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Old Guard, New Directions, different tomorrow

The story of Ian Sutherland’s two terms as Squamish mayor
1525ian
Seeking Sutherland With the recent announcement that he'll be retiring from local politics, Squamish Mayor Ian Sutherland has admitted being approached by the federal Liberals

Where there’s character, there’s testimonial. Every town has its indicators, little clues about the people who live there. From the titles carried in bookstores to the busiest restaurants, from employers to programming, local papers to local politicians, there’s always an abundance of evidence for both newcomers and denizens should a need to define oneself suddenly arise.

For nearly 10 years, Squamish has been a character in flux. Being simplistic can be dangerous, but, if anyone cares for summation by symbol, look no further than the east side of Highway 99, right at the mouth of the downtown.

Among the first things northbound travelers will see is the Adventure Centre, resplendent in both sun and rain thanks to its architecture, which makes ample use of glass panes and flowing water. Almost immediately after, there’s the lumberjack statuary, a massive, coastal Paul Bunyan, bearded and brawny, foot resting on a bucked trunk as he breaks from the business of hard work, likely to ponder just what the hell this Adventure Centre spectacle is all about.

Opinions differ, but the Adventure Centre represents a new Squamish, one poised to embrace tourism and the sort of edificial opulence reminiscent of Whistler. It represents economic diversification, light industry, trails and film. While nothing happens in a vacuum, it wouldn’t be unfair to say it represents New Directions (ND), the slate that took over council in the general election of 2002, but lost members in 2005.

Now, consider the statue. In part a monument to all things forestry, it harks back to days mostly gone by, to a time when people earned their livings with heavier footprints, when the Woodfibre mill was still blissfully in business, development was slower and Squamish was something tourists drove through on their way to Whistler. Again, nothing happens in a vacuum, but it wouldn’t be unfair to say the statue represents the so-called Old Guard, those people in Squamish power circles who abhor New Directions and all its remnants.

Ian Sutherland’s two terms as mayor began along these fault lines. On a sunny afternoon in his district office, dressed casually in skateboard shoes as he is during strategy sessions, the bespectacled Sutherland remembers the year 2000, when Councillor Corinne Lonsdale was mayor and a woodchips facility was proposed for downtown.

“Downtown was starting to evolve and change as more young families moved downtown,” says the mayor, who will not be seeking re-election come November. “People were starting to like the thought of a vibrant downtown. And the concept of the chips facility just south of the Brew Pub — a lot of people became upset by that.”

A group of people, many of whom later formed New Directions, organized themselves into a protest group called Citizens for a Healthy, Innovative and Progressive Squamish (CHIPS). The district approved the project, prompting CHIPS to launch a court case against the powers that be.

“That forced the district to go back and rezone the land for the facility, and that led to a public hearing,” Sutherland says.

The project died. There was a by-election in 2001, and Sutherland found himself on council. In the background, the New Directions slate and vision was starting to coalesce.

“It started probably quite soon after the by-election,” he says. “We started talking about a general election. It started off with the idea that there were a lot of good people willing to make a run for council in 2002. And because we were talking together, and working together, we felt the honest thing to do was to declare that up front. So we came up with the name, which was ND.”

The slate was to embody a number of principles, including the densification of downtown, a focus on the value of recreation, diversification of the economy, an overhaul of the town’s image, a focus on environmental responsibility and a plan for the demise of Woodfibre, which wound up snuffing out, along with 300 jobs, in 2006.

It’s easy to talk about apples without mentioning oranges, but you can’t talk about Sutherland without mentioning Lonsdale. It’s like discussing the sky while ignoring the ground — which is to say: one certainly invokes thoughts of the other.

For many people, Lonsdale, with her 25 years of elected experience, represents the Old Guard, no doubt a statement of irritation given that she thinks the political camp theory is pure fiction.

“I’ve been around long enough to know that if you check every three years, four members of council are replaced,” she says. “Every time, at least three get replaced. We just have a pattern of doing that type of thing. I couldn’t go along with this Old Guard/New Directions stuff. I just don’t swallow it all. It just doesn’t work. I don’t believe in it.”

And so she refutes Sutherland’s assertion that previous councils had undeclared slates. Either way, while many people find the slate approach to be heavy-handed, ND certainly won the day in the general election of November 2002.

Of the 9,234 registered voters, 62.2 per cent cast ballots. Sutherland, who ran on the mayoral ticket against Paul Lalli and Ron Bahm, scored 2,919 of 5,655 votes. Lalli finished second with 2,349. Council, meanwhile, wound up composed of three New Directions members — Dave Fenn, Ray Peters and Sonja Lebans — and three others, including Lonsdale and Raj Kahlon, who, with 3,608 votes amassed, was the most popular bid at the ballot box. Jeff Dawson was third and, while not an official member of ND, Sutherland says he was ideologically aligned with the slate.

