Shaun Newman Podcast - SNP Archives #31 - Richard Starke

Episode Date: October 13, 2021

Born in 1960 He attained the degree of Doctor of Veterinary Medicine in 1983, help build a thriving business (Lloydminster Animal Hospital), served as MLA from 2012-2019 for the area Vermilion-Lloydminster & was the minister for Tourism, Parks & Recreation in 2013. He is a father, husband, volunteer & community pillar Let me know what you think Text me 587-217-8500

This is Glenn Healy. Hi, this is Braden Holby. This is Daryl Sutterin. Hi, this is Brian Burke. This is Jordan Tutu. This is Keith Morrison. This is Kelly Rudy. Hi, this is Scott Hartnell.

Hey, everybody. My name is Steele-Fer. This is Tim McAuliffe of Sportsnet, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Wednesday. Hope everybody's having a great week. Hope you bundled up. Man, she got chilly awfully quick.

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give Wade Gertner a call, right? 7808, 808, 50, 25. And if you're heading into any of these businesses, let them know you heard about them from the podcast, right? Now let's get on that T-Barr 1, Tale of the Tate. Born in 1960, he attained the degree of doctor of veterinary medicine in 1983. He would then join the team at Lloydminster Animal Hospital and eventually become a partner.

He served as MLA from 2012 to 2019 for the area of Vermillion and Lloydminster. In 2013 he was appointed the minister for tourism, parks, and recreation. He's a father, husband, volunteer, and community pillar. I'm talking about Richard Starkey. So buckle up. Here we go. February 14th, our women do not love us today, do they?

It is Valentine's Day. I don't know how you signed off on this, but today I am joined by Mr. Richard Stark. So first off, thanks for hopping in. I'm happy to be here. Well, basically, like I was just saying, we want to talk a little bit. bit about your life. You grew up, your younger years were in Emmington. That's correct. Yeah. You know, when you go back to the early days, what comes to mind? Well, I grew up in a family where my parents were both immigrants to Canada. They had both come from Germany in the early 50s.

They met here in Canada and were married in 1956 and my sister was born a year later and I was born in 1960. But we grew up in a household where hard work was really emphasized, especially by my dad. My mom was a homemaker, but that was still a huge, you know, that was a huge commitment to us as kids. And she also did lots of volunteer work. In fact, years later, she was recognized as she received the Canada Volunteer Award. They flew Mom and Dad down to Ottawa, and she had this big ceremony, and the whole bit she still had the medal hanging. in her living room when she passed away. So the influence of my parents was, you know, that you worked hard and you tried to be,

do any job you were assigned, you tried to do as best as you possibly could. And they were sticklers for that. And so I actually grew up speaking German. I spoke German before I spoke English. And, you know, once, you know, you started going to school and everything, of course, your English then became predominant. But in our home, we spoke German most of the time. I mean, mom and dad had only been in the country for less than a decade.

So it was an interesting time. But, you know, very much, you know, small house in, you know, the Calder neighborhood in North Edmonton. And then we moved over to Kensington because we needed a little bit bigger house. And we were in Kensington. And actually, that's where I grew up. And my mom lived there until she passed away eight years ago. So that was home.

And our home life was dominated by school and by music. You know, mom and dad were absolutely adamant that we had to put our focus into schoolwork. And the second thing that we did very actively was music. I played both the electric organ and the accordion as a child and actually, you know, entered music festivals and the whole bit every year. and unfortunately I enjoyed sports. It was never all that good at any of them, but I enjoyed them.

And the only thing I did major in terms of sports as a kid is I spent one year playing soccer for a German sports club in Edmonton. There was a club called the Friends of Berlin. And this was a club that was mostly expatriate Germans that came from Berlin. And we happen to be very good friends with the president of the club and his son, like David, their son was basically same age as I was, and Dave was on the team,

and Mr. Pol was coaching. And so they invited me to play. And this was, mom and dad were not very sure about this, but played one season. I had a ball, absolutely loved it, and we crushed the rest of the league. I mean, and the funny thing was is our team, even though we were sponsored by this German sports club, I think Dave and I were the only two Germans on the, or kids of German descent on the team. We had Ukrainian kids,

of Polish kids and Chinese kids and kids that had been three generations in Canada. It was hilarious. We had a very diverse team, but we're good. So a man of your stature never got convinced to go into any other sport? Well, I mean, people try to... Tell the listeners, how tall you?

How tall you? Well, I'm 6'6. But, I mean, I'm a lousy basketball player. I'm just, I'm really lousy at it. I mean, I played intermural sports. I'm a lousy basketball player, too. I don't think any team's coming to grab me. You have an excuse.

And, you know, like, no, well, I, I remember when I was in vet school, we, there were three of us in first year that were all six, four and better that signed up for our intramural basketball team for a vet for the veterinary college. And we had a guy in third year who played collegiate basketball for the Huskies for University of Saskatchewan. And he saw the three of us. said, oh, finally, I got some tall guys. And he sent us out, you know, the starting, you know, three forwards. And I think after about five minutes, we were down 25 points or something like

that. And he called the timeout. And he pulled, pulled us off the court. And he said, you guys have to be the worst basketball players I have ever seen. And I thought, gee, thanks, Stu. You know, really nice of you to say that. But yeah, no, basketball, uh, nope, uh, hockey. I wish, I, I wish I could play hockey better. But I don't skate particularly well. And I didn't really start playing hockey to any extent until I got to university. And fortunately, both at the U of A and at U of S, in the intramural leagues, they would have different tiers of hockey. And I was in the anchlers. I was in the anchlers. I was in the ankle benders. And I was even one of the lousier guys in the ankle benders. But I had a ball.

I mean, I loved it. As long as you're having fun. Oh, God, we had fun. Yeah, no, it was a great fun, but I'm a terrible hockey player. Going back to your parents, coming from, that was awesome to get Mr. Stark talking about ankle benders. Yeah, that's great. That's fantastic.

Go back to your parents immigrating from Germany. Did you ever talk to him about the years prior to coming to Canada? Yeah, we did. but I mean I can tell you that that mom and dad had sort of somewhat different pathways to come to Canada. My mom was actually born in Ukraine. She's of German descent and she was born in a, and this was commonplace in the 1920s. She was born in a village of German Lutherans in the southern Ukraine. And when Stalin rose to power, Stalin decided that he really didn't want these Germans there anymore.

and so through a series of purges essentially, he drove the Germans out of Ukraine. My maternal grandfather, my mom's dad, who I never met, in 1936, Russian soldiers rolled into her village in trucks, and all of the men 16 years of age and older were loaded into these trucks and hauled off and they were never seen or heard from it yet. Taken into the gulag.

They were taken to the gulag, basically. So that's what happened to my grandfather. And like I have his middle name, my middle name, Carl is his first name. And that was, and then mom spent a good part of her time basically staying one step ahead of the Red Army. In the World War II, they were running from the Red Army to, you know, escape being captured because they heard full well what the advancing Red Army was doing to Germans, right? My dad was born and raised just on the outskirts of Dresden in what what was.

for time East Germany, but in Dresden, which is this absolutely gorgeous city, which of course, got horrendously firebombed in February of 1945. But my dad wasn't there in 1945 because my dad, as a 15-year-old, had been conscripted and handed a rifle and said, the Russians are that away, go, and was basically sent off to the Russian front as a 15-year-old child soldier. So mom and dad didn't talk a whole lot about some of their experiences, especially through the war. That was that was a time that they didn't talk about and they didn't talk a lot to us about it. We heard other stories that were not necessarily related to the war. My dad talked a little bit about his time as an apprentice, getting his,

the word for it is maista brief. It's essentially a journeyman certificate. But in Germany, professions or trades like being a butcher are held in very high level, and as many trades are in Germany. And my dad attained his maistaf, his journeyman certificate, in being a meat cut or being a butcher. But Germany in the 1950s didn't have a whole lot of need for butchers. There just wasn't a whole lot of meat around.

And my dad had always had this dream of going to North America. He had read basically every book that had been written by this author named Carl Mai. It was a German author who had the same hometown as where my dad was born. My dad was born just outside Dresden in this tiny little place called Rada Boyle. And Radeboil was the hometown of Carl Mai. So my dad had read every Carl Mai book that there was. And Carl Mai wrote about North America. He wrote about, and most of what he wrote was pure total fiction.

because he'd never been to North America. But he talked about, you know, well, for him it was called Cowboys and Indians. You know, that was what he was writing. And Dad had read all those books. And he had, of course, his very romantic picture of what North America was like, especially Canada. And so he came to Canada as a result of that. My mom came to Canada because her younger sister, my aunt, Clara,

had fallen in love with a, young man who was farming near Barhead, Alberta, and they were actually fully ready to go, and they had all the papers ready to go to emigrate to Argentina. My mom, my uncle, my grandmother, they were all going to go to Argentina. And then when my Aunt Clara ended up going to Canada to Barhead to be with my Uncle Albin, my grandmother said, okay, fine, we're going to Canada too. My mom was not happy lady. She was all ready to go to Argentina. But they ended up coming to Canada, the two, a mom and dad met here. But in terms of, you know, talking about some of their experiences, not a lot.

