed their perspectives and grown, that that is a sticking point. And there are other brilliant people who might cower away from that response and saying, you know what? It sort of shapes me,

but no big thing. I've done great things and I'm a great person. Like, missing out on how people develop is how other people can get themselves out of those circumstances. And I think I'm glad that you were willing to share that. Where did you go from there? Where did your decision start to be made in terms of where you wanted to take your career and the difference you wanted to make once you started to have a stronger faith? Well, even the way we did business changed, there were some things that we just didn't want to participate in, you know, on the real estate side.

Well, yeah, yeah, there was just a whole host of things that, you know, I was still the same person, but not really. And my worldview changed, like, literally, instantly. And, you know, I was kinder. Like, there was no, anybody who knew me would say that they wanted Henry as a partner, because I had a piece of rebar for a spine. I wouldn't bend. Like, it was my way or the highway. My business came first. Family was second, maybe. be third, and God was way down there somewhere else. That all changed, where now my family was first. I treated my wife. You know, if it wasn't from my wife, I don't know where I would be. Because despite, not that I hit her or was abusive in any ways, but I ignored her and talked

down to her sometimes. And there's still a little part of that. I always, you said people, I don't know if you said it or not, but every institution, every individual has imperfections. Every one of us, there is no such thing as a perfect person. There was only one, as far as I know. And he is either who he said he was or he's a lunatic. There's no room to go anywhere else. But my brothers noticed it in business. You know, there was a competitor who wanted to price fix, and I said no.

Probably 10 years earlier, I might have gone down that road and said, yeah, well, let's make some easy money. And what does all of that say to the kids who are watching? You know, when you go across the border and the customs officer asks you, did you buy anything? No. And yet you know the trunk's full of stuff. You're teaching your kids something. and how you do business. And even my son, who was 14, probably 14 at the time, struggled.

He says, what's happened to my dad? He's so different. And but it set me on a path of I wanted to give back to the community. And I got fairly involved even while I was in the private sector. One thing at a time, I didn't want to be on too many things. But if the mayor phoned and asked me to chair a committee meeting, I did that for a number of years or the airport authority or economic development. And I was always looking at how can we make things better than what we found them at?

And I try to do that in my own life in business and everywhere else. And hopefully it's a model or modeling to people who are watching. I'm not perfect. I make mistakes. And when I make them, I own up to them. I've done that a couple of times with counsel in closed session. not in public, where I exceeded my authority. And I told him, somebody came to me and said, you didn't have that authority.

It was actually the city manager. I said, you don't have that authority. And I said, you know, I never thought about that. But, you know, there was a day when I would have told him to get lost. I'm the boss. Reminds me of what I'm watching on CNN with their former president. I can relate to that because I once lived on that side of the fence. kind of not quite the same but

so it just changed my perspective in so many ways and try to get involved in things and help people who I mean we had a tough life and when I see immigrants I have a soft spot for immigrants and refugees because I lived that and I can relate to it and I can relate to you in your skiing story

because I'm sure along the way people made fun of you and probably said some things that were hurtful. You know, they say sticks and stones, or words won't break bones, but actually the tongue is more powerful, and it can do so much damage, especially to young people because they internalize it. And we see this with suicide rates and teenagers, young people. Like, I didn't see that when I was.

So all of this stuff is bearing down on those in our community who can't fend for themselves and somebody, well, somebody, all of us should be looking out for them. And we need to change our behaviors and our attitudes and our focus. But the minute you pop your head up and start suggesting some solutions or let's have a conversation, we're into this shaming culture and cancel culture. And like if you say anything about God, you're a wacko. And yet we are the poorer for it because, and I guess I'm in a place now where I have a, what's the word I'm looking for, a platform where I can actually say some things that I wouldn't have said 10 years ago in the public square. Or potentially because since you're not seeking re-election, that maybe you're able to speak more freely. Yes, I've thought about that during this conversation.

be saying this if I was running for reelection? Maybe not. And that's shame on me. Because I think I have something to contribute. You may not agree with it. And that's okay. But let's talk about it. Let's explore. Because I think nine times out of ten, we will find out that there's more, we have things, there's more things in common than there are differences. In all cultures, we all know that, or I hope we all know that, you know, you don't do bad things to little babies. Where does that come from? And where does that thing called a conscience come from? Where do ideas come from? Where do I, yeah. We act like, I had this idea and it's like, where did that come from, though? Like, seriously, where did that come from? You have no idea. And we take credit for it. We give

credit to people for having an idea. But we don't know where that comes from. And to that, to that point, I think that how we've developed in terms of like the counseling resources are growing and it looks like we're trying to address this mental health crisis, but we're leaving the idea that there is an institution, there is a place you can go to where you don't have to pay, where you can talk about your problems, where you can talk about your shortcomings. But that idea of confession or that idea of admitting your own flaws seems to be something that's difficult for people right now because there is this mentality of that being a victim opens doors and that you can blame it on other things. And to a certain extent, I think that's

fair. I've worked as a native court worker and I've had people with horrible stories of sexual abuses and physical abuses say like, you just expect me to pull myself up by my brute bootstraps and work hard. Like, I have a lot going on in my mind. It makes it hard to go to the store and live a normal life. So fair enough to those people. But when you just give blanket advice, which is this isn't your fault. And so it's not on you. It's on this government.

It's on this church. That is part of the message, but you can't leave it there. And I've experienced people going like, where do I go from there if it's not on me? If I don't have our role to play and I can 100% put it at the foot of somebody else, there's no reason to go get a job or to go and try and make a difference or to try and and do anything because it's such a weight of like it's off your shoulders. So wait for somebody else. So there has to be this complex balancing act to both inspire, but also to give mercy to people. And it's a very complicated conversation to have with people, which is you might have

been bullied and you might have had abuses as a kid. And we will be merciful on those challenges, but we still need you to reach your full potential, whatever that looks like. And that's such a nuanced conversation that I think it's hard to get fully out on any platform or tell people because it's so easy to get stuck on, oh, you're just telling me to pull up my bootstraps, which is typically what conservative say. But then on the other side, the left side says, well, they've faced immense adversity, which is why I think typical immigrant stories are so inspirational to us, because you took this terrible hand that you were dealt and made something beautiful out of it.

And my goodness, what if we all did that? And what would the world look like if we all took the terrible hand we were dealt and made the most of it? And that's why I was so excited to sit down with you was because I think that that is definitely the message your parents set. But it is the journey that you've been on for yourself, which is how much good could I do in this role? And how can I take the best of what I've been through and share that with people and inspire people and build other people up? And I think that that's just a message we need to hear more of. Totally. When did you start to leave that position and start to look at other things?

And do you have any advice for current entrepreneurs? Because I feel like the only way we get out of, I believe that we're now in a recession, I think that we've had now two terms of no growth. So I think that we can safely say that we're entering that kind of sphere. Inflation, which detrimentally impacts people on fixed incomes, it's here, it's arrived. And I think the only way out is likely entrepreneurship, is innovating our ways out of these positions. And I think that's what we've done in the past. What advice do you have for those people?

What advice do you have around growing a business, starting a business, sharing an idea with other people? Well, I had a mentor. My mentor was actually my father. Now, having said that, I know that there are, I've met many people who their experience with their father was not a pleasant one. but mine was and I always tell young entrepreneurs I have not done it as a mayor at least not in the same sense some people have said that they've been inspired by how I have led our city others can't wait for me to leave so I get that too but I always mentored one or two young younger people in their early 20s entrepreneurs who wanted to build a business and I spend time with

them usually a couple of years, with some it was every week, some every two weeks, I think only one, maybe once a month, but to talk about the struggles that they were having. And I would relate to them things that, because many of those things, you know, like if there's not enough money, what do you do? And so I try to inspire younger people and I recommend you, find, Whoever is listening to this, if you don't have a mentor, look for one and look for somebody that you trust, that has a good reputation because you can be mentored the wrong way, too. We see that in our gangs and drug culture, you know, some of those guys would build fantastic businesses, I think, if they stayed on the right side of the law. because they obviously have some skills to organize stuff. And as a mayor or as a chair of the police board, I can tell, well, I can't tell you too many,

but I know of lots of places where I could point to that and say, look at what they did. They created an organization, but it was for evil, not for good. But yes, the tough times are, I agree with you. We're going into what appears to be an inflationary cycle. I've seen three or four of them in my lifetime, and none of them were fun. But you need somebody that you can trust, that you can lean on, that can help you. And sometimes that help will come from other people who will come alongside you, especially on the financial side.

It may be an opening a door to a good banker that can help you through that, that believes in you. My banker believed in me. I didn't, when I thought I just about lost everything, I'm not sure I could say I believed in myself at that point, but I had a different worldview perspective too, so that changed as well. But I can point to my father, my banker, and a number of other people that came alongside and encouraged me. And that's another thing that's lacking is encouraging younger people. I do this when I go to our schools.

