Running for municipal council as a first-time candidate is a daunting enough endeavour on its own.
But Pemberton council candidate Katrina Nightingale is taking on the challenge during a particularly difficult time: when she sits down for the all-candidates meeting on Monday, Sept. 26, she’ll do so virtually from Ontario, where she’ll be attending a memorial service and helping her father get settled following the recent death of her mom.
“There’s never a good time for these things,” said Nightingale. “But the timing of it is interesting to me, just because so much of what I learned [about service] was from my mom, you know? … I’ve got her so present in my mind while I’m [running for] town council.”
Another principle Nightingale’s mom (and dad, she said) instilled throughout her upbringing was a “love and deep respect for the natural world,” the candidate added. “She loved the Earth and just by virtue of the way she lived her life, she taught me to make every effort to tread lightly and recognize what sustains us.”
Those values passed down from her parents are just some of the life lessons Nightingale will be bringing with her to the Village of Pemberton council table if elected on Oct. 15.
Nightingale was born on Vancouver Island but raised in Ontario, where she studied political science and history at Queen’s University before answering the call of the mountains and returning back to B.C. in her 20s. She has worked as a teacher for the last 25 years, after earning her teaching degree from New Brunswick’s Mount Allison University.
Interspersed in those experiences was a stint working in Budapest, Hungary following her undergraduate degree—“I was there when the Iron Curtain came down,” she recalled. “Seeing the desire for democracy and how much education was tied to that, that’s what inspired me to come back and then become a teacher.”
Nightingale’s education career took her to schools in Surrey, Vancouver and a First Nations community in Bella Bella in the late ’90s, right around “the start of a dialogue around residential schools,” Nightingale said. “It was the very beginning, and reconciliation wasn’t a catchphrase then … It was an incredible learning experience.”
After marrying her husband and having children—Nightingale’s two kids are students at Pemberton Secondary School (PSS)—the family decided to leave the Lower Mainland for Pemberton’s green space and small-town community feel about 12 years ago.
Nightingale said council feels like a natural next step after years spent involved in local soccer, dance, gymnastics and biathlon organizations and volunteering on PSS’ Parent Advisory Council, Stewardship Pemberton’s board and the Official Community Plan (OCP) Advisory Committee, all in addition to her work as a special education teacher, formerly at Signal Hill and now as a tutor.
Now, “I want to do more, I would like to be involved—at this crossroads that Pemberton is at—in doing everything I can to help Pemberton become a resilient community,” said Nightingale of her motivation to run. “I just want to give back in a more substantial way.”
Building that resilience—which she defines as “the ability to adapt to external pressures and internal pressures, while maintaining the identity of this community”—is, in Nightingale’s view, the biggest challenge Pemberton currently faces.
“Resilience, for me, is so tied to identity, which has everything to do with what we value,” she said. As the candidate points out, Pemberton’s OCP lists “Our community is habitat” as its first of six guiding principles. So, “in terms of our local situation and globally, for me, then that is the lens that informs all the decision making,” she said.
From affordable housing and transit to mental health and reconciliation, Nightingale sees every issue as inextricably tied to the environment. She has ideas of how to address them individually—for example, promoting the creation of compact, mixed-use, environmentally-responsible housing developments and allotting space within those for local employees; “tirelessly” maintaining pressure on demands for the regional public transit Pemberton needs; and being willing to sit down and have the difficult, honest, emotionally-charged conversations needed to build meaningful relationships—but ultimately, “protecting and preserving our natural environment, our home here, is paramount to our success as a community,” she said. “It’s something I will take very seriously.”
Nightingale joins Ted Craddock, Derek Graves, Jennie Helmer, Laura Ramsden and Eli Zysman in the race for Pemberton’s four council seats. Check back with Pique in the coming weeks for more candidate profiles.