I can tell you that. Not a lot. I mean, I think there was a lot of things that they just kind of suppressed or pushed sort of to the back of their memories. And they didn't care to relive them or to share them with either my sister or myself. Yeah, that's fair. I, uh, that's the, that stuff is, I mean, hasn't been seen. since, well, that's not true though either. I just think it's more and more of that generation is no longer here to even talk about it.

So you can't just go down to the local meat store and sit down with. No, you're right. And it's, you know, everybody handles those sorts of traumatic incidents in different ways, right? And in the case of my parents, they chose, they chose to put their, they chose to put their energies and put their focus on what's in front of them and what the future was going to be. And in their case, they put a lot of their focus on my sister and myself. My sister, I mean, my sister was also very, she was very good in school. She did very well in school.

She also did very well in music and musical competitions and that sort of thing. And then my sister, I mean, she became a doctor. She's a physician in Edmonton, and she's had a very good career as a physician. I was always interested in veterinary medicine. And so I ended up going into veterinary medicine. And so, you know, mom and dad, you know, dad's a butcher working at Canada Packers for close to 40 years. You know, they raised two doctors.

I think they did okay. How about this? What did they try, stories aside from back in Germany? Sure. When they come over to Canada, what were some of the lessons they passed down on? Because, I mean, you can try and hide some of the things they've seen. Sure.

But they would have instilled some things that have probably stuck to you to this day, I bet. Well, both of them, it was show up early. Don't go home till late and be the hardest working person in between. I mean, that could kind of sum up. And anything they tackled, it wasn't good enough for it to be good enough. For them, it had to be done, you know, as well as you possibly could do it. You know, they absolutely strove for excellence. They expected the same thing from us.

You know, we would come home from school and I'd say, you know, I got a 95 on a test. And, you know, they'd say, hey, you know, it's really good. Maybe if you work a little harder next time, it can be 100. You know, they'd be happy with the 95. Don't get me wrong. But they'd say, you know, well, that means there's a little bit of room for improvement there still. You know, that was, that was. And my dad, like, so my dad worked a can of Packers, and that's a union shop.

That was a union environment. And, you know, what my dad did tell me is that there were times where he caught flak from some of the union brass for working too hard and embarrassing some of his coworkers. You know, my dad could work faster and better. I mean, he worked in the department in Canada Packers that basically boned out the beef. Like he would get a side of beef on the rail. He'd lay it down on the table in front of them. and the job of the guys in that department was to carve these sides of beef out, put the meat in one pile, and the bones all went on the conveyor belt in the back.

That was dad's job. And I know because I worked in that department on night shift one summer. You could tell which bones my dad had been working on because there was no meat left on them. Like the skill that he had as a butcher that he'd learned in Germany was unbelievable. Like those bones were absolutely picked clean. like a coyote would have starved to death, eating off the carcasses my dad worked on. You know, everybody else,

there are chunks of meat here, there, and everywhere, but not dads. Dads were just picked clean. And he could do more of those in an hour than anyone else on that table. And he prided himself in that, that he was more productive and he did a better quality job

than anyone else in the department. No one else could touch him. And there were times when some of the union guys said, hey, Alfred, you know, slow down a little, you know, you're kind of, you know, you're kind of making the other guys look bad, you know, and, you know, same thing, like, he, he wouldn't take a 25-minute coffee break when the coffee breaks were only supposed to be 15 minutes. You know, the guys would stretch that a little bit, you know, and I noticed that when I was working night shift, you know, the guys would sort of say, you know, coffee was supposed to start at midnight.

Well, at 5 to 12, they were kind of packing up their knives and heading down to the car, and I said, I thought it was 15 minutes. I said, ah, yeah, nobody keeps track that closely. My dad wouldn't leave until it was time to go. And he was back up on the table. He'd always be the first one back up to the table. What would he say to the guys when they're like, you're making everybody look bad?

He said, I'm hired to do a job. I'm hired to do a job. No, he was never one of the more popular guys in the union. And, you know, some of that stuck with me. Like I understand full well the place of organized labor and labor unions. And they definitely have a role in terms of making sure workers don't get abused, in terms of making sure that workers get a fair wage, that they get reasonable benefits, all of that stuff. I get all of that. I have no trouble with any of that, and I think labor unions play an

important role in doing that. But as I said to some of my colleagues in the legislature who were, you know, labor union stalwarts, I said, when you grow up in a household and hear these other stories from your dad about how the union were telling him not to work so hard, how the union was telling him not to show up five minutes early or ten minutes early for work. And how they're giving them a hard time for that. I said, you know, I'm sorry. I can't have a very positive outlook on labor unions when that's what you grew up with in your house. You know, and some of them are sitting there saying, oh, gee, you know, I said, look, I said, I get it. You know, you folks see all the good sides of labor unions and if and there are some and that's good good for you you know but

understand that that there's also a not so nice side of labor unions and and you know like I say some of the intimidation and some of the bullying that my dad got well my dad couldn't be bullied I mean there there was no way you're going to bully this old German guy you know that that was that was just not going to happen who went to the front lines of 15 years old yeah yeah that that wasn't going to happen that dad was not going to get bullied by anybody but you know Just a snide name-calling and that sort of thing. My dad endured that, and he just sort of said, well, too bad, you know, this is what I do. Mum was no different.

Mum was a fiercely, fiercely proud woman, you know, in terms of, you know, anything that she did, you know, any of the volunteer work that she did, you know, she worked as the treasurer, the bookkeeper for the talent shows in Edmonton for a long, long time. I think it was over 25 years. long after my sister and I had grown up, left down, you know, most of the time when your kids are out of it, you leave, right? Nope, mom stuck with it for another 15 years or something like that. And when she did the books and she did it all by hand, and none of it was done like on a computer or anything like that, if it didn't balance down to the last penny, mom wasn't satisfied. It had to balance to the penny.

You know, it's just the way mom was. Yeah, no, they put their efforts very much into what they were doing and very much was focused. on what we were doing. Can we talk about politics for a few minutes? I know I'm skipping ahead in the story, but... We can bounce around. I wonder why. Was politics something always on your radar?

Because, I mean, you go to school, you become a vet, you own your own business, you're very involved in the community. I can go down the list of things. Were you always attracted to politics? Yes. I mean, short answer, yes. And again, part of that was from my... mom and dad. I mean, mom and dad had both

growing up in an environment where they saw what happened when you lost your rights, including the right to vote, right? So when I got interested in politics was sort of in my mid-teens. Well, it started even before that. Mum and dad

were friends with a gentleman who eventually got elected the Alberta legislature with Peter Lachie in 1971. A gentleman by the name of Tom Chambers. Just passed away a couple of years ago. But Tom had emceived my mom's talent show a couple of times. And after he had done that,

he let us know that he was going to run for the legislature with Peter Lougheed and the Progressive Conservative Party. And mom and dad helped out. I mean, they couldn't help out much financially, but they helped out in terms of volunteering and that sort of thing. And I could remember going to a rally that we had at the campaign headquarters. I was nine years old or 10 years old.

I was 10 years old. And we had a rally for, for Peter Loheed at the campaign headquarters, and they decided, well, gee, it'd be sure nice to have some music. And this was in the day before boomboxes and all the rest of it. And it just so happened that the fellow who was the president of the constituency association was also a good friend of Mums and said, well, Milita Starkey's boy, he can play the accordion.

We will get Milita Starkey to bring her son, and he can play accordion in the background. And he can sit him in the corner. So here I am playing away in the corner, you know, given background music and in strolls Peter Lougheed. I was like, well, 10, 11 years old was the 1971 election campaign. And he comes up to me and he shakes my hand and he said, that's real nice music, son.

I really enjoyed that. You don't forget stuff like that. And then a few years later, I got involved with an organization called the Texas Parliament of Alberta. I was in that for seven years. It's longest running youth parliament in Canada. and over the course of the seven years that I was in it, I served, I was premier, I was alternately the opposition, I held four or five different cabinet portfolios and learned, you

know, about debating and speaking in public and that sort of thing. And at the same time, while I was going to high school, I got very involved in high school debate starting in grade 10. And from grade 10 to grade 12, that was my main extracurricular activity. You know, The cool kids did sports. The nerds did debate club. And so I was in debate club. And the partner that I worked with in grade 11 and grade 12, she was phenomenal.

She was such a good researcher. Like she could research anything and find the best quotes and statistics. And the two of us would rate our speeches and whatnot. And we were the top intermediate team in grade 11 and we won the provincial championship in grade 12. We went to nationals. in 1977 in grade 12. And so the public speaking and debating and then the youth parliament thing combined with being involved as a, you know, as a member of the Progressive Conservative Party, those things all meshed. And, you know, when I was, you know, still fairly young,

I said, you know, I think maybe someday I would like to run for political office. And, and my first foray into that actually was really just after coming to Lloyd Minster. I mean, I came to Lloyd Minster in the fall of 1983, or spring of 1983, rather, straight out of the vet school. And the fall of 1985, Allison and I had been married for one year. And she came from a family who was also very, very politically involved in her hometown. And I said to her, remember it was our first anniversary we were celebrating. And I said, what would you think of the idea of me running for city council this fall in Lloydminster? And she said, I think that'd be great. You should do it. You know, and so I did.