I say, you know, the questions you're at. asking at your age, I mean, I'm blown away. If this is a representative sample of your generation, I think we are in good hands because you are way ahead of where I was when I was 15 or even 20. I wasn't thinking about the kinds of things that you are thinking about. And invariably, I ask them, you know, if you want to be an entrepreneur, well, any leadership position, really. I ask them two things, but specifically when they say they have political ambitions, I ask them two questions. One, do you have thick skin, and do you have a need to be loved by everybody? Because I can guarantee you that not everybody's going to love you. There will be

people who will throw rocks at you all the time, and you need to get past that, and don't take it personally. But you need encouragers to offset that, that are in your life that you can, share that with and say, well, this is what's happening. And these people, this is what they're saying. And how do I, how do I, how do I deal with that? My wife is a great encourager. There's times, even the last eight years, when I would come home and say, man, this was a tough day. Why am I here again? Why am I doing this? And she would encourage me and relate to me some things. And, you know, I just felt better. And I think that's what we need to be doing. We're pouring ourselves into younger people for the next generation because you're going to be the leaders, and I can see that in you.

I have no idea where your life journey is going to take you, but I see good things for you. You're sharp, you're articulate, you're a lawyer, so you've got some discipline that you've learned that you're going to use in wherever you end up going, and I think you're going to change the world. then I really think you, not I think, you were on to something about engaging our culture. And you maybe can do it better than I can. Yeah, I don't disagree that I think that it is a challenge for so many. One of the things I personally hate, which I think gets me in trouble, is I cannot stand the old white man statement. when people have to preface or they say that person's just an old, like, I think that that is just, first of all, I think that it's partly racist.

I think it's, it's not helpful to a dialogue. Of course, there's truth in the fact that there were maybe, there were definitely bad actors in the past that were old white men, but that is not a solution to a problem. That is just pointing at a problem with no real solutions. And I think one of the differences, for me is I want to succeed, I want to bring everyone along with me, but I want to just go where the knowledge is. And one problem that I faced when I was at the University of the Fraser Valley was the professor on multiculturalism was like, I can't tell you how to change the circumstances of indigenous communities for the better reservations are often in poverty. I want to know how to fix that.

I do not care the color of the skin of the person who has the solutions. I want the solutions. And they were like, well, I'm, I'm a white person. I'm not going to bring my white perspective into this issue. And it's like, but there are sexual assaults going on on reserve. There is extreme poverty and there are abuses that come as a consequence of that poverty. I do not, like, your skin color should not play a role in how we go about building the community up to make sure those things don't happen anymore. And I'm a huge admirer of Alice Ross for his approach of just being unapologetically.

These are the crimes that are going to. on in my community and I'm going to do whatever it takes to change that for my community members. I think it gets him into a lot of heat, but I see the same problem he sees, and it seems like some people just don't want to go there. Let's focus on the environment. And again, I think that there's concerns there, but his point seems to often fall on deaf ears, which is really concerning to me. Yeah, I agree. I totally agree with you. Yeah. It's very surprising to me. And when we talk about reconciliation. Those are the topics I want to talk about, which is how do we change these circumstances? Like, I have been to these communities. I've seen the challenges they face.

I see the lack of inspiration that the young people have in those communities. And if we're not spending days, trying to months, years, lifetimes fixing that problem, we're missing out. And it's not like what's in because the neighbors of those communities might go, well, they bring on property crime into my community. Beyond that. Imagine the culinary arts that exist in that community or could, the artwork that they create, the inspiration that they could deliver to your communities that would make us all stronger and better and learn more. We do not have a place to get Bannick in the Fraser Valley right now that's easy and reliable. Well, you're missing out on our culture. And so where is the entrepreneurship in regards to sharing the beauty of our culture in a way that everybody can get on board with where you can, you go to different places, you travel the world wanting to.

try different foods in different language and different culture, it's right here. We just have to start exporting it and be strategic in how we do that. And I think that that's where individuals like yourself have so much knowledge to share in terms of how to run a business. What are the strategies? How do you forecast into the future? Because that's what I feel like is missing in my community. And that's why I wanted to take courses like taxation of corporations and shareholders, which to most people, they go, that sounds dull. And it's like, but this is, the information, like, I could go and take an indigenous law class, which would recite many of the things I could go learn from my community. How about the things that aren't in my community

that do sound maybe boring to some people, but they will give us the tools to go and succeed. So First Nations economic development and taxation of shareholders were courses that interested me because it was like, this is the information I could use and export to my community so they can start to export the culture. And there can be a reciprocal relationship between the legal institution, which many indigenous people are not a fan of, and delivering out the culture. And they can work symbiotically now. We don't have to think that they're at odds with each other. We can start to take the best of both of them and share that with people.

Yeah, absolutely. And I tried, not I tried, I did this very early on. You talk about knowledge. We have lost knowledge that you have, your community has, especially when it comes to herbs. plants and all sorts of things. We need to get that back. We're not all the same. You know, people have come to me and said, oh, we need eight people on council like me.

I said, no, you don't. I said, that would be a disaster because we all have different skill sets. We all have different filters or matrix that we filter everything through of our life experiences. there's things that I can relate to your desires in certain areas, but I'm not interested in that over there. But we need somebody that's interested in that over there because together with all of the parts of our society working in harmony,

you can move a lot faster and get to wherever it is that you're going. So that takes me back to when I first became the mayor, I was not happy with the relationship that we had with our two First Nations. Well, we have three, but I don't know that there's anybody from La Camel that actually lives in Abbotsford, but at least not that I'm aware of, but Samoth and Matsqui. So I reached out to them very early on and said, I just want to get together. I have no agenda. I just want to get to know you.

And what are your aspirations, you know, once we got a little further, I think probably the first time they were little. they never say anything but I think oh yeah what's this old white guy want but we struck up a good relationship and we've been meeting ever since to learn what are your goals and aspirations for your first nation and is there something we can do to help you do that you know whether it's providing services or police or fire I mean whatever it is we don't want to stick our nose if that's not what you want to explore, but they were both welcoming of that. And over eight years, I think we've got a pretty good relationship where we're open and honest. It doesn't mean that there aren't hurdles.

There are. And complexities and traditions and history that get in the way probably for both of us. But I tried to get through that and say, you know, how can we make this a better place? You mentioned some of the things, you know, drug use as well, comes into play. It's destroying our youth everywhere, every level throughout our society. I don't care whether you're poor or you're rich. I know people, far too many people who've lost daughters and sons. And some of it, some of the homeless people that I've, I don't get to interact as much as I used to when I was a counselor

because I had more time. But some of the stories, especially from the females, that told me their, and my wife was always with me, horrendous stories. And I says, you know, I cannot relate to, I didn't grow up in a home like that. But if I had of, I can see why you're on drugs. I probably would be on drugs too if I had to live through what you did.

But there are people, again, a lot of our faith communities, are coming alongside as volunteers to take people by the hand one-on-one, 18 months, to walk with them. And yes, sometimes it's one step forward and two back, or two forward and one back. But there are people who honestly want to help and make a difference. And I think we lose sight of that. And I keep hearing, you know, we should, you know, get rid of our churches and tax the heck out of them and all of this. I said, you know, if the local government or provincial or federal government had to be, to replace all of those volunteers who are doing this on their own? Are you kidding me? Like,

your taxes are going to double because the little bit that we forego on taxation is nothing in comparison to the value that they bring to the table for the greater good of the community. It would be, we would spend 10 times, maybe more than that. Some people have actually done studies on this, the Carter Center. I think the Halo project out of Calgary, I think, was a test case that I read number of years ago that comes to mind. But yeah, there's when we work together, and there is a lot of bad things that happen that should never have happened. But history is replete with that. My mother and father, as they relate to both what the Nazis did and what the communist Russians did, is terrible. And it's playing out in front of

our eyes. Well, we don't even see it. It's sanitized by the time. it gets on our TV stations, but when you go on the ground and you're actually living it, that is a whole different experience, which is why I want to capture that for my kids and grandkids and their kids so that they will never forget. That's what happened back there. And if we're not careful, that can come here over a number of generations from now, as hard as that is for us to believe. But if our society continues to head down the path, that we're on, I'm a little fearful for it. You don't have to answer this question, but it seems like most people understand what went

wrong with Nazi Germany. It feels like you take a lay person off the street and you say, what kind of took place they're going to give you not terrible cold notes. It seems like we don't have the same understanding when we talk about communism. It seems like most people don't know who Stalin is, most people don't know who Mao is, Most people don't know the death tolls that that philosophy brought about. Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, my grandmother, and it's in this book, I articulate it to quite an extent.

My grandmother told me there was the purges, Stalin's purges, there was millions of bodies, dead people. Everywhere they looked, in the bushes, behind buildings, they couldn't bury them fast enough. Dogs are eating people. and it had a profound impact on my grandmother who didn't want to talk about this, but she did talk to my dad about it, and so he related to me. But the destruction and death that came out of that is just unbelievable. And my father relates the things that he saw, people being tortured and killed as 13-year-olds. What they witnessed when they were teenagers, no teenagers should have to live through or witness.

But when he articulates it, and I put it to paper, it's a reminder, what happens when we have a segment of our society or in leadership, this is where it starts, that thinks they are better than everybody else. And this is what we're going to do to anybody that thinks differently. It's unbelievable. I'll bring it a little closer to the Mennonites. There was, I think, 30,000 Mennonites that fled from the southern Ukraine, and only 10,000 made it out, 5,000 went to Paraguay, and I don't know where the rest went distributed to other. But the other 20,000 were recaptured.

