I’ve lived, volunteered and worked in this community for over 30 years. I‘m running for re-election to Council to work for balanced and responsible decisions that help maintain a sustainable community reflecting our core values as expressed in our Official Community Plan.

My wife, Heather, and I moved to Saanichton in 1991 where we still live in that same home today, now with our Golden Retriever, Riley. Heather, a retired nurse and nursing instructor, is a devoted paddler with the Island Breaststrokers Dragon Boat Team (breast cancer survivors). She is a Director of the North & South Saanich Agricultural Society (Saanich Fair) and has served many years as convenor of the vegetable section.

We do our best to live a greener lifestyle. We own an e-car (Chevy Bolt) and e-bikes (car substitute). We compost our food waste and apply it to our vegetable gardens, and recycle leaves from our large maple tree on site. We recycle through the CRD Blue Box program and our soft plastics at Stelly’s. And when the weather cooperates, we use solar and wind power to dry our laundry!

Since the 1990s, I’ve volunteered and worked for a number of local and regional agricultural initiatives including the Saanich Fair, Peninsula Country Market, Southern Vancouver Island Direct Farm Marketing Association (Farm Fresh guide), Island Farmers’ Alliance and BC AgriTourism Alliance. This year, I set up a “Go Local” Peninsula agriculture booth at the Saanich Fair with my friend Sandy. Currently, I do contract work with the Small Scale Food Processor Association (https://ssfpa.net), completing development of its Women’s Initiative website (https://women.ssfpa.net), and now designing an on-line food hub resource website.

History is one of my personal interests. Do you know why the Prairie Inn is called the Prairie Inn? Did you know there was a large cranberry bog south of the Saanich Fairground that was an important resource for the First Nations before it was drained for farming? In the 1990s I located an 1859 map of “South Saanich” (now Central Saanich) and the survey notes on which the map was based, allowing me to map the pre-contact vegetation pattern. This map represents the transition from the world freely occupied by the WSANEC people for thousands of years to subdivision into 100-acre parcels for settlement by Europeans and what we know as Central Saanich today.