And I ran for city council in October of 1985. God elected as a 25-year-old. I think, if I'm not mistaken, I'm still on record as the youngest city counselor that's ever been elected in Lloyd Minster. And, you know, served two terms. Bill Condro was mayor and then Pat Gulak was mayor. I served under those mayors. Learned a lot about striking compromises, working,

working with other people, sometimes where you didn't necessarily agree with what they had to say. Municipal politics is, I call it untainted by party politics. In municipal politics, you can, there will be some issues you'll be voting with the guy sitting right next to you

or the lady sitting right next to you. And then on the next issue, the two of you practically have to be separated because it's going to come to Fistikovs because you disagree so vociferous. on an issue. And that was my experience in municipal politics. It was wonderful. I really enjoyed it. But from 1985, when I was first elected, we had no family, and I wasn't at that point yet a partner in our practice. By the time 1991 came around, Allison and I owned the practice outright. We were the only two owners of the practice,

and we had two young boys. And I said, look, it's time for me to step back from politics and focus on family. on my family and my business. Yeah. And I did that. And then, and then 20 years later in 2011, you know, there were some political changes happened. I had been involved at the provincial level with the, with the PC party and had been a supporter of Doug Cherry and then Steve West and then Lloyd Snellgrove and had, you know,

helped them. I wasn't right deep into the party politics because I was still pretty busy. But when 2011 rolled around and Lloyd Snellgrove said, I'm not going to run for another term, which was a surprise because he'd actually won the nomination already. But Lloyd had not supported Alson Redford to be premier. And Alson Redford unexpectedly won the PC leadership. And so Lloyd stepped back and so now our constituency here in Vermilion and Lloyd Minster, we had to find a candidate and find somebody. fast. And because we had, we had about two months to find someone. They said by the end of January, we want all our candidates in place because we know there's going to be a spring election.

And so we were all sort of sitting in Vermillion at the Super 8 hotel looking at each other and saying, well, anybody in the room want to do this job? I mean, Lloyd's not going to be running. And I had been thinking about it, but I was waiting to hear what Lloyd's intentions were. Because, I mean, it was, it was not a total surprise that Lloyd stepped back. And I was approached. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was approached that night by Ken Baker and by Headley Dental, mayor of Dewberry. And Headley, who had known me for years, and Ken who had also known me for a lot of years.

And they said, what are you doing? Well, why don't you do this? And, you know, could you step back from the vet practice for a while and maybe do this? and you know we made the decision I talked to Allison and we had actually made the decision some months previous but it hadn't been made public that we were actually retiring at the end of that year

that we were selling our shares in the practice and that we were going to step back from veterinary practice and this was like literally a month and three days or whatever from the date and so we made some phone calls I talked to some people tried to gauge support You know, you want to see who, if you did decide to run, who might, who you, who you could count on for support. And got a lot of positive feedback on that. And so early in December of 2011, announced that I would be trying to win the nomination, because that wasn't a for sure thing.

And if I won the nomination, I'd be running for the seat. So, so that's the background. I mean, I was always interested in politics and always interested in some form of public service. And one of the key things you have to be able to do as a politician is public speaking. And that was never something that I had ever any issue with. I know for some folks it scares them to death. Not a problem for me. Yeah, well, you've been training for a long time.

Sure. And the story about playing the accordion when walks in, I can't think of that. Peter Lockheed, yeah. Thank you. Yeah. is equivalent to somebody training for the next 15, 20 years in hockey or something when, you know. Gordy Howe walks in on Wade Gretzky, right? Right.

Yeah, it's the same. It's the same deal. It's like a life-changing moment, right? And, you know, to this day, people say, so who are your political mentors? Who are the political people that you look up to that you, you know, try to emulate? And then I said, well, that's easy. Peter Laheed and Don Massenkowski. I mean, those two guys,

because both of them were very good at what they did. They were respected across political boundaries. I mean, Peter Laheed and Don Massenkowski, you have to look real hard to find anyone in any political party that says anything negative about either of those two gentlemen. And, you know, I got to know Don after coming to Lloyd Minster in the 80s. We moved to Lloyd in, well, in 83, and actually the 84 election that got Brian Mulroney elected as prime minister happened three days after Allison and I were married. We basically arrived in Lloyd, and we watched, you know, our first night in our new home.

What did we do? We watched the election results, you know, because we were politically interested, right? And I can remember, you know, working, you know, with Don a little bit before that election. And then the following spring in 1985, we were in Ottawa. and we were, no, let me get this right, that dates are wrong. In 1988, we were in Ottawa, so that was four years later, 1980, we were in Ottawa. I've been on city council for three years and had many interactions with Don through that.

But we were traveling with Roland, our oldest son, who was three months old. And we phoned Don's office, and we said, you know, we'd just like to stop by and say, hello, we're traveling with our three-month-old. So, I mean, it could be a train wreck if we'd come in. he wouldn't have any of that. We went to his office. I don't know who all he was going to be meeting with that afternoon, but he absolutely cleared the deck,

and he spent an hour and a half with us, chatting with us in his office, you know, on Parliament Hill in the center block of the Parliament buildings. You know, here was a guy who never, ever lost the common touch. And Don Mazenkowski, I supported him like throughout his time in the House of Commons and when he retired in

1993 they actually asked me to give the dedication speech at the statue that they were unveiling of him in Vagerville. The Vagerville Chamber of Commerce

did a bronze statue of Don Mazzankowski and they wanted to have somebody speak at that at that ceremony and I get this phone call and they say Richard

we'd like you to speak at the ceremony and I said I said I'm on but I mean, good heavens, there must be 100 other people you could have picked. And they said, yeah, but you were kind of first on our list. And if you won't do it, we'll go to one of those other hundred people. So can you do it? And I said, sure, I'll do it.

And I gave the speech. It was, I mean, I think it was an okay speech. And I remember the next morning I get a call from Don Mazikowski. And Don's saying, you know, Richard, he says, that was a wonderful speech. Thank you so much. Da-da-da-da-da. Now I need you to run for the... federal progressive conservative nomination in the federal writing because I'm not running and we

need a good strong candidate. We need somebody like you. And I said, well, Don, I think I'm too young. I'm only 33. And he just started to laugh. He said, that's how old I was when I first ran and all these other things. Ultimately, I mean, a long story short, decided not to, decided the timing just wasn't right in 1993. And then I was asked a couple of other times to run provincially and and always said no. I just said, you know, I got family commitments. I got business commitments. I want to make sure those are all looked after first. And when 2011 rolled around, you know, we decided to retire from practice and we, you know, our sons were both, you know, out of the house on their way, you know, and so, you know, we talked about her. And I talked, you know, first

Allison. I phoned my mom. I phoned both of the boys, and they were both very encouraging of it. And Alistair was taking a polysai degree in Calgary, and he asked me a whole bunch of political questions. You know, do you have support? You know, what about fundraising? You know, what about organization? It's other stuff. You know, I said, oh, well, you know, I'm glad we sent you off the university to learn about polysci. But it was really good, and their support was really strong right throughout. So it's good. Well, let's talk about your seven years in politics. Sure.

Because I know I'm jumping to the very end of it when you're leaving to quote you here, but I'd read an article on you and said, Albertans would be dismayed if they knew just in some ways how dysfunctional this place is. I was curious what the, I mean, you're a guy who served there for a lot of years. Yeah. And as a younger guy, I'm only 34. I look at it and I go, I talk to people all the time. I go like the way to fix anything is to get involved.

Sure. Get involved in politics. That's great. I agree 100%. And I was asked that question when I announced that I wasn't going to run for a third term. And my frustration was that I had spent my first term, the first three years of my time, I'd spent as a government member. We were in the majority. And I spent about half of that time as a cabinet minister.

So I was at the big table helping making big decisions. And what dismayed me even about that was how dismissive we were of anything that came from the opposition benches, any suggestions, any amendments, anything like that. That people, you know, anything that came forward from them. And I mean, yeah, sure. A lot of it that they came forward was trying to make us look bad. But there were some amendments or some suggestions that they were making that would have made our legislation better. And a couple of times I said, you know, I kind of actually like this amendment. I think we should, I think we should, you know, seriously consider supporting it.

And a couple of times I was told, you know, by people and they said, yeah, you're new here, aren't you? Because we don't do that. There's nothing that they can put forward that we're going to accept. And I said, well, why? I said, that's just dumb. It doesn't leave to good governance. If we're going to be a good government, we have to support principles. we have to support principles of good governance.

And they said, yeah, you know, but if we do that, it'll just give them hope. We don't want that. We want to just keep them under our heel all the time. So I thought that was really bad, right? Well, doesn't that sound really bad? Oh, it is. It absolutely sounds horrible. I agree.

So fast forward to 2015, the NDP are elected. They've been in our position for years and years, like basically since forever. It's the first time they've ever been elected as a government. and they got elected largely on a promise of doing things differently. We're going to do things differently. We're going to be respectful of the opposition because we know what it's like to sit over there, you know, all these other things. And I thought, wow, great.

You know, this is going to be kind of fun to watch. You know, I'm not crazy that I'm over here in the opposition and we're in a third party position. We're not even official opposition. But, hey, that's okay. You know, we were sort of the experienced voices in the room. I mean, of the 87 MLA, 7. 70 of them were rookies. 70 out of 87 had never served in that chamber before.