Russia was part of the Allied force. forces. People forget that. So they were together with the Americans, the Canadians, and the Brits. But my father says what he saw the Russians do during that fleeing, that five-year period, he says, was as bad or not worse than the Nazis. And they both treated the Poles and others, the Jews in particular, unbelievably horrible things that he saw. So the Americans finally woke up and they said, well, because they helped them put them back into rail cars to ship them back to Russia. Because Russia wanted those people back, there are citizens. But when half the people were committing suicide in those railway cars before they got 20 miles down the track, they said, there's something wrong here. If these are people who want to go back to their homeland, why are they killing themselves?

And they finally woke up and said, yeah, there's something else going on here. And of course, many, many years later, and now through all sorts of investigations and research that's been done, we know the kind of atrocities. This fight with Ukraine has been going on for 500 years. This didn't just happen eight years ago. This has been going on for a long time. And it's one nation trying to wipe out another culture or one culture trying to wipe out another culture. So it's horrendous. But if we don't capture this stuff, you know,

and maybe some people will read the book and say, I can't believe this actually happened. I mean, my grandkids, they are wide-eyed for some of these conversations. They say, really? That's what happened? I says, yeah. And do some of your own research. You'll find out, yes.

You talked about flat earth. I actually know somebody in Abbottesford who still thinks the earth is flat. And the Holocaust never happened. Yeah. And that's sad. And I think that that just shows that, like, we're not supposed to have a perspective on everything. And I think social media has put a lot of pressure on people to think about issues that had we not had the Internet would have never crossed their radar. That they would have never been asked to have a position on whether or not the Earth is flat or not.

And whether or not the Holocaust happened is not something that everybody needs an opinion on. But social media sort of changed that. The other interesting thing about history, for 9-11, it was the falling man. I don't know if you remember that image, but there are certain things that stand out to us that kind of remind us. And there was a person who would have rather fallen to their death than remain in the building. Oh, yeah. A heavy thought, but my first interaction with communism was seeing the photo of people selling body parts and realizing that our ability to have, a sense of morality and a sense of right and wrong is really predicated on a complex structure

that gives us that freedom to do that. I don't know if you've heard of Yanomi Park, but she fled from North Korea. And she shares some of her experiences and what she saw in North Korea. And this is taking place today, a problem that is very difficult to solve, but one that I think should beckon to people to ask what is going on and to have a global perspective on the issues and the challenges and be ever grateful for the democracy that we have here in Canada. I'm also interested to know what was the journey to decide to go into politics? You mentioned that it was not the first thing on your to-do list. What were your perceptions of politicians back then? Because I know a lot of people don't like politicians. What was your perspective of

politicians going into it and what was the catalyst to decide to run? Yeah. The reason I was was laughing is because that's what my daughter said dad don't do it people don't like politicians it was yeah and i i don't mean this broadbush because there are excellent people in every part of our society but there's a lot of bad actors too and unfortunately there's many good examples that people bring forward and say this is what a politician should be doing and so it breaks down the trust of our institutions and we need our institutions to help us govern our society because we do need governance. Without governance, you're talking chaos, which will lead to anarchy. That's what my parents fled from and other people from other countries. But I come back to, remember I said

that I made a deal as if you can make a deal with God, that I would do whatever he wanted to me to do, I would do. And I came reluctantly. It took eight years for my friends and former mayors and counselors to try to convince me I should run for public office. And when I heard enough of it, I said, okay, to my wife. And my wife really wasn't on board at the beginning. She is a 100% behind, was when I ran, because I wouldn't do it unless she was 100% behind me. And she was very much in favor of me running a third term as mayor she says if if that's what you feel it's your decision and i will support it 100 percent but i will also support you 100 if you don't so don't worry about me but i took that to mean and some people may think i'm you know being silly or naive but i took

that to me when people kept coming i thought okay maybe i'm supposed to do this um and And so to honor a commitment I made to God many years earlier, I did it. And that was really, I'm really not interested in what people think of me. I don't want any roads named after me or anything else. I have an audience of one that I am concerned about what he will say on that day when we cross from this side of eternity to the other side. And I hope, where my hope is that he can say that I did a good job. and followed what I instinctively know he has led me down a path.

So, yeah, that's the straight answer. Brilliant. So when you started to run as a counselor, from my recollection, I looked at the press conversation you had, and you talked about financial mismanagement as one of the pillars as to why you wanted to run in the early days. What were you seeing going on and how did you think that you could help with the problems the city of Abbotsford was facing? Well, I didn't ever use the word mismanagement.

I used the word fiscal responsibility, which then morphed into when I became the mayor fiscal discipline. As a business person, when I looked at their balance, you know, I've lived my whole life, basically 69 years of my 72 in Amistford. And it's been a great community to live and to raise a family and to, as I say, to grow old, which I'm heading towards that sunset years. But when I looked at the balance sheet, I'm thinking, wow, the net financial position of the city in 2011 was $17 million in the red. Now, if that was your business and you came to me as someone, somebody who was looking for, okay, what do I do? How bad is this? I would say, well, I can tell you right now, there's going to come a day when you cannot pay your bills. I just don't know

when. And now, for government, it's a little harder because we have, you know, you just can't up and take your building away or your house and move it to another city. You're stuck. So what do governments do? They typically, when they get into financial troubles, raise taxes. And we've seen that since before the war. The taxes were only going to be there for a while to help fund the deficits during World War II, or World War I and World War II. And where are they today? Well, they're way up there. So something had to change, and I made a lot of noise about it. Maybe some people would say I made too much noise about it. Some people told me if you keep talking like that, you'll never get reelected. And I said, well, somebody needs to open up

this can of worms because this has to change. Most of our reserve accounts were in the red. So we'd come up with some ideas that we thought we should invest here or there, but finance guys would say, but there's no money in that account. And if you want to borrow money, you've got to go to referendum or at least if it's over $5 million. So, and so we have worked Very hard as a council over the last, since then, 10 years. That figure at the end of December 31st, 2021, is at $353 million. So that's a swing of $3,000, you know, at $17 million, because we had to get out of the hole first. We have now set up our city for sustainability because, you know, it sounds like a lot of money,

$353 million to the positive, and it is. But relative to our asset base, which is book value is probably about $2 billion, but replacement would be probably $4 or $5 billion, that stuff all has to be replaced at some point in time, you know, five years, 10 years, 15, 20. Where is that money going to come from if the piggy banks dry? So the first thing that will happen, and it happens in business too, when you get into financial trouble, the first area of cut is in maintenance. because you don't feel the impact of it right always.

They do this personally. You know, I should fix my roof. I should replace it today. But I'm going to try to get another five years. But then maybe five years from now, have you done more damage? You're not only replacing your roof. You're replacing your ceiling, the jiprock and other things, insulation, because you were foolish and didn't spend it when you should have spent it.

So I think we have put the city on a good financial, not I think, I know we have on a financial footing that will stand future councils in good stead. And we hopefully will, because we are behind in some things, we should have things, we probably never made enough noise about wanting help on projects from senior levels of government either. Because we can't do it all through property taxes. We do need help. You know, when you, like we're in the process right now of wanting to increase our, capacity in our water system. Well, that's a $83 million bill. So we look to federal government

and provincial government funding for some of that. We'll come along with our portion, but we can't swallow the whole pill. And so, and that really was the number one reason why I ran, because I was, I was nervous about where this road would take our city. was there any temptation ever to run provincially or federally no none um what has it been like interacting with those levels of government i've spoken to uh darrell plekis who served provincially bud mercer who's worked uh municipally and it seems like they play of course important roles but it's a different experience working with individuals at that level because there's a party There's a group of people with different constituents, different priorities.

Has it been easy to work with provincial and federal governments? Has it been appalled to get them to the table? What has that experience been like? My experience has been very good. But I think part of the reason for that is I've never chucked anybody senior levels of government under the bus. That may make somebody feel better or maybe it's good for your ego to be seen as stand. up. But if you actually want their help, you need to work with them. And before you can work with them, just like with Matsui and Samath First Nation, you have to build a relationship.

Because if you don't have that, how do they know whether they can trust you or not? So there has to be that trust again, that relationship building before you ask. I met John Horgan long before he was the premier. He was in Abbottesford for an agricultural, the BC Ag Awards. And he was sitting in the back of the room there with his, I don't want to say aid, executive assistant probably is a correct title. And I saw him sitting there by myself and I went over there because I thought, you know, he might be the next premier. And so we had a chat. I don't know if he remembers it or not. We had a good conversation. And then later on, when he became the premier, I went out of my way to invite him to Abbotsford.

And he was amazed at the things that were going on in Abbotsford and what our needs were. He says, I've never had any connection. He brags now that he's the first mayor from the NDP to come to Abbisford and meet with the mayor of Abysford. And I did that federally as well. And then when we needed their help in the flood, That all came because I had, they knew who I was. I wasn't giving him BS. They knew that they could trust what, that doesn't mean I know everything and that doesn't

mean I don't make mistakes. I do. But when the relationship is there, you can go a lot farther and faster because you have credibility and a trust that is important in any relationship. If I don't trust you, what are we going to do? If you're worried about me, we're just going to have a decision. discussion, but nothing's going to come out of that. So they said, how can we help?