And of those 17 that had any experience, we had eight of them. Eight of them were us. So, like, we had half of the experienced members in the legislation. So I was looking forward to that, and I discovered very early on that the attitude of the sitting government, the Rachel Notley government, was pretty much exactly the same as our attitude had been. And that was anything that comes from the opposition benches, we're going to just ignore, we're going to just sort of play, you know. And so that's when I talk about

the dysfunctionality of the place. That's what I meant. So can you change that? Is that leadership, right? If the right person was elected, could you say, listen, guys, we are going to listen to the opposition. We want to make this, but we want to get people talking and moving towards it. Is that just, is that, am I like La La Land live on a rock? No, no, it is leadership. It absolutely is leadership. And it takes a tremendous amount of fortitude to have that willingness to be more bipartisan. It's going to be interesting to see, for example, how things operate with Joe Biden as president in the U.S. because Biden has been a senator, as has been said by many times for, you know, better part of his allot life. He's been in Washington for, you know, decades.

and but the one the one reputation that he's developed over that time is his willingness and ability to work with the people in the Republican Party as well as his own Democratic Party and it's going to be interesting to see if he can carry that into the White House because I mean the U.S. is as polarized as it ever has ever been ever been I mean the level of polarization in the U.S. and the the divide you know between the blue and the red if you like

And, I mean, that Bruce Springsteen commercial during the Super Bowl with the church in Kansas, you know, that was, you know, very powerful commercial. But what he said was absolutely true. I mean, there's no middle ground anymore. And the worry I have in Alberta and in Canada is that we're headed the same direction. That, you know, there is no sense of willingness to work with, you know, with other people. There's no sense of willingness to be cooperative and try to let the best ideas come to the full. perk you laid up. Exactly.

You know, in the very first speech I gave in the legislature when I was first elected in 2012, I remember this line specifically. Towards the end of my speech, I said, people elect us to filter through and sort through ideas. And it shouldn't matter if it's a Wild Rose idea or an NDP idea or a liberal idea or a progressive conservative idea. what should matter is if it's a good idea. And if it's a good idea, we should adopt it. And it shouldn't matter so much whose idea it was. And Harry S. Truman, U.S. President, said,

it's amazing what you can accomplish when nobody worries about who gets the credit. And we've lost that. We've lost that. It's now been an environment and it's getting worse where we've blame the other guy. If there's anything that goes wrong, it's someone else's fault. There's an inability to recognize or to acknowledge shortcomings or failings. If you change your mind on something, you know, a number of times I, you know, I would say, you know, in our government, I said, you know, look, I think we got that wrong. I think we should just stand up and tell

people, look, we got it wrong. We're going to take another look at it and we're going to try another run at it. You do that in business all the time. You try something in business. It's a flop. Your customers tell you usually pretty quickly if it's a total disaster and you say, okay, you know what? We got to think this through and try that again. And if you do that, people will respect you because, I mean, politicians, elected people are human, just like everybody. You guys aren't perfect? Well, we're not perfect. No. And the sooner that we understand and accept and acknowledge that and be open about it. You know, they say, oh, you know, while changing your mind on an issue, that's a sign of weakness.

You know, flip-flopping, that's a sign of weakness. I go, no, it isn't. It's a sign of strength. It's a sign that you've got the maturity and the self-confidence to say, hey, you know what? Sometimes we screw up and sometimes we do things wrong. And maybe, just maybe, if we listened to people with differing points of view to ours, we would know that we were headed into a wrong direction before we instituted some. policy. But if we do the la la la la la la and you know cover our eyes and ears and don't listen to any

dissenting voices, we're going to end up with an echo chamber where the only people we talk to are the people who agree with us. And unfortunately social media makes that worse because social media allows you to insulate yourself with like-minded people. With like-minded people, right? We form these little, like I call them echo chambers where the only people we hear from or that we listen, do or only articles we read are the people that already agree with us well one of the fundamental things about politics is you have to try to see if you can get people to vote for you who don't necessarily always agree with you and no I but but getting back to your earlier question Sean it is absolutely about leadership is

absolutely about the tone that gets set from the top by the leader I mean in our system whether we like it or not in our system in Canada with our parliamentary democracy, the leaders of the party are extremely important because they set the tone, they set how things get done. And when I ran for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party in 2017, that was what I, you know, a lot of what I've just said is what I was telling people as well. I said, we have to be able to do politics differently. We have to be able to govern differently. We have to govern with confidence, but with all also with respect because those folks across the aisle from us,

they got elected by Albertans too. And we represent, if we're in government, we represent the people that elected them too. You know, if they're from Tabor and Tabor voted for another party or if they're from downtown Edmonton and downtown Edmonton voted for another party, guess what? They live in Alberta, they're Albertans, we represent them too.

And chances are pretty good that the guy from Tabor or the lady from Edmonton who's telling us what her constituents think is going to have a better idea of what's going on in their neck of the woods than we know. So we should quit pretending we know everything and that we have all the answers and we should actually maybe listen to some of the people that could help give us the answers.

Politics isn't working that way right now. And so that's when I said, you know, people would be surprised how dysfunctional it is. That's what I was talking about. So how does it get better? Like in your mind, how do Canadians, Albertans, whatever, get it better. Americans.

It's going to take, it's going to take a lot because we didn't get to where we are now overnight. We got to where we are now, partly because of the incremental shifts in time. These things don't happen in big leaps. They happen like incrementally. And what we've had progressively is more and more leaders that were less conciliatory, less willing to work with the people across the aisle, if you like. I mean, that has really been lost in Canada in a lot of different ways.

How does it get better? Well, part of it is in how we choose our leaders. That is a faster way to reform is getting better leadership and leadership that is more conciliatory and more cooperative. So wouldn't that mean getting better people? people into politics? Oh, hugely, yeah. Because how can you choose a better leader

if they're not sitting there? Yeah, no, you're right. I mean, you know, and, you know, this is why I always have to kind of laugh and smile when they say, oh, you know, politicians, they make too much money, you know, oh my God, do you see how much money those guys are making, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da.

Well, if you pay peanuts, you're going to get monkeys, you know, and so here, you know, I remember, I remember in 2013, I was sitting next to the chief financial officer of a mid-sized oil and gas company. And we were just having this conversation back and forth. And she was telling me about the adjustments they had to make when the oil prices went down in 2011, or 2008, rather. And the challenges they had. They had to cut their budget by 30 percent.

And what she had to go through the processes and how she made the decisions and who got laid off and what processes and what business lines they had to completely. Jettison and that sort of thing. And I'm listening to her and I go, that's fantastic. With that experience, you should be Minister of Finance. You know, how good would it be to have somebody with that kind of experience, you know, in doing your provincial finances? And she smiled and she said, yeah, there's a problem. You guys don't pay enough. You know, here she is for a CFO for a midsize oil and gas company. She's probably making upper six figures. right? Is she going to take a cut and pay to earning you know $128,000 a year? I agree, but I'm going to argue that that's what public service is all about, right?

Because what happens is where we get to, right? Where it's like great. Agreed. Agreed. And you're not wrong. I mean, to me, public service is public service. And that in and of itself should be something you aspire to. But if you don't remunerate people, you are limiting the people who are prepared to make that financial sacrifice to people who were already wealthy, right? You know, you're already really wealthy and you don't need the money either way,

okay, fine, I'll take eight years off or four years off or 12 years off and go do the political thing for four or eight or 12 years. And my businesses will tick along and I'll continue to have a comfortable living. But, you know, me as an example, well, I had made a decision to have stepped away from veterinary practice.

But I didn't have another source of income after I left veterinary practice. You know, if I had not been elected in 2012, would I be doing something else? Yeah, absolutely. I found something else to do. But for that seven-year stretch, being a politician was my full-time job. Yeah. And I can tell you, I put in hours doing that job that I hadn't put in since calving season in the 80s and 90s, you know, working in vet practice.

I mean, you know, I would show up, you know, again, from my dad. I'd show up at the legislature when I was a cabinet minister. They got to know me as the guy who showed up at six. They got to know me as the guy who left after midnight. I'd put in 16, 18 hour days at the legislature. And when I left after midnight, I was the last guy out of the building. The only people left in the building were janitors and security guards. How about another thing that I always hear is that going into political service or going in politics,

your family comes under scrutiny. Yes. Yes, they do. They absolutely do. And in many cases, it's exceedingly unfair. In many cases, it's unbelievably cruel. And it's, and you have some people say, well, you know, if you can't stand, he don't get in the kitchen in the first place, da, da, da, da, okay, fine.

But, you know, you, you. you can't completely shield your family from it. I mean, I certainly had colleagues that did everything they could to keep their family, you know, completely insulated from what was going on. But, you know, my wife reads a newspaper. My wife goes on, you know, and watches online stories. And, you know, she knew what was happening to me and she knew what I was being called. And she also knew that she was being watched, you know, when she went to the grocery store,

when she went to events. When she went to the grocery store? Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. She would be, she'd be accosted, you know, feeling, you know, checking on the freshness of the broccoli. She'd be saying, you know, what Richard's doing in Edmonton is terrible. You've got to tell him that.

She had that happen. So, no, our families are involved. I mean, my, my sons, you know, I would say a little bit less so because, I mean, they're not living at home and, you know, they've each got their own lives. But, I mean, I know, you know, they're both, you know, they're both politically engaged enough. They know what's going on. And, you know, they chose not to get, you know, involved in some of the fights and debates that would happen in social media. But, yeah, no, it's, it's a, it's a team effort. You get elected.