And I've said this over and over again. They have done, they provided the help. But I always said the harder part is in front of us, which is still in front of us. So we've just bundled up our plan and about to send it off probably this week with a funding request to the province. And then we'll see, because now we're talking big dollars. So before, of course, I want to hear about what took place during the floods. what was the process to run like though was that difficult was you've talked about how you have thick skin maybe it's not the thick skin you need to have but the people the family around you

to have to hear negative comments or anything like that was it difficult to run at all or did was the response generally positive no the response was generally positive and it was all positive in my family and they reminded remember why you did this what was your number one priority. And it was, because there was times when I came home a little cranky. You know, I try not to bring work home, but, you know, to my wife, she's, she gets to hear some things. Nobody else hears. And she keeps it to herself. If I had a wife who couldn't keep it to herself, I wouldn't tell her that. But nothing in camera, but, you know, just the goings-on of day-to-day life, some of the nasty emails I get and, and things of that. But no, it went very well.

I was actually surprised at how many people, how many like-minded people who had similar concerns that came out of the woodwork. And I think it's that silent majority in the middle. And there's extremes at both ends of the spectrum. And I still listen to them, but I don't make my decisions based on that. Every decision I have made, and I think even our council as a whole has made, I don't know that there's an exception. and maybe I could find one, but where what is, what should we be doing that's in the best interest of the community as a whole going forward? And that's what we should do, the right thing, not the political thing, because often we find ourselves swimming upstream against the current, because it's easier. Somebody told me, maybe it was chief silver, told me that dead fish always just go downstream.

Which is true. Yeah, that is a good quote. Pre-flood, what stood out to you during your time there that were milestones for the city of Abbotsford? Well, I think finally getting a tenant in our building that was designed, the Abbotsford Center that was designed for hockey. So I started working on the Canucks probably within a few months, they actually called me, I think, of becoming the mayor. And I don't think I'm telling any tales out of school, but Calgary Heat, the city had backstopped them for $5.2 million. So if the revenue didn't rise, the gate revenue and concessions and everything else didn't rise to 5.2, if it only rose to 3, guess who cut the check for the difference, the taxpayers? And we did that for five years and then this is crazy.

And then finally, I wasn't the mayor. I was on council, and I voted and I pushed for it. Let's buy our way out of this agreement. And that's public. I think we cut them a check for $5 million to go away. The Calgary heat. Yeah, because otherwise we would have lost $10 million had they stayed. I know for some people that was hard to believe, but I can guarantee you that's the road.

Every year the deficit kept getting larger. And so the Canucks said, well, if you give us a little bit more, then what you gave the heat, we'll move with the Canucks Farm Team. And I said, well, if I want to be a one-term mayor, I should sign such a deal. And we had a good conversation. We got to know one another. Again, building a relationship. And then it was a number of years.

They came back and said, well, you know, we're thinking about it. Da-da-da-da. Nothing came of it. And then finally, a year before they came, they were serious. And I could tell they were serious. And I said, well, I always said to you, if it doesn't cost the taxpayers any money, I will do whatever we can to get you into that stadium. But we're not paying you the kind of guarantees that the heat had.

That business is going to have to stand on its own. The best we ever did in those five or six years where there hadn't, there was no anchor tenant, was I think, $750,000 subsidy. So we took it from, and it was on the entertainment side on top of the hockey. So the total deficit was about, or subsidy was about $4 million a year. Well, over five years, that's a lot of money. Just think all the things we could have done if that hadn't happened. So we finally got to a place where the Canucks agreed that they would take the risk above $750.

So we're capped. So no matter what happens. But I think the Canucks are going to do well. They're business-minded, you know, and I say this with all due respect to public servants, but it's not the same. They have to survive in the real world, the private sector, and if they mess up, they lose big time. And it comes out of their pocket. Sometimes public service, it's like, well, just raise the taxes 10%, but they've never had to look after a payroll or say, well, I just can't. can't raise my prices or I'll go out of business.

So the taxation increase is an easy way to go. And I kind of lost where I was going. So the connects are going to start playing at? Well, they've had their first full season. Oh, my gosh. In the Abbotsford Center. And they just about made it to the playoffs. So do they practice there?

Oh, yeah. Public games? Yeah. How does that? Because aren't they located usually in the Vancouver? I don't know what they call it. Well, they were in New York. the farm team.

What is the farm team, sorry. So that is their training, that is AHL, American Hockey League. Okay. So that's one step below the NHL. From there, most of the NHL players, I don't know if most, but a significant, maybe half, have come up through the Western Hockey League and then the HAL, some directly from the WHL into the pros, but it's great hockey. And that's what that arena was big.

for. So we've filled it now and we get a cut of the revenue over 5,000 seats and a slice of the naming rights. And I think all of that's going to come that I can see the day where we will break even. And the taxpayers will not be footing any subsidy. That may still take a couple of years, but the foundation is set for it. Very interesting. The other piece that I was curious because you do chair the police board. I've sat down with Bud Mercer, who's in the city of Chilliwack. He's a counselor.

It'll be interesting to see if he chooses to run for mayor, and he talks about the benefits of the RCMP and really enjoying that system. I've spoken to Daryl Plekis, who talks about the challenges municipal policing, and he even talked about provincial policing. As the chair of the police board, as someone who has lived in the community for a very long time,

who's seen the RCMP, who's seen Abbotsford Police Department. What are your thoughts on how policing works generally and municipal policing specifically? Well, I didn't grow up in a jurisdiction that had RCMP, the District of Matsquay, which is where I, this is pre-amalgamation, had municipal police, and the District of Abbotsford had RCMP. So in 1975, or sorry, 1999, the District of Abbotsford and the District of Massachusetts and the District of Matzwee amalgamated to become what is today the city of Abbasford. So at that time, council had to decide which way are we going, RCMP or municipal.

They chose municipal primarily for monetary reasons because the Matzwee Police Department was probably four times the size of the district of Abysford because the population was about that. And to lay off, I don't know what they had in those days, 75, 80 police officers in Madsquy would have been an enormous cost, whereas the RCMP could absorb all of their members into the rest of the organization across Canada without any cost. So it was an easy decision. Municipal police force will cost you.

Well, that probably is not true right now, but up until the RCMP increased their salaries by 25%. municipal policing was 10% more than RCMP. I prefer municipal police force because the governance is local. I am the chair by virtue of my office as a mayor. Counsel gets to appoint one other member, a layperson. He's a lawyer, Mark Workentine. He's just finishing his six years. So we'll get a new, well, actually we have appointed a new one by council.

And the other five members, so it's a seven-year-old. member board, the other five members are appointed by the province, but they are local people, so they understand the local issues. So if we want to make a change or a shift because something has changed in our municipality or a city, and we are saying, hey, there's some gang drug activity here in this part of the world, or it's stealing cars or whatever it is, B&Es, we can move fairly quickly because our model, our governance model allows for that. In the RCMP, they say they can make that, but the RCMP ultimately reports to Ottawa and the federal government. And there probably needs to be a little more separation between those two things federally. And I think

I don't have to give examples that we all can see the examples of what may have been going on or is going on. I'm not sure. I don't have that information. But if I had to choose, I would always go with a municipal police force. Now, having said that, the RCMP brings to the table lots of resources and information and data that we don't have as a municipal police force. So they have been working very hard at integrating better than what has been in the past. And I can see a regional police force coming, because there's 22 municipality, I think it's 22 cities that make up Metro Vancouver, 23 maybe. Some have municipal, like Vancouver, have municipal police, West Vancouver, Delta, New Westminster, and there's others. I just can't remember them.

And they maybe don't talk to each other as much as they should. You know, the Picton inquiry shed light on what happens when there's not good communication because different people knew different things, but those dots weren't connected. They need to be connected in this world that we live in today. I was on the organized crime agency for the two years that it was in business, and that gave me a perspective that, so that was British Columbia. Ujard de Sanjo, when he was the premier, spearheaded that, and when Gordon Campbell became the premier, it was disbanded.

But I thought that was a mistake. The Russian mafia and other, the gangs from overseas, I had no idea, and I really can't talk about it, other than to say, it curled my hair, what was going on in our streets. and they are ruthless, and they are not worried about our laws or in our justice system, one iota. They think it's a joke. And when we see what the fentanyl crisis and other things have done to our society and our young people, well, not just young people, you know, blue-collar workers too, that got hooked on drugs. And when the tap was turned off for them, they went to the street.

And it's killing thousands and thousands of them. But I still think municipal policing, and a regional police force would be not RCMP. It would be a similar to, but I can see that happening. And while the Opel actually recommended that in his report going back, I'm guessing it's 15 or 20 years. And he's talking about it again because of some of the things that have been going on in the policing world. So I can see that happening in the next 10 years. Interesting. Yeah, I always find, with a criminology background, I always find policing and managing a community always so interesting.

What were the differences to you between being a counselor and being a mayor? Were there big differences? Likely as a mayor, you're taking on more of a leadership role, more of a how do we have quality conversations on these issues rather than just voting on issues or providing your perspective? It's a bit more involved because you're sort of guiding the conversation. And it sounds like, from my understanding, each mayor can bring their own flavor, bring their own approach. And so I'm just interested, what was that sort of transition like for you? Well, the learning curve from counselor to mayor was actually steeper than what I thought. I'd always been involved in some aspect of our city when any mayor phoned when I had my own business, whether it was on the police, I served six years as a municipal or the council appointee.

I served on the chair of the Economic Development Commission for, I think, eight years. I was on the airport authority board. So I thought I knew the city fairly well and just my interactions because I lived there. But when I became the mayor, that's a whole other ballgame. And that's not to diminish the role of council. Council is dealing with, you know, it's a part-time position, dealing with governance and policy. and that happens with all of counsel. But when you're the mayor, everything comes to your office.

There are so many people think the mayor can fix everything. No, the mayor can't fix everything, especially when it's under other jurisdiction. You know, whether that's school trustees, they look after schools. I can't, or health, that's the province. I can't fix the hospitals. Federal government, same thing. I can advocate as the mayor, and I should, and I have been. And I built those bridges and those relationships, and that's a lot of work.

And that's not a complaint. That's a mayor's job. But it's just, I'm amazed that sometimes people just don't understand how local government works. They think that, you know, fix, we can fix gangs and drugs and fentanyl. No, we can't. I can fix the flood issue. No, I can't just build a dike across the border or along the border because there's international treaties that come into play. And the Americans do have something to say about it, even if we don't like it.

So those kinds of things. But being a mayor, if you're going to do the work, and my dad taught me that work ethic, if you're going to do something, do it well. and don't just coast. And that has other implications to health and other things because sometimes I drive myself a little too hard, I think. My wife tells me that anyways. But I've enjoyed it. I say 75%, 80% of what I do as a mayor I enjoy.

The other 2025 is not so much fun. Interesting. Can we talk about the floods now? I'm interested to know when did it come onto your radar? I've heard that it was a lot of sleepless nights during the first couple of weeks. Can you just walk us through that journey and what that experience was like for you? I can, but having said that, I need to be careful what I say because there is a class action lawsuit hanging over the city's head. So some aspects, if you sense that I'm shying away from that, I am for a reason.

But the, I mean, the freshet on the Fraser, every spring, or sorry, every spring I start thinking about it than watching the Fraser River. I was more afraid of the Fraser doing something to our Matsui Dyke, under the dike, actually, than overtopping. And it looks like fresh at the peak of the freshette is today, and we're fine, at least on the surface. Now, tomorrow morning, something, a boil could come up. underneath that dike and disrupt it and, you know, you could have a flood. That's possible. My crystal ball is no better than yours. But getting back to Sumas, I was nervous. I began to get nervous when I saw the forecast for, and we heard this term, at least I think it was only this year. We always called them Pineapple Express when I grew up here. And before that, when I was a

youngster, just a heavy rainfall. But all of a sudden these three atmospheric rivers were coming and looked like they were going to land on the Fraser Valley or the lower mainland. And sure enough, it did. What shocked me in the moment was that one of them, and I can't even remember which one, stalled over Abbotsford, well, probably Bellingham, Abbotsford, Mission. I don't know how far it went. A lot of this information we didn't become aware of until after the fact. I had been told, or it looked like this was going to be an event like 1990. Well, in 1990 was the last time we had water, significant water coming across the border. And I thought to myself when I heard that on the news or wherever it was that, oh, well, I think we can handle that.

But we were watching, and all of a sudden, the Fraser River, given what was happening in further up country, and we saw the devastation and the canyon and the Coca-Halla, and like, I'd never seen that in my life. But a lot of that was after the fact again. Had somebody told me that 48 hours earlier, maybe things would have been different, but we had to close the, I'm saying all that, we had to close the floodgames. at Barrowtown because the Fraser was rising to a level that was higher than the Sumas River, which comes from the U.S. And the minute those floodgates are closed, and they have been closed now for probably two weeks. So the Sumas River starts to rise because there's nowhere for that water to go. You can't drain it out of Sumas prairie because it is a bowl or a drain former lake.

so the water kept coming and it kept coming but I still wasn't super nervous because I thought well if this is equivalent to a 1990 event we should be okay but what we learned afterwards is that this was nowhere near 1990 this was way more rain and of course the nooksack breached the bank said Everson there is no dike there and I'll come back to that because there's a reason why there's no dike there but all of a sudden

I'm told 20% now this is all after the fact because they still don't really know what's going what has happened south of the border but on a call that I was all on and it's public so I don't think I'm saying anything out of turn because you could go listen to it yourself

take with the grain of salt our reading on the Nooksack River. I says, you know, that's great for me to hear this now. This is about maybe a month ago. And I'm still learning things of what's going on on the U.S. side since the 1990 flood. But I went up on a helicopter. Why? I think to see what it looked like from the air.

Because the floodgates were closed. The water was rising. And I wasn't sure what was going to happen. But you could have said, I'll send up some person. Oh, no, no, no, that's not. You don't know me then. But that's what I'm saying. I want to hear what the logic was as to why you?

Why couldn't it be somebody else? Well, it could have been somebody else. And maybe with a different mayor, it might have been somebody else. But I took up the city manager and the general manager of engineering. And I wanted to have a look at what was going on across the, what did it look like south of the border? because we were still under COVID. So you just couldn't jump in a car, even though I was a mayor. Well, first of all, I couldn't drive there anymore because Sumas had six feet of water at the south end of Sumas City.

But the minute we got close, I'm guessing we were probably over the penitentiary on King Road. I could already see, you know, hearing that there's water and Sumas Prairie that's rising is one thing. Seeing it is something totally different. I thought, oh, he smokes. I could see, and as we got closer, I could see that the water was already coming over a part of the dyke. And I turned to Peter, and I said, boy, this is, now I think this is after we declared, you know,

those 36 days are, like they blurred into one another. So I'd have to revisit some of the notes of our staff to help me reconstruct that, but I want to, because now I could tell from our staff they were nervous because how much longer are those, is the Fraser River going to be higher than the Sumas River? And we don't have answers for that. You know, even now they projected we were going to have one in a hundred year return on the Fraser River. Well, that turned out to be not true. It was closer to one in ten, which makes me feel much more comfortable today. But at the time, we had imperfect. information, and we don't know what we don't know.

But I told Peter, I said, that dike's going to break somewhere. And sure enough, later that day, I think it was, it did break. It's just a question of when and where, because we had, I think, 17 kilometers of dike on the Sumas River, and it broke initially in two, but two spots, the big breach, which was about six kilometers upstream of Barrow, and then the Coal Road, at the Coal Road was the second one. But there was an additional seven that we discovered after the fact. And we've repaired all those temporary and we're waiting for provincial funding

to make the permanent repairs, which we need to do before November of this year. Because we could have the same event. You know, a one, that dike is a one in 50, I think it was built a one in 50 year event. that doesn't mean, okay, we've had it and nothing happens for 50 years. That just means there's a, I think with a 1 in 50, there's a 2% chance that can happen every year. Yeah. And people don't understand that.

Yeah, and this is a problem that places like New Orleans face. I think that New Orleans is interesting because there are parallels to me with biblical stories of Prepare for the Flood. And that story and the corruption that seems to exist in their community really places barriers towards them being able to address their flooding problems because there is widespread corruption there. And so it seems to act as a barrier towards them getting out of the circumstances that they know could be coming.

Well, I think we spend way more time talking about seismic upgrades and far less, if at all, about flood risk. And I think the flood risk is the bigger risk. This comes back to infrastructure. Infrastructure costs money. But the initial capital cost is not the biggest expense. The biggest, whether it's a building, a school, I don't care what it is. The initial capital, or a piece of equipment, the initial capital cost will be far less than the ongoing maintenance over 40 or 50 years.

And those dikes were built after the 1948 flood, and not a lot has been done. of them are seismic. All of the dikes were studied by the province, and a report came out in 2015, that it was only a small percentage of the dikes in the lower mainland meet standard. So we've all known this, but what gets in the way is the cost, the money. It's a lot of money. But whether it's Calgary or the Red River, it seems like we have to have a disaster, and then things get built. It would have been cheaper, far less expensive, to fix the dikes that in our

report, there was about $600 million in $2018, I think. Then now it's going to be 2.2.3, 2.8, depending on which options. And the Barrowtown pumps, or not the Barrow Town, a new pump station on the Sumas River is like, it needs to be done like yesterday. yesterday, that will replace the volume of water that goes through the, or that would have gone through the floodgates when they're open. So now we could pump the water to the other side and into the fraser so that the water never, ever again, will back up to, because that dike was 7.1 meters, that's like 23 and a half feet. That's the wall of water that, when it broke, that ended up coming into Sumas bowl and flooding out the farmers eight, nine feet of water. water, which they hadn't seen in 100 years. So that is being upgraded? The Barrow Town is? Well, that's part of our plan.