It's a team effort. I have to admit, I was extremely fortunate. Allison, my wife, is, well, she's probably a better political mind than I am. I mean, she grew up in a very political family. Her dad was very involved, actually, with the Lockheed, the whole building of the PC party under Peter Lockheed. He acted as campaign manager for several of the MLAs from the L'Khome area. and so she grew up in that environment, in that household. And Peter Loheed was somebody who had spent time sitting in their living room.

You know, so, and Allison was, was, you know, quite prepared and quite comfortable to, you know, go to the events and to schmooze with people and to, you know, be the, you know, sometimes, sometimes you needed somebody who would come along and pull you away from a really difficult conversation. You were having, you know, somebody was kind of. She could recognize it. Yeah, in a minute, you know. And, you know, you might be having a conversation with somebody and they were, they were really kind of monopolizing your time and you had a whole room to go around and meet with people and greet people and that sort of thing. And she'd come up and she'd, you know, just tucking your elbow and says, actually there's

somebody over here who needs to or wants to talk to, excuse me. She was, you know, he was very good at it. But she was, she was perfect at that. She did that very well. Fast forward 20 years from now, you're going to get, we're all going to get, we're all going to get asked a lot about the year 2020. COVID-19 lockdowns, everything going on worldwide, not Alberta-wide, not Canada-wide, worldwide. Worldwide, yep. What do you think of everything that's been going on? Well, I certainly hope we're learning from it, although I'm not entirely sure that

we are. I think that this particular virus is one that that has really, really challenged our ability to have a coherent response to it. You know, when we were in veterinary school, I studied virology, I studied epidemiology, I studied immunology. So I have, you know, the scientific background to understand a lot of what's going on. And even with my background, I have to admit that at times I really wonder what the best course of action is. I think, though, that in general, and this is speaking very much in general, but in general, the nations in the world that have done the best in terms of minimizing the negative impacts

on their economy, but also minimizing the illness and death toll. And I mean, and we don't even know how bad the illness problem is going to be because you hear more and more now about folks that have chronic COVID infections that for months and months and months later are still not back to normal where they can go back to work or whatever. But in general, the places that have done the best are places that have had very strong leadership that have treated the virus seriously, who have listened to the scientific community, who have listened to the scientists and taken what the scientists have recommended seriously and have in some cases taken the necessary and albeit unpopular steps,

but have now that we look at it, they have managed to protect not only the health of their people, but also the health of their economy. And I mean, I use as an example, I mean, New Zealand has done extremely well. Australia has done very well. As European country goes, especially densely populated European countries go, Germany has done very well. The countries that have had a lot of struggle with this are countries, I would say in a lot of cases where the leaders were not really clear and focused

in their messaging to the people in terms of. of what needed to be done and were not effective in terms of having that empathy for people who were affected by this. And so, you know, and this is my personal opinion. I think the former president in the U.S. did a horrible job, just an absolute horrific job, and that he is really the reason, first of all, why the U.S. was so heavily impacted. And to a certain extent, by extension, why Canada, even though it has approached things, I think, in a better way, why we have a lot of struggles in Canada as well, is because we have a lot of spillover in terms of the attitudes

and in terms of some of the things that are believed from what's being said in the U.S. So what are people going to say 20 years from now? That's a great question. I guess I don't know, but I think that, you know, it is a, it is, a pandemic that certainly what it will do interestingly is how it will change the way we do things because there are some things that we change the way we do things because we had to we're these

changes were necessitated and when we did we discovered whoa hey we can keep doing it this way because actually it works you know i think for example just you know to pick one example the idea of flying to a central location somewhere so that eight people can get together in a room for a one hour business meeting and then everybody flying back home. It makes zero sense? I think that's going to be a thing of the past. I think. I mean,

now that people are comfortable with Zoom and Skype and teams and you name it, it doesn't make any sense to do it that way. Definitely there's going to be changes like that. Yeah. I mean, spend 10 grand on flights or what on a Zoom call. And just the time, you know,

just the time. I mean, the investment of time, I mean, if we're talking about a national organization, I mean, most people are basically investing an entire day to make that trip to get to wherever, the meeting in Toronto or the meeting in Winnipeg, whatever it is. So, I mean, that's one thing that's going to change. I mean, I had the laugh. I read somewhere saying, you know, can you imagine that a year ago we would celebrate somebody's birthday by having the guest. of honor, blow all over the top of a cake, and then we'd eat the cake. You know, he says, can you imagine that that's how we used to do things? I mean, are we going to do things like that? Is that going to be what we go back to? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. So it's, it's,

it's hard to know. It's hard to know how this year will be viewed. It's been challenging. I mean, for sure. My, my youngest son and daughter-in-law, um, they bought a coffee shop in Lecombe in March of 2019. And they were doing very, very well. The coffee shop was popular. Sarah's an outstanding cook. She's very creative. She really does a great job.

And Alistair was doing quite well as sort of front of the house guy. And they were doing all. They were busy, was steady, and then COVID hit. And I mean, there's as a tiny little coffee shop. I mean, there was maybe room for 20 people to sit in and it was totally full. Well, you have to sit at, you know, whatever it is, 15 or 20% capacity, it's like two tables. Well, you know, it's been tough.

It's been really, really tough for them. But I give them a lot of credit. They've been incredibly resilient. They've been creative in terms of finding other ways to generate revenue for their little, little business. And I think, hopefully, in a year or two, they'll be able to look back at 2020. just kind of laugh about it and said, well, I was kind of a crazy time, but we got through it and we're stronger for it on the other side. I mean, uh, adversity, sometimes, you know,

what they say? Adversity breeds characters. Sometimes it certainly does. Let's talk about, uh, you know, we've talked about seven years of your life for quite some time now. Um, not that it didn't stem early to childhood, but I mean, you're a local business owner. Right? Like, uh, a veterinary practice. Yep. Um, um, um. What was it about becoming a vet that pulled you in? Well, mom and dad say that I was always the kid that dragged home whatever sick cat or sick dog was wandering around the neighborhood and would drag it home and, you know, they would, you know,

can we keep them or, you know, can we make them better? And, yeah, I guess I kind of remember that. And so I was always interested in animals. And I was always interested in science. science was something I loved, you know, loved working with animals. I thought of a couple of other, you know, career choices, but veterinary medicine was pretty much always the top of the list. And, you know, went to that school. Out of vet school, and especially while I was at vet school, I discovered that my interest

was kind of a broad range of species. I didn't want to just do small animals, didn't want to just do large animals. I wanted to do mixed practice. I wanted to do the James Harriet thing, right? You know, where you were looking after anything that walked or crawled through the door. And so I interviewed with four different practices when I was in fourth year at vet school. I interviewed in Weyburn, Wetascoen, Stettler, and Lloyd Minster. And the Lloyd Minster practice was the one that was the best fit for me in terms of my interest, in terms of what I was most interested in doing, and also in terms of what they were trying to accomplish. I mean, Malcolm Gray and Sue Ashburner were the owners of the practice at that time.

And they were looking for somebody. They had just built a new practice building. And they were really looking for somebody, like Malcolm was mostly interested in cattle. Sue was mostly interested in horses. But they thought that the real potential for growth in that practice was the companion animals, I think small animals, dogs and cats. And neither, both of them enjoyed doing them and were very capable. But they wanted to focus on the species they really liked working with.

So they wanted somebody whose primary focus would be small animals. And I was quite prepared to do that, although I told them, you know, right from the outset, I don't want to just do dogs and cats. I want to still do horsework and do cattle work. And they said, oh, don't worry. You'll get all that chance to do it. And I did. So, you know, came to Lloyd in 83, joined their practice.

It was a good practice. It did a good job. It did good work. And we had, like I said, we had this brand new building. was asked to become a partner in that practice a year later in 1984. I declined at that point because Alson and I had just gotten married and I really didn't know, you know, if Alson didn't even go to like it, Lloyd Minster,

I really don't have an idea about that. But a year later, when the opportunity to buy in the practice was given to me again, I said yes. So I bought in as a partner in 1985. As it turned out, Dr. Ashburner was in the process of planning to leave. I hadn't known that, but she left in 1986. Malcolm Gray practiced for a few more years until 1990, and then he had to retire.

He had some problems with his back. So he retired in 1990. So at that point, in 1990, Allison bought Malcolm's share of the practice. She's veterinarian as well. And so Allison and I in 1990 were 100% owners of the practice. And so that gave us the office. opportunity to make some decisions about the direction the practice would take, but it also meant

that, you know, all of those decisions were on our, on our back. But Allison, um, Allison is a very, very savvy person as far as business management goes. She really, um, she's very much detail oriented and she, she knew what we needed to do. Um, I was sort of more of that kind of big picture guy and, you know, and quite often really good business relationships have that sort of combination of things. And in 1992, we hired Daryl Hanley, and that was the best decision we probably ever made because along with hiring Daryl, we got Daryl's at that time fiancé and then eventually wife, Sonia Colossa, was also, and Sonia became part of the practice. In 1994, Daryl and Sonia got married in that same year, Daryl and Sonia.

bought into the practice. And so for a number of years, it was Allison and I and Daryl and Sonia. So two married couples that ran the veterinary practice. So we'd gone from three veterinarians, and for a period of time, we were two veterinarians. It was just Daryl and me for a while. And then we went back to three and then the four and then the five. And, you know, when I left the practice, I think even to this date, the practice has got eight veterinarians.