Okay. Now, there's lots of voices from across Canada speaking into this, both for and against, and telling us what should or shouldn't happen in Sue Mass Prairie. Interesting. Which... Why is that? Well, it's like a lot of topics. People who know nothing about what Sue Mass Prairie is going on in Sue Mass Prairie or the

most productive farmland in all of Canada, and that we produce 50s. 50% of the dairy eggs, poultry, chickens that are consumed in British Columbia comes from Avidsford. When you add Chilliwack to that, it's like 80%. I had no idea. And so, you know, if you're going to displace all those people, kick them off the land, they are going to go where and produce this food where? Delta's anywhere in the world, the best agricultural productive land is along rivers. Why? Because long before people showed up on the scene, there was soils that were deposited and decayed and deposited over millennium, many millennium.

And that's the productive land that's close to water, which you need. Because when you don't get the rain, it doesn't grow. So it's complex and complicated. But I'm hoping that we're going to hear fairly soon, but I think there's people that think we're going too fast. And the one thing, and this gets back to council's direction, this time, in 1990, after 1990, there was all sorts of studies that were done for five years, committee meetings, all the rest of it. And it all ended up in big binders that were put on shelves and nothing ever happened. I was determined, and this council was determined, that we weren't going to let that happen this time. We were going to invest in the plan, and we spent our residents' taxpayer dollars to develop that plan with consultants.

Is it perfect? No. But is it a plan? Absolutely. And the first, the key is a new pump station on the Sumas River, not to replace barotong because that does a canal. So that'll stay. but we want to reinforce it so that never again do 300 people from East Abbotsford and Chilliwack have to come over in the middle of the night and do a sandbag assembly line to protect that

piece of infrastructure because had that pump station flooded, we still probably would just about now be opening Highway 1. What was that like? What has it been like to see the power of community in its most sincere form? It's unbelievable. I mean, I have never been so proud, not just of our community, but neighboring Chiloac, Mission, Langley, people from Burnaby and Surrey and Vancouver, people from out of province who came here. They flew into Abbotsford Airport to help from Calgary and Edmonton and even from Ontario. Like, I was blown away.

I expected it in our community because I've always known that Abbotsford was a very caring and giving community. Samaritan's purse, when they came, they were worldwide relief organization, they were in New Orleans, many other disasters around the globe, came, they made an arrangement with the provincial government, they set up an Abysford, they said they, in all of the places that they had ever been, they had never had the kind of volunteer response that they had in Abisford. They said, in fact, there was, we had too many volunteers, we had to turn some away. We didn't have enough work for them, or we couldn't manage the work. We should have brought more supervisory staff, but they didn't know that at the time either. So I was very proud of our community and the farming community in particular. They are helping one another unbelievably and still are. And I intend to meet with many of them after this lawsuit is out of the way because I was meeting with farmers one-on-one until that lawsuit hit.

and then our lawyers told me you can't have those meetings anymore because there may be things that you will say that will be held against you by even apologizing could be viewed as totally I says yes I know that I had that lecture when I was in the private sector where you shut your mouth in and let us do the talking and we know how far we can go but but there's many farmers out there that have been very grateful for the response and there are a few that aren't happy about it. And I understand that. I've talked to enough the heartache and the letters. I just received a bundle of letters from residents and farmers in Sumas Prairie, and they are heart-wrenching.

I knew that. I'd heard some of these stories. Some of these stories I will never talk about in public were farmers, you know, what happened to their animals. And I mean, I saw grown men six foot two, six foot four, break down and cry because they had to shoot their cows because they were going to drown. They couldn't, but they couldn't do it. So their friends where their neighbors came and helped them. And one in particular, I was, yeah, I was shocked at the stories I heard. And so all of that bore on me.

Some people said, well, why did you break down in some of those press conferences? because of all of these stories that were in my head. People asked you that? People asked why you would break down during such a dark time in your community? Yeah, there was a couple of from the media that asked me that question. And I was brutally honest with them because I said many of them are my friends. And I know that they've lost a lot, if not everything, in some instances. And so I know it was like to be poor and to lose everything.

My parents, everything that they had was taken away in the 19th. 1930s, well, after the, sorry, in 1917, and then they lived like animals. They had nothing. My dad says, you don't know what hungry is until you go for four or five days without any food, and you start eating bark off trees to fill your stomach. That's hunger. Not missing a meal or two here and saying, oh, I'm hungry, dad. So all of that stuff was in my head. And so, So, yeah, there was times, you know, even the letters that I wrote, my wife and I read them all, that's a couple of weeks ago. I mean, some of it I brought tears to my eyes because I could empathize with them and feel for what was going on. And I feel helpless that I can't do anything because I don't have the checkbook for that.

Disaster financial assistance. I'm writing some letters right now because I'm advocating. I said, I will take those letters and make sure they get to senior levels of government to the prime minister, to the premier, and other ministers, and that probably will be going out in the next couple of days. And then I want to follow it up. I said, if you need me to come to Ottawa, I will come. We have to help because there's some people eight months later haven't received a dime. And that's not okay. Yeah. You have a unique approach to your leadership style that would, as you kind of described, other mayors might not have taken that approach. Where does that come from for you, where you couldn't just send up somebody else in the helicopter, where you wanted to see it for yourself, where you were honest in press conferences. When I interviewed Tyler Olson from the Fraser Valley Current, he talks about how they don't attend most press conferences because they get a lot of smoke. They get a lot of rehearsed statements.

that don't deliver anything that press, like a press document that a press release, they couldn't read off of that. Where does that come from where you're a real person and that really stepped up in that moment and it's not a perfect comparison, but the way Mr. Zelensky stepped up and said, I don't need a flight out of here. I need ammo. Ammo. Those leaders, we don't see a lot of them.

They're pretty rare for a lot of people, as Mr. McElpine sort of alluded to, that was a moment in time where you really took up your position and made it maybe more than it needed to be in terms of like other mayors could have been like, we'll send out a team and they'll go look into it and they'll figure it out and they'll let us know and then I'll tell you what they found. You said, I need to be there. I need to know. I need to understand. I'll read the letters. I'll look into this. Where does that come from for you where others may have taken a passenger seat? Well, in order for you to communicate honestly and openly with your community, wherever you are,

whether it's here or Alberta or whatever local government or provincial or federal, people want, they just want to know, even if it's bad news. But the only way I can communicate openly and honestly is if I have a good grasp, of the facts of what's going on on the ground. And then I can articulate. The only way I know how to do it, and I did this in the private sector, is I have to get on the job site. I have to see this for myself so that I'm not hearing somebody else tell me, well, this is

what's out there. There have been times as a mayor where I've read a letter that, or a speech, and I would ask, who wrote this? and they would tell me and they want to know why right away. Well, because I know that's not true. I have experience in there, and that was once true, but not today. So things have changed, so we have to change that. And of course, they do right away.

But this is where computers and technology come in and databases. So once it gets in a database, people just go in copy and paste and think it's always like that. Well, no, things change. But coming back to the flood, where does that come from? I hate to be sound like a broken record but it the root of that comes back to my faith I I know what I'm I know I have to do this it is only I am the mayor I can't send some staff person out there and face the music now I happen to be fortunate enough that I had a certain set of skills and construction I built railways railway grades and dykes are very

similar. There are differences. There's no floodgates and stuff like that. But I didn't have to have a lesson in what was going on out there. George Ferguson and I talked about the Sue Mass Perry many times when I became the mayor. And he was one of my supporters and said, you have to run. I said, why do I have to run, George? Because he says, I think you could bring something to the table. And so I've thought of him, he's passed away, but I've thought of him often during the floods and Dave Kendall, both are not here. But they encouraged me, and in a way, they even mentored me a little bit when I didn't know they were mentoring me when I was much younger. But all of that, my family, this is my community.

You know, if somebody parachutes in and, you know, I've only lived here a year or two, they would have no idea about background on any of this. So I always tell people, be careful who you elect to any position. Whose interests are they there for? Unfortunately, I see this in business, and when I sold my rail business, I saw it in New York on Wall Street. People who had graduated with MBAs from Harvard and Yale and Princeton, very, very smart people. But they didn't know the difference between right and wrong. And so they were making decisions and asking me to come along. alongside as the CEO of their American or Canadian branch because they'd bought us out.

And they wanted me to sign on things for the quarter so that the number that the number that they had given to the street that they would hit, they would hit, which meant fudging books. I says, I'm not doing that. And their CFO told me, Henry, you don't own this company anymore. And I says, you're right, Mike. don't. But I have a fiduciary obligation to the shareholders, and I am not telling my staff who have watched me operate for 30 years and now tell them to do something different so that you can fudge your books to make the street market, the market. And of course, it wasn't long

after that in the U.S. they declared bankruptcy because they were doing some things that they ought not to have been doing. But I can tell you the pressure to conform. under those circumstances is enormous. But when you aren't afraid of to stand up for truth, and I get nervous when I hear my truth, your truth, I don't know where that comes from, but there is no such thing. I think we're talking opinions.

Truth is truth. Gravity is gravity. You jump out of a building, you're going to hurt yourself. I don't need anybody to prove me different. But anyways So where does that willingness When there is pressure so many conform Was that through seeing your parents overcome challenge

Is this from your faith that you're able to see That it's just important to stay consistent Because so many times it's easier to conform It's maybe the consequences are down the road And maybe you can see that in the future but it's easier to conform and so it's easier to just get along and so where does that come from where it's it's no negotiations there's no deliberations over how can we bend this or flex that where did that come from when when did that start or has that always just been your approach no no

that approach was I didn't have that approach until I had my conversion and I was 38 it was September of 1988, in fact, but it's all of that. It's family. It's my grandkids and my kids watching what I'm doing. And if they don't see consistency in what I say and what I do, I call that hypocrisy. And kids are much more adept at smelling that out than adults are. I think we get so jaded after a while. Well, okay. And my faith is a big part of part of that. Scripture, it's not a book to, you know, I have way more joy and happiness after I was, after I was 38 years old than prior to that. I had an empty life. From the outside, it looked like I had a very successful life, except if you really got to know me and I allowed

you to get inside my head in a conversation, you would have found out very quickly that you're not happy. And I wasn't. And my wife knew that. But afterwards, I had a purpose in life. I had a compass and a guide where I sometimes use True North. I know where True North is. And do I hit the mark all the time? Absolutely not. You're heading in the right direction. I mess up many times, and if you don't believe me, just ask my wife, and she'll tell you, or my kids. But there's consistency there that when I mess up, I also deal with it and make it right if I can, or at least to ask for their forgiveness that I didn't do the right thing.

I should have done that, and I did this. And nine times out of ten, people are very forgiving. There's the odd one that, no, you're a turkey. you're always going to be a turkey. I think it's the mistake that so many on higher levels in politics make, which is, we'll just say the nice thing or we'll spin it this way. And I do think people feel that and it makes them mistrustful and then it makes them not vote. And then there's questions of was that the goal the whole time is to just discourage people from thinking that their vote matters. I often feel like that's how politics is done, which is it just feels like you're not making a difference.

And then when you don't get the truth, it's hard to know which party to vote for in that circumstance because you don't know which one's going to be honest with you. And they lump everybody in that basket then. Everybody's in it for themselves. And when you look at the rating of politicians, well, actually all of our institutions, I don't care which it is. Where they were 50 years ago and where they are today, the trend is downhill, big time. and it affects our whole society because everybody gets jaded and think that everybody's in this for themselves. I know many other politicians who are trying to do what I have been doing and are doing it. But there's not enough that, I don't know, that's maybe not the right way to say it.

It is very hard. And I was fortunate to be in a place where I don't, need to be reelected. I'm not looking to the next election because that's what too many politicians do. It's all about getting reelected and their agendas. My agenda has been for the people and the city. And I haven't always met the mark, but I'm hoping that history will record that I left it in a better place than I found it. And I've tried to do that in my personal life with any piece of property that I, or building so that it contributes to the well-being of the community as a whole for the common good. And we have lost something of that common good. It was there in spades

50 years ago when I saw, you know, if there's a fire or something and a building burnt down, all of the neighbors came together and they were erected that building in short order with volunteer labor. There was an insurance company's around then. But that's all being replaced now with, well, government's going to look after all of my problems. Well, I got news for you. Government doesn't have enough money to look after everything. And we become so dependent that we're missing out so much on the community building aspect of it. And we need to get back to that. Yeah. And we taste just glimpses of it during things like Barrowtown. And we see it And we all have a warm feeling afterwards.

Often people struggle in their familial lives and then a flood hits, whether literal or metaphorical, and everything comes crashing down. You were likely placed under intense pressure, not likely you were. You talk about in one of the articles that you were lacking sleep, that it was a lot of work. In the interview, you were like, and just now I'm starting to. to be able to get like five hours of sleep and that was a big step in the right direction for your for your mental well-being. What was it like to go through that? I'm sure that there was an immense sense of duty during that, but to be able to lean on people and to know that you, you weren't alone in it. It wasn't just on you that you were able to rely on other people

for maybe for your dinners or for a little bit of solace to distract you or to calm you down, help you work through problems. What was that like to just have these? experience of not being able to sleep and work incredibly hard during that period? Well, I think I said earlier, it was like those 36 days were like a blur. One day just morphed into another and into another. And the time actually, when I look back now, went really quickly. There was so much going on. You know, I'm not even sure I had enough time to think about all the things that could have

gone wrong that didn't. But I had a staff around me and a council that was trusting. I didn't have to call committee meetings to make decisions to do stuff, counsel and together with our staff, because they're the ones who deal with this infrastructure day in and day out and know far more about it than, I mean, I learned a lot about our infrastructure that I did not know before, but they knew way more than I did going into it.

But I also had enough experience that I could take all that information and relay it in a way that gave comfort to the people in Sue Mass Prairie especially, but even to others who told me later that you seemed to be so calm. And I says, well, there was, you know, I was like a duck. There was, yeah, it looks calm on top, but I can tell you that I was paddling my feet, trying to get my arms around all of this stuff. But again, it's just I had friends around me. No, I couldn't.

I hardly talked to them. But they would send me text messages and emails, just encouraging me and, you know, saying that we don't know where you're getting all this information from because you seem like you're an expert in everything, which I'm not. But I had good staff around me that helped me. And I trusted them, again, a relationship. Had that flood happened in the first year of being the mayor, I'm not sure if I would have been quite as trusting because when I came as a counselor, I was against the referendum. I know I'm digging up old bones now for some people, but I was opposed to it. Sorry, the referendum? For our $300 million water supply plant, which would have really broken us as a city.

We were already broke. But it was turned down, 7525. And some people thought I did it as a political stunt. I did it because we didn't need it. We still don't need it. Had we built that plant, we wouldn't be using it. Or we wouldn't be using the existing one. But I came out, made a very hard decision.

I said, I'm voting against the referendum because we don't need it. We will need it one day, but not now. We're good for 10 to 15 years, and we're coming up to that, and we are looking at expanding the water supply, but it's just being honest with, and this was the other leg, transparent government, to tell people what you're doing and why you're doing it. And some will still not like it or understand it, but at least you've said, well, this is the way it is, and I invite you to come, the trains leaving the station. I'd love for you to get on board. But if you aren't, I still know where we're going and we're going to go. Interesting. Do you have any advice for people in leadership roles based on what you went through during that period?

Is there anything you can recommend to people based on? It's such a monumental event that will stick in the lives of many who saw firsthand or who experienced it in some way or another. But there's such a learning experience that you must have gone through. Do you have any words of wisdom or advice for people during times of immense pressure and stress? Well, I would encourage people there as people in every organization that you would hold in higher esteem than others. And that doesn't make people better or worse. It's just some people, it doesn't take you long to figure out, does this person know what they're talking about or not? And when you find those people, trust them with what their roles are.

Don't micromanage or get into the, so often politicians get into the weeds or I say playing with the train. And they will destroy, that will destroy the culture of an organization, even a good organization. Because that's not your job as an elected official. your job is policy and governance, good governance. And when your staff sees that and that you are serious about your policy, they will bring you reports that line up with the vision and mission that council has in their strategic plan that they've laid out for the next four years. And when they do that, people shouldn't be surprised that council approves those reports

because they're doing exactly what we asked them to do. Bring those reports in line with where we're going. So it's not rubber stamping. It's actually good governance. And then be open and honest. So many politicians deny stuff when they say it didn't happen, when it did happen. And the minute that happens, that trust relationship is broken. Our currency in government or in any institution is based on trust.

When the public loses its trust in us, and no matter where you are, you can't function properly. And everybody's looking over your shoulder because they said, well, like, you broke that trust over there. How can I trust you with anything else? And I have worked really, really hard. Are there examples probably, I can't think of one right now, where I made a decision that people would say you broke my trust. There are a couple, and they came out of my community of faith actually when I raised the pride flag for the first time in Abbottesford, and I did it myself. Why? Because we didn't have a flag policy. We did actually, but it was a verbal one, that we would fly every flag request that had ever come to us we agreed to. Not in my term, but previous. There's history here. So for me to say to counsel, we should turn this down, would fly in the face of that.

So we're not going to fly the flag because of what? We have nothing to base it on except feelings or whatever. I said, that's not good enough. We don't have a policy. We're going to have, we have an unwritten one, and that was to fly every flag. And there was some in the, there was not one pastor that came after me, but there was a number, there was a number of people who I knew in my community of faith that said, how could you do that as a Christian?

I said, very simple. These people are part of our community, too. This is their city hall, too. They pay taxes. And I will stand there. I'm not going to send somebody else out, a staff member, to pull that flag up the flagpole. I'm going to do it myself, because there's a message in that. And I mean what I say.