Now two locations. We opened the second location in 2008, just before the big economic downturn timing was maybe not the greatest but we we opened the south side location in 2008 we we were awarded small business and business of the year in 2011 that was that was exciting and I think it was a validation of the work that that all of us had done I mean it wasn't just me or Allison it was it was is all of us and we created a work environment that was really positive and And I was really, it was neat to see that like last year, the practice won the chamber worked for employer of the year.

And I thought, wow, that's really good, you know, because we always tried to create a situation where our employees were family and that people, you know, would want to work at our practice. And we have very low turnover of staff, or we always did. You know, many of our veterinarians, this is the only clinic they've ever worked at. I've only ever worked, well, prior to retiring, I should say. But, you know, Lloyd, I came out of vet school, went to Lloyd. Same with Daryl. Corrinberg, same with him.

And with Trent and Becky, well, they both spent some time in New Zealand, but in terms of practices they've worked out here in North America, we're the only ones. So their career, they're lifers, right? So, you know, and the practice was always built on the idea that you do the very, very best job you possibly can on behalf of your patient and you focus on the needs of your patient. And you work very hard for the client and you make sure the client knows you're putting forward your best effort. And because it is animals you're dealing with and because we're dealing in medicine,

you're not always going to be successful. That's a reality. And that's sometimes really hard. I mean, it's hard for anybody in a medical profession to sometimes. come to grips with that sometimes you're just not going to be successful and it's not always it's not necessarily because of something you did or didn't do sometimes there are patients that you can't save there are patients that you can't help and um and that can be frustrating and I know it can be very it can be very hard on people in the what I call the caring professions it can be really

hard on them. But we, you know, like I say, together we built a team and we created a culture that was very much focused on patient care and good client relationships. And I think we were pretty successful with that. I mean, the way our practice grew. I think that was part of the reason for it. And so, and, you know, it allowed us to, you know, it allowed us to do things in the community in terms of supporting all manner of events and teams, and, you know, you name it. I mean, I lost track of how many different things, you know, people would come to us and say, you know, can you support this? Can you support that? Like any other business we did.

And, you know, we also had a very fortunate situation of being in a community where you saw business leaders become real leaders of the community. You know, people like Ken Kay or Glenn Weir or. or Dave McCaw or Byron Keebaugh, you know, Ray Nelson, you know, can't forget Ray, you know, any of these people, you know, were people who really showed you what it meant to be a leader of an organization. But then that organization had to be something the community could then rely upon, you know, like an organization that would take a leadership role in the community. And we see that.

And we say that, you know, if you go, you know, when you go to the service sports center, you know, you look at the businesses on the pillars or the names of the businesses on the arenas and all that stuff. I mean, this community has a business community that really supports it. So what's one of the best days of your, that you look back? Am I doing my math and my mental math here correctly? 28 years then of the animal hospital? Yeah, roughly. 20 yeah it was uh 28 and a half years like i started in in in started in may of 83 and my last day was 31st of december of 2011 so what's one of the best days from those years they was it opening

the second one was it the awards was there was there a specific day was it taking ownership you and your wife you know the best days were it is going to sound weird but the best days were the days when you got to the end of the day and you knew you you had done good work for a patient. You know, there's patients that you sort of take a step back and said, that dog would be dead right now if it wasn't for us. We saved that cow's life. You know, that calf, when it was born, there was no heartbeat or there was no breathing.

And that calf is now alive and sucking his mom. And those are good days. I mean, the awards were wonderful. Don't get me wrong. I don't, you know, don't mean to downplaying them. And they're wonderful recognition of what you do every day. But everybody will tell you, it's not the reason you do this. The reason that we did this was to serve our patients and help our patients and to provide service to our clients.

That's, that was, and the best days were the days where we felt we had done a really good. job of that. Excuse me, I just got a little tickle on my throat here. Open up right beside you. Open that up. This is a fridge? Yeah. Oh, oh, how cool is that. Now, now you can either do the the Saskatchewan beverage of choice. I see that. That's marvelous and maybe when we're done I might just take you up on that but for now I just a bottle of water will work. That's perfect yeah. No, how about how about and I don't know if it's easy. to talk about her but you talk about the best and and being able to yeah you're

talking about saving lives essentially and like really doing some real good there had to have been the opposite the the the Yan yang the the tough days of there are there a few tough days in there oh yeah yeah no absolutely um it's funny because I mean right now I'm I'm actually working up in Grand Prairie one week out of a month working as a local veterinarian for practice up there of a veterinarian who I helped get started in Canada's from Germany. He came to Canada in 2003 and established his own practice in 2007 and I work at his practice now. But anyway, we were talking about this and I mean it's it's in my case, in my situation that the two that I remember the most clearly were patients where I made

a mistake and the mistake cost the patient their lives. That's, that's tough. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, and, and it affects you as a professional. Um, and the challenge is you have to be able, you, you don't forget it because you can't, but at the same time, you have to be able to shake it off and move on because the longer you carry it with you and the longer it impacts you negatively to be able to serve other patients, you're hampering your ability to be your best for that next patient. And the patients keep coming. You mean, yeah, you've had a rough go or, yeah, you've had a bad, you know, you've had a bad situation.

But the next day, there's still 40 patients to see or, you know, or there's 200 chalcitrake check or, you know, whatever it is. And, you know, during calving season, you know, every, I don't know, every maybe three or four years, you'd make a decision that you can pull, that you're pretty sure you can pull a calf and the calf hip locks and dies. You've made a decision. You've made a judgment call that you think that calf will be delivered okay. and, you know, we would always stop and we'd turn to the farmer and we'd say, you know, look,

I'm pretty sure we can get this calf by pulling. Do you want me to keep going or would you rather just stop and do a C-section at this point? And most of the time, the farmers would say, whatever you think, Doc, if you think you can pull it, you go ahead. You know, and if you were thinking, yeah, you know, we can't. And every once in a while, you're wrong. You know, I, I'd like to think that I can probably count on less than the fingers on one hand the number of times that had happened. But I can remember a couple of them when it did happen and you feel pretty crappy at the end of it because you've got a dead calf, you've got a cow that's down that may or may not

get back up again. And, you know, you've got a guy who's hauled that cow in to see you and trusted your judgment and trusted your, you know, your clinical abilities and you've let them down. And, you know, thankfully, most of our clients were always very, they were a pretty forgiving lot. I mean, I tried to always make sure there wasn't a whole lot they had to forgive me for. But they were a very generous lot in terms of if something didn't go 100% right, they would say, hey, you did your best. So, yeah, those were the crappy days. what's the oddest animal you've had through the door?

Oh gosh. Well, one time I did a list of all the animals that I have helped deliver something from like babies, right? Okay. So, I mean, obviously dogs and cats and cattle and sheep and goats, llamas, lots of follings, chinchillas. What else? Anyway, it's fairly longest. The circus was in town once. they asked me to come over and look at an elephant.

That was different. Elephants have foot problems. Like that's their biggest thing. Captive elephants, the biggest issues they have are foot problems. And especially with their toenails, I think they are. They can get a lot of infections in between there

and all the rest of it. And so the elephant handler called me over and I'm sort of, you know, but we looked after it. Yeah, just, just, I mean. That had to do. been a cool day. Oh, it was. It was. I mean, it was, it was cool. It was different. I mean, I, I, I got called in to, um, to do the export certification. Uh, there was a fellow, a wild boar producer up in the Bonneville area who had sold his entire herd to wild boar hunt farm in

California. Well, there's a lot of paperwork that that has to go through. You have to take blood samples. You have to put your tags in. You have to do this, that, and the other things. And he had sold every pig on the place from the little suckling pig that was like eight pounds to the 450 pound wild boars that had tusks like bananas, right? And we had to take a blood sample on each and every one of these little gaffers. And in some cases, rather big gaffers. And so that was, you know, it was neat. At the time we were doing it, we maybe didn't think it was quite so neat.

But when you think back, you know, you say, well, that was kind of cool. never a dull day well you know one of the beauties of mixed practice is is that no two days are identical no two days are the same i mean that there's one day you'll be doing this and then the next day all of a sudden you're out in the field and doing that and and you might be on emergency work and you get called for you know something totally weird and bizarre um you know i sometimes think of the number of different things that i have pulled out of the the intestine of dogs that have swallowed stuff that they really shouldn't have swallowed. Articles of clothing that sometimes had to be explained a little bit between husbands and wives.

And I just sort of said, hey, I just do the veterinary work. You deal with the rest of that stuff yourself. But, yeah, no, it's, I mean, it's a fascinating profession. Veterinary medicine is a fascinating profession. I'm glad to be back doing it. I don't know that I'd want to be doing full-time practice again, but I do my one week a month up in Grand Prairie, and it's fun.

You have to call on a lot of skills and abilities, and, you know, your experience, you know, after you're seeing patients for 30 years, you know, say, wait a minute, that's just like that dog that I saw, you know, that's like, just like that cat or whatever it was, yeah. It's fun. you've been married to your wife for 36 years Allison correct yep what uh what is what was it about

Allison maybe in the beginning and then furthermore 36 years is no short stint what is what has made it work uh no um so uh so Allison was a year ahead of me at vet school um yeah older girl uh well yeah yeah she is but i mean she was a year ahead of me at vet school um yeah old older girl uh well yeah yeah she is but i mean she was a year ahead of me at vet school. And we actually sort of met, but not really, at U of A when we were both doing pre-vette. I was in first year. She was already in second year. We had a pre-vette club at the U of A. But it was on, it always met on Thursday nights, and I was teaching music on Thursday night, so I couldn't go to the meetings. But my sister would quite often go for me, because she'd be usually on campus, because she's in medicine. And she would go to the meetings for me. And so she

actually met Allison sort of before I did. And then Allison got into vet school and so then I was still in second year. And then when I went over to Saskatoon, Allison was a year ahead of me. She was in second year. She was the little red-headed girl. I was Charlie Brown and she was the little red-headed girl. I mean, she was just gorgeous head of red hair. And I mean, I knew she was really smart.

and I knew that she was, you know, from Alberta. And, you know, I had chance to talk to her a few different events and that sort of thing. And I always thought, wow, you know, she's smart and she's funny and she's gorgeous and da-da-da-da-da-da. And so, I mean, we started going out in vet school. And we got married about a year after I had graduated and we came to Lloyd Minster.

And it became really clear very early. on that our relationship was going to be a partnership that that that that that we had strengths that you know we would do better if we we tried to you know have those strengths mesh as opposed to run into each other I mean there are a lot of things that we both are good at and we we had to figure out ways to make sure that we could both you know shine in our own ways doing those things well and there were some things that we're both not very good at at all like you know, there's just some things we just aren't particularly good at.

And we knew we knew well enough that we, you know, we would just, you know, help each other out in those areas. And then there's, of course, all the areas that she's way, way better at than I am. And there's the one or two areas that I'm better at than she has. But it was a partnership. So our whole relationship's been a partnership. Raising our kids has been a partnership. Running our veterinary practice has been a partnership.

The political life was a huge. huge partnership. And I mean, the comment I got from people all the time was you have the most amazing wife. You know, she's incredible. And I go, I know that. I know that. I don't know argument. I mean, tell you a funny story. Early on after I was elected, my constituency association did the strategic planning thing, right? You know, where you have these whiteboards and you have tear sheets and stuff stuck to the wall. And one of the things that they said is, okay, put down what the best things about your representative are,

your MLA are, right? And so, you know, some people would write one thing or the other thing. And then somebody wrote, has a great wife. You know, has a great wife. And if you agreed with that statement, instead of writing it down on your piece of paper, you're supposed to just put a checkmark, right? Has a great wife was by far in a way,

the number one biggest attribute beneficial attribute that I have. Better than me on public speaking, organization, blah, blah, blah, and all that other stuff. No, Richard Stark, great wife. Richard Stark, he has a great wife. You know, that was the whole deal.

And, you know, so I sort of said to the group, I said, so what you're saying is that the best way that I could assure of being reelected is actually croak and let my wife run in a by-election in my stead because she'd win a landslide. And they all kind of said, well, yes, you would, but we're not saying you should do that, but yes, you would. And so, no, Alison, you know, we've, we've been, like I say, we've been this partnership. We've done everything together.

You know, we make, you know, any important decisions we make are always decisions we make together. And, you know, I'm unbelievably blessed that, you know, she's been on this journey with me. I mean, we, you know, like I say, we've been together now for, we started going out in 1980, so we've been together for like 41 years. But it's 36 years that we've been married. And I, I, it's been great. It's been really good. Have I been mispronouncing your name the entire time, right?

I think so, but I mean, I didn't want to. Starkey. Starkey, yeah, that is Starkey. Yeah, that is tricky. Well, you jackass, you're supposed to tell me. It's all good. I'm calling you Richard Stark for an hour and a half now. You know what, but you know what, Sean, I'll be for it.

That long, good grief. No, I'll tell Sean, I get that all the time. So I don't really worry about it because, I mean, the English way of pronouncing that name is Stark. You don't pronounce the E. The reason I pronounce the E is because that's the German. It literally, if you were saying it the German way, you know, your family's going to listen to this, though, and they're going to be like, yeah, that's okay. If you were saying, if you were saying at the German way, you'd say, you'd say, sure,

Starker. Starker. And, I mean, in German, that word means the strong one, the one who is strong. Stark means strong. And, and, but I remember my mom and dad saying, when you tell people, say your names, tell them it's Starkey, and that we pronounce it. We anglicized it, but it's Starkey. So, hey, don't worry about it. I mean, I think I got called Richard Stark at ceremonies where, like, you know, heads of state and all the rest of it were there.

So I'm doing bad, but I'm not doing that bad. You know what? You've got tons of company, Sean. Don't sweat it. Don't sweat it at all. You've got tons and tons of company. Yeah, it's all good. How about kids?

I assume just the, when you talk about family and how you treat your company like family, how your parents brought you and how they focused on their kids, what was having kids like? Well, it's, it's the best. on-the-job learning program that mankind's ever come up with. I mean, we were blessed with two sons. Our oldest Roland was born in 1988, and Alistair followed two years later in 1990. Both of, Allison was sicker than a dog the whole time for both pregnancies.

I mean, it was unbelievable. Like, I mean, she started getting sick with Roland. I mean, before we even knew for sure that she was pregnant. And, I mean, she spent a bunch of both pregnancies in the hospital because she would get so dehydrated from throwing up and all her. So the pregnancies were hard on her. But fortunately, thankfully, we, you know, both boys were delivered healthy and normal and strong and all the rest of it.

And we were heavily, heavily invested in them. We got stuff they got involved with, we got involved with. I mean, they were both in beavers and Cubs, and Allison was a beaver and Cubs leader. They both played soccer. I coached soccer. Alster, Roland eventually went into play basketball for a couple of years. The lousy basketball player, the lousiest basketball player ever,

I was just an assistant coach because I couldn't help those boys. But, I mean, I was the assistant coach on the basketball team. When Alster became involved in the speed skating, I eventually became the head speed skating coach for, our club. And so we were heavily invested. I mean, the other thing we were heavily invested in our boys is that we made the decision early on that we would homeschool them. So we homeschooled both of them from K to 12. Really? Yeah. Why? Why? Well, I mean, the decision was a difficult one because like Allison's mom's a teacher. And my mom actually had received training back in

Germany as a teacher as well. But Allison's mom had been a teacher before she retired from the teaching profession. The thing that really, what we were looking at it, we had moved out to our acreage north of Lloydminster in 1992. So when Roland, two years later in 1994, when Roland was six, we knew we were going to have to make a decision about, okay, well, what school would he go to? Because there was going to be busing involved, right? And we actually, kind of like the idea of him going to kit scottie better than going to the schools in lloyd but the kit scotty just what we found out about the busing was was it was going to be close to an hour each way on the bus every day and i'm not so sure about that but what really tipped it was um alison was talking to

someone we knew who is a teacher who we really respected she was a really you know very well thought of teacher and was just talking about that roland was he's a very intelligent little boy. I mean, he taught himself to read at age two. You know, he changed all the passwords on our computer when he was three. Luckily, he just used his name as the new password, which was good, but he changed our passwords. He figured out how to do that. I mean, he's always been very good at computer stuff, and he reads voraciously and reads at a rate that is just scary. He read the entire Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I think that's the fifth book in the Harry Potter series.

He read it in a day, 700 some odd pages. He read it in a day. So anyway, so Roland was right from the get-go. We knew Roland was special. A precocious young man. And so Allison was talking and, you know, was talking to his teacher and the teacher said, well, you know, Roland must be getting to school age pretty soon.

in. And Allison said, yeah, we're, you know, we're struggling with, you know, how to deal with it because, you know, he's, he's, you know, you don't want to call your own kid gifted, but he's, he's got, you know, he's really quite in, how many two-year-olds do you know that have taught themselves that read. Well, yeah, that's, that's true. And, and, and this, this lady, you know, Alison told me the story. He says, I wasn't there. This lady told Allison, you know, I used to really enjoy having students like Roland. But now they're just a bother. And, you know, imagine yourself as a mother you've just heard somebody you really like and respect as a teacher has said this to you. You know, and Allison came home. She was crying. And I said, you know, what's going on? What's the problem? And she said, well, you know, this is what, you know, this lady said.

And I said, wow. Oh, my goodness. And Allison said, I'm going to look at a homeschooling. And I said, okay. I said, you know, find out what you can't find out about it. I mean, and some of the things we found about homeschooling, we weren't necessarily all that crazy about. But we did like the idea of the autonomy it gave.

We did like the idea of, you know, being able to teach the student, teach both of our boys in their own learning styles. Because Roland and Alastair have completely divergent learning styles. You know, one of them is very visual and the other one's very tactile. You have to hold it, see it, feel it. And, you know, and Allison, as she does with everything, she poured herself into becoming a teaching professional, understanding different teaching styles.

And she would go to the conferences and she would pick up curriculum and that sort of thing, especially in the younger years, you know, when they were, you know, when they were, you know, like from grades, you know, one to six type thing. And every year at the end of the year, we'd ask, we'd ask the boys, look, you know, do you want to go to a regular school? because if you do, you just say the word and we'll stop this homeschooling. And they said every year, they said, no, I want to keep going with homeschooling. We like it.