I want to treat everybody with special treatment, not just some groups at the exclusion of other groups. Now, for some people, that's hard message to hear, but it's one that we need to get on board with. It's particularly hard because people do feel like a group helped get them elected or a community is the people that are representing. But as something like mayor, you're representing everyone, even the people who didn't vote for you or the people who didn't vote. acting in that best interest and that's a very principled approach and I think one of the challenges for people to understand the beauty of law because I'm I disparaged the practice of law occasionally because I think that there is elitism that takes place with lawyers and I don't like that but there's a beauty in the principles there's a beauty in knowing what the values are and following

them through. John Horrigan has chosen not to run again, and I think that there's a beauty in the fact that he's going to serve the community without the weight on his shoulders of stressing about a re-election and an honesty he can deliver that he might not have been able to if he was considering it or if he ran again and then lost. You've done something similar. You've basically announced that you have chosen not to run again, which has freed you in this conversation to speak openly. And for the rest of your term, to be honest with the public and to have a conversation, whether it be at press meetings or any dialogues where you can not have the weight on your shoulders of, is this going to push

a certain part of the community away? Is this going to be misinterpreted? You don't have those pressures. What was the process not to run again? Where did that come from? Well, it goes way back to before I ran for counsel. My wife and I discussed this at, some length, if I'm going to run, we together, you and I, because we're a team. And I could not do this without the support. 100% of the support of my spouse. She is right beside me all the way. That doesn't mean she makes decisions at council. That's not what I'm talking about. But if she was not supportive, it would be a hard role because I would come home to someone who was probably not happy that I spent way too many hours away from her. So we committed to two terms if the people

wanted me. If they didn't want me to want me in 2018, I had lots of other things I could do. But I did get reelected. Third term was optional, conditional upon my health, whether I still enjoyed and what I was doing, and was I making a difference in the community. I think on all three of those points, I probably should have run again. I got a few health issues that weren't there four years ago, but nothing serious. But I am 72, so stuff happens. When the older you get, the more stuff happens. But our family changed, and that is a dynamic I did not see coming. Our oldest grandson is getting married to a wonderful young lady in Ohio, so he's moving over there. That's usually how this works. The husband or the man always goes to wherever the spouse is and her family, so that's

happening. So he's on a process for a visa, a fiancé visa, so he can legally live in the United States. Three other grandkids moved up country, and so they're five hours away from us by car. So I have one grandson left and a daughter and her husband. We are a very close family. I modeled for our family, what my mom and dad modeled. We got together at least once a week for dinner together to have conversation about lots of stuff, including politics. And so I miss that. There's still a few things my wife and I would like to do while we still have the mental capacity and the physical ability to do those things because, you know, life is not, we're not assured of tomorrow. But if I live to be 82 years old, which is the average age of a man in Canada, I've got 10 more years, or I refer to it as 10 inches left out of 82 inches.

What am I going to do with that 10 inches? Well, another term would eat up 4 inches and I have 6 left. My dad was a year older. I'm a year younger than my dad when he died. Longevity is not in our genes, not so much on my wife's side. Her aunts all lived to be 95 and 103 and a half, one of them in Mission. So all of that came together. Plus, I think sometimes we hang around too long.

Like if I ran, everybody was telling me, Henry, you'll have no opposition, probably. But if you do, you're going to slam dunk, you're going to get reelected. Yeah, but my goal wasn't to get reelected. So one council member has announced that he will run for the office of mayor. I doubt that he would have done that if I would have stayed on. And he's younger than I am. And so this is an opportunity for him to step into that role. And there was, because I voted against the referendum going back to 11, I lost a lot of friends.

There was a lot of people who didn't want to see me. they thought I was going to tear the city apart if I became the mayor when I ran. And so I kind of came into the position with significant opposition to me being the mayor now where everybody says we want you to stay. It's kind of ironic the way it's flipped. I says, well, I'm still the same person. And I always said to myself, I want to look in the mirror at the end of my time. Whenever that comes, am I still the same person?

Because if I'm not, then I've failed. And I've become something, somebody else. And so far, I'm still looking in the mirror and saying my values, the way I do things, it doesn't mean that they're right or that others who do it differently are wrong. I guess that's probably a better way to say it. But I have a big heart for our community. and I want to see it succeed, and I will do everything in my power to make that happen or to provide that. Not just myself. I have been very blessed with a council that gave me a lot of rope.

Yeah. That is an amazing, amazing statement. Can you tell us about this book that you're working on, that you've been working on for a long time? Do you have a plan for its release? Probably after I'm out of office, and for sure, if I would have run another term, this book would have sat on the shelf. It started for another term because some people say, oh, yeah, well, now he's using his office to promote the book. That's not what this is about. This book is not about me. It's about my mother and father, and their forefathers and their trek as teenagers fleeing Russia, the Ukraine, southern Ukraine, very close to Zaparizia. I always said Zaparaja, but I see the news media calls it Zaporizia, so I'm using that phraseology.

It started in 1985. The book did. The book. Well, it came after I read Mitchener's book, Poland. A friend gave it to me, and I read it on a beach in Hawaii with my wife and kids there. Many, well, a long time ago. And I said, wow, I keep hearing stories from my grandmother about Poland. Like, what the dickens were they doing in Poland?

Because they were from the Mennonites from the Mennonite villages in the southern Ukraine. So I started doing research. And when I went to Winnipeg to meet with C.P.Rail, I always allowed four or five hours that I could spend at the Mennonite Historical Museum in Winnipeg to do research. And I became fascinated. And part of this ties into my conversion experience in 1988 that I talked to three years later. But that was the spark that got me going. And I did that for a number of years. I taped my father Saturday mornings, go there for breakfast, and put the tape recorder on and just talk to them, ask questions.

So I have this all on tape, which I'm so thankful for. And then the company started to grow across Canada in the 1990s, and I kind of put it aside. And then the sale of the company, so I put it aside. So I put it aside. I took it up again in 2004 after I retired from the rail business. And my mother and father invited me to come, Velma and I, to come to Hawaii because they had a two-bedroom condo that they had booked and their friends had bailed on them two weeks before. No, I bailed. Something came up and they couldn't go.

So my mom says, you're not doing anything. So why didn't you and Velma come along? I says, wow. I said, I haven't been on a vacation with you since I was twice. years old. I'm not sure how this is going to work. Anyways, make a long story short, I said, yes, on condition that I could bring my tape recorder and we'll pick up on the tapes. And so we did. Had a wonderful time, best time I've ever had with my parents. I mean, I always, my dad was a mentor besides my dad. And on the way home,

I told my wife on the plane, I said, I have this eerie feeling that this might be the last time I get to do that with my dad. And sure enough, a year later, he was gone. So then I didn't, I didn't, I just didn't feel like doing it again. And so I picked it up when my mother turned 90, which is a little, well, coming up two years. And she said, you know, you've been working on this book since 1985. She says, am I going to have to die before this book gets written, finished? I said, okay, mom, I get it.

I'm not a book writer. And so I engaged somebody about 14. 14, 15 months ago, and she has been working not full-time, but three-quarter time, I think, on it. And we're just in the final chapters of editing. So I'm hoping by my mother's birthday is October 23, I'm hoping by that time it's in print, and I can present it to her on our 92nd birthday. You have an amazing, amazing story. It has been such an honor to be able to have this conversation and to hear about not only yourself, but your parents, everything that they've endured for you to be here today, how you overcame such adversity as a young person, how you reimagined who you could become and set your sights higher on the potential that you could give.

And that has led into making a difference in so many different ways. I think that you stand out, at least in the Fraser Valley, as a role model after those floods. I think you came onto people's radar, as I said, very similar to Mr. Zelensky as this is what leadership looks like. And it isn't people often have write books on what leadership is and how it takes place, but you feel it. You feel when someone's setting the example that makes you want to do better, that makes you go, Wow. To be that person to set that example, to have a community so humbled by your willingness to step up, I think we're incredibly lucky when individuals like you come around and share your gifts with the community because I think it makes us all want to step up in a different way. It's certainly how I felt after seeing the floods was like, he's in the helicopter. He's not just waiting for like someone else to do that. Like that makes you kind of remember like, wow, this is this is what it feels like. for someone to take on that leadership role and to fill it to the best of their own abilities. And throughout this conversation, I've been really inspired by how you approach adversity,

how you're willing to look at your mistakes, own them, but also look for how you can do better in the next run. And I think at bare minimum, that is the example you set for other people on how they can move forward. So I really appreciate you being willing to make the trip out and share such amazing stories with us. And I cannot wait to be one of the first purchasers of that book. Well, for you, I'm going to bring a copy, so I'm not in it for the money either. So I just have to wrestle now with how many copies to make for the first edition. But I see in you similar things. I did a little research because, quite frankly, I was not aware you were doing a podcast until, I don't know when the request came in like a month ago.

So I did a little research on you. And having now met you in person, I can see. that you are going places and I mean that in the right sense of the word I think you're going to make not I think I know you're going to make a great contribution in your life you're just starting on chapter maybe two or three of a 30 chapter book but I will I will be following what you are doing and listening to the guests I've listened to some of them, but I haven't listened to all of them. But I did listen to the one with Daryl Plexas and a few others, but I'm inspired with you and where you are in life. And just keep on,

I don't know everything about you that makes you tick, but I have some idea. And just keep doing that because I really like what I see in you. And I think you will be a bridge between our different cultures in our communities, both here and further out. I certainly hope so. I have the pleasure of learning from individuals like yourself. So I take in this. Usually I go and re-listen to it and try and take as much as way as I can so that I can do better in the future and learn from brilliant people like yourself. Because I think that's the mistake young people often make is we think the world's so different now. there's nothing else to learn. And I think individuals like yourself and your parents show that

that's simply not the case that a lot of history does repeat itself. And it's important to go back and hear those stories and learn from people. So again, thank you, Henry. I've learned so much and I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for the invite. Thank you.