And, I mean, it gave us an opportunity when they got a little older. We took a year off. We took a year sabbatical from our practice and lived in Germany for a year. Tough to do that when they're in a regular school situation. But homeschooling, you know, we just packed the books with us and we did homeschool while we were there. And that really, I mean, the Germans had a hard time wrapping their head around that because they don't have homeschooling in Germany. It's illegal in Germany. Really?

You cannot homeschool your children in Germany. It's against law. And there are truancy laws that are actually pretty, pretty strict. And I remember, like, we used to send Alistair to the bakery to go get fresh buns every morning for our breakfast. And one day he gets accosted by this elderly lady, says, you know, why aren't you in school? Why aren't you? It's a school day. Why aren't you in school? And Alistair, by that time, had learned enough German that he knew exactly what he was saying. But he just did the English only. I think so, you know, but no, we homeschooled throughout when Alster, in like when he got to the point where he was pretty competitive in speed skating and had to go to speed skating competitions all over the place, homeschooling meant that we could. could go to Winnipeg or Milwaukee or Vancouver or Calgary or wherever he had to go and, and, you know, spend, you know, several days at speed skating training camps and that sort of

thing. And Al Sturridge just brings his books and he could study in the evenings and that sort of thing. So it's not for everyone. And I tell everybody this, it's homeschooling is for sure not for everyone. But for us and for our family and for our sons, it was the right choice. And, I mean, and they're tradeoffs for sure. I mean, they don't. have necessarily the big circle of school friends that they went to but they do have some very close friends that they met through other organizations that got involved in they joined the same youth parliament that I was involved with back in the 70s they they joined it when they were of of age to join it and actually Alistair's

wife he met through youth parliament so you know that was that was kind of cool and yeah they know they're they're they're both They're both doing okay. Roland was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when he was 15. And diabetes is a difficult disease. It's a very challenging disease. And we've in recent months kind of gotten to know even more about how challenging it is to keep your blood sugars well controlled. And I know that that has been a challenge for him.

but he's like I say he's doing his best that he can with it and Alistair he took a poly-sci degree he went to UFC you went to UFC to skate because he was speed skating and he skated competitively for four years and he really enjoyed it he got just sort of a notch below the national team Canada has a lot of really really good speed skaters and but he enjoyed it and he made some wonderful friends

through speed skating that was his community in Calgary and then when he decided he had enough competition that was fine and he finished his degree in 2015 and Polly Sye and he got married two days later and his wife Sarah is a chef and the two of them bought this coffee shop in Lecombe in 2019 and they've been running that coffee shop since then so he's not necessarily doing political science things and Roland's degree was in He had a B.A. and philosophy from the U of S. And then he took a couple years of a theology degree at the Lutheran Seminary in Edmonton.

And then he ran into some health problems and wasn't able to complete that. But Roland did, like I say, he had an interesting university career too. And they're both doing okay. You know, as we slowly wind down here, I was reading back through the notes. And one of the things that caught my eye

was, you know, you wanted to talk about some of the things you've learned through the different things, community leader, business owner, elected official. But then it's the last line, the importance of integrity. Maybe as we slowly wind this down, Richard, you could talk that line and just explain it. Well, to me, integrity has been defined a lot of different ways by a lot of different people, but, you know, I think of it sort of integrity is doing the right thing even when nobody's looking. Integrity is when you not only don't lie to somebody else, but when you don't lie to yourself. And, you know, grounded with, you know, some of the lessons that I learned from my parents growing up, you know, probably one of the most important things we always learned was, you know, to absolutely be honest,

treat people with respect, do the best job you can, and be true to yourself. You absolutely have to be true to yourself. And that was something that we did throughout our time in veterinary practice. I mean, any business, you can get yourself into some ethical time. You can tie yourself up into a little ethical knots because in some cases there's the challenge between keeping your business afloat and, you know, profitable and doing things, completely according to the book, which might end up being a little bit less profitable. Well, in our situation, I mean, it was really never much of a question.

I mean, we didn't cut corners. We didn't make any, we didn't take any ethical shortcuts. We refused to do that. And that's all we served us well. Did we make, did we maybe make as much money as we could have? No. Did we make enough money that, you know, we were okay, did okay, yes. So it was never a problem.

So, and so, you know, whether we're talking about then, you know, translating that into my work in politics or when I was on the health foundation board or, you know, I was coaching kids in soccer or in speed skating or, you know, my involvement in city council. The thing that was always important for me is that you, you stuck to your principles and you stuck the principles even if sometimes that, that. put you in a position where you were unpopular or where you were in a position where you were sort of going against the grain. So, you know, probably, or at least most people would say the most specific example of that was after I lost the PC leadership in March of 2017, you know, at that point I said to Mr. Kenny, who had won the leadership, I said, look, you know, people have spoken, you've won the leadership. I'm on your team. You know, I want to work with you and we want to make this the best party we can make it. I'm not going to try to stand in your way here. But let me help you.

There are things that I can, I think, information I can give you, insights I can give you that I think will make this party better. And he assured me at the time that that would be the case. But it became really clearly apparent in the following, in the ensuing months, that that that was not his intention. and I was essentially locked out of any further discussions that were going on with regards to merging with the Wild Rose Party or any of the other things. And so when the vote was taken in July of 2017 that these two parties, the Wild Rose and the progressive conservatives, that they would form a new party, this UCP party, I announced that I would not cross the floor for all intents and purposes that I would not join this new party because I was elected as a party. progressive conservative. This new party, I mean, nobody knew what their policies were going to be. Nobody knew what direction they were going to be. Nobody knew what they stood for, essentially.

And I said, look, I've been elected as a progressive conservative. I'm going to continue to represent the people that elected me as a progressive conservative. And if that means that, you know, come to the next election, when there is no progressive conservative party that I don't run again, then so be it. You know, I've said repeatedly, that if the only thing that is motivating the things you do in politics are getting reelected, if whatever you do is with an eye towards getting reelected, you're doing things for the wrong reason. You're making decisions based on your own self-interest,

not based on what's best for the people you're representing. So I made the decision in July of 2017 that I was not going to join the UCP caucus. It was kind of funny because it was one of those decisions where the people who liked you applauded the decision and the people who didn't like you applauded the decision because I said, good, good riddance. We don't want the guy anyway. You know, we don't want that guy in our new party. He would just stay in our new party. He's too progressive.

So, I mean, it was one of those weird times in politics where he made everybody happy. But there was a lot of significant nastiness from people when I did. decided not to join the new party. And I said, look, this is, that's, that's a decision I've made based on, you know, what I consider to be my principles and the principles that I ran on. And, and, you know, and as, as things then played out and as, as things happened with this new party and now that we've seen what they're like for the first two years that they've been an elected government, um, I mean, there's not a day that goes by that I'm not absolutely confirmed for me in my mind that I made the right decision for me. I could not be a part of that party.

I don't support that party today. It's a party that is, you know, it's not, it's not a party I can support. I'll just leave it at that. But, you know, integrity means that you have to at all times respect, respect the rules that are set out and govern yourself accordingly. And one of the concerns I have is that it seems that, you know, If, you know, one of the books that I would write is, is nice guys don't always finish last. But there has been a trend.

And, I mean, one of the things that was involved with that trend was when Mr. Trump was elected south of the border. That people who act in a way that has integrity, that has ethics, that, that is, you know, the right way of doing things, that they were getting left behind. you know it to me it was it was just unbelievable that you know in some situations you had people getting elected who you know was very clearly were not you know didn't conduct their business in a matter that was ethical didn't conduct their personal relationships in a manner that was ethical and and that you know could be pointed out time and again we're simply lying to people you know it was something i just would refuse to do you know um and and was sometimes called out for it.

You know, like, you know, if I, if anybody ever tried to suggest to me, well, you know, maybe you just have to tell a little white lie. And I said, that's not going to happen. I said, that's just not going to happen. If you're asking me to lie, I said, that's not going to happen. I said, if I misspeak or say something that is wrong or incorrect because I don't know the facts, that's fine. That can happen to anybody.

And as soon as I know the facts, I will correct myself very publicly. if what I said the first time was public, but I'm not going to, you know, say something that I know at the time I'm saying it is untrue. And, you know, I had some colleagues in the political world that said, well, that's going to be a problem for you. And I said, no, if you think it's okay, then it's a problem for you. You know, that's who's got a problem here. No, that's well put.

Yeah, no, that's like I say, and, you know, doing work in Lloyd, working in Lloydminster, having a business in Lloydminster, and I talked about some of these people before, we had the wonderful benefit of watching people with incredible integrity run their businesses and run them, and they were very successful, and they were very respected. And again, I use the examples of people like Ken Kyle or, Dave McCaw or Ray Nelson.

These are people that ran businesses and were successful, but were always known for their ethics, right? Yeah. Well, I don't think you could leave it off any better than that. I appreciate you coming in today and talking a little bit about, well, humoring me and where the conversation led. And talking about your life and career and everything else in between. So thanks again, Mr. Stubner.

Darkie for coming in. No problem. I enjoyed it. Thank you. Hey folks, thanks for joining us today. If you just stumbled on the show, please click subscribe. Then scroll to the bottom and rate and leave a review. I promise it helps. Remember, every Monday and Wednesday, we will have a new guest sitting down to share their story. The Sean Newman podcast is available for free on Apple, Spotify, YouTube,

and wherever else you get your podcast fix. Until next time.