The next three years would be changing for the district.

“We wanted, probably for the first time, to have all the planning processes in place,” says Sutherland, “so that whatever moves forward is based on policy and merit, and not based on whoever put the application forward.”

The CHIPS experience, he says, showed how land use strategies and bylaws were fast and loose, their terms and definitions open to interpretation and threatening to the slate’s grand vision for downtown.

“You need a good, solid definition of what light industrial is,” says Sutherland. “Light industrial is not 24/7 with lights and loud noise. But the bylaws were vague. Now the bylaws have been tightened up and improved so that now we have a pretty good understanding of light industrial.”

Sutherland insists that the slate was not an iron fist. They shared an overarching philosophy, but, on a case-by-case basis, they’d sometimes vote at odds.

“All I know,” says Lonsdale, “is for the three years ND was in power, I was very frustrated.”

When 2005 rolled around, it brought with it a drubbing for ND. Turnout for November’s elections was low, just 44 per cent of 10,441 voters. Lonsdale emerged as the councillor most favoured, scoring 2,826 ballots, with Kahlon just behind her, himself earning 2,223 votes. Meanwhile, the only returning ND councillor was Ray Peters.

Sutherland held onto his post as mayor, although he was given a run by Terrill Patterson, who, with 1,925 votes, came within 336 steps of the sash.

Many see Patterson as a protest candidate. The theory goes that ND supporters constitute a younger demographic. They were complacent, ignoring the polls for their pastimes. The Old Guard, meanwhile, is a set more sterling, the type who view political participation as a civic responsibility. Accordingly, they stormed the polls and carried most of the day.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Patterson shakes off the protest label, insisting he was viewed on his own terms and that Sutherland’s showing was a “report card.”

“The Old Guard couldn’t find a candidate,” Patterson says. “They were able to scrape together the few you see sitting on the council right now. So what they were able to do was cut the mayor off at his knees, not take him out.”

The new council composition slowed ND’s momentum considerably.

“Well, on one side we’re lucky that we did a lot of work in the first few years,” Sutherland says. “If you look at a lot of the stuff we’re getting into now, most of it was started before 2005. So we’re lucky on that one. But that council was very good at making decisions and processed a lot of work. This council tends to move at a slower pace, tends to debate issues longer, and tends to want to manage as opposed to lead.”

Ask Sutherland about his accomplishments, and he’ll rattle off a familiar litany. The new Downtown Neighbourhood Plan, Quest University, the community’s shift towards self-containment, a better image, purchasing the Nexen Lands for $3, the Adventure Centre and better relations with Whistler — the latter despite the corridor’s loss of the Olympic sledge hockey rink, which most people in Squamish circles blame on Whistler’s initial indecision and subsequent overcompensation.

He’ll also mention the economy. A favourite figure of his is the nearly $70 million in commercial construction value achieved in 2006. It adds up to more than the total of all annual activity dating back to 1988, which finishes at approximately $50 million, according to district records. That trend, says Sutherland, will see Squamish recoup the lost revenues represented by the closure of Woodfibre come 2009.

But Lonsdale, who stresses her respect for Sutherland, objects to his taking credit for the economy.

“No municipal council can ever take credit for turning an economy around,” she says. “The economy of the province was absolutely at rock bottom before Ian got elected.”

While Lonsdale does acknowledge a different character in Squamish, one that focuses a good deal on recreation, the change in Squamish, she continues, is due to the housing boom, the construction boom and the announcement of the Olympics, among other things, none of which Sutherland can fairly lay claim to.

“It wouldn’t be safe to say we’re (economically) diverse today,” she adds. “We lost a lot of diversity, in my opinion, with the demise of the pulp mill, the railroad and the forestry industry itself.”

With November still a whole summer away, Sutherland’s recent announcement to quit local politics seems odd in its timing. There’s a theory that he did so to hamstring Greg Gardner, who replaced the late Ray Peters in a by-election, thus stomping out the last hint of an official slate.

“Yeah, but the flipside of that is that if I waited too long, they’d say people were trying to run me out of office,” Sutherland says, adding that his reasons are the same as when he made the announcement.

Whatever the case, Gardner’s ambitions are official as of early this week. As speculation surrounding other candidates trundles along, there are a number of people, including Lonsdale, simply waiting to see who enters the arena. Whoever does will wade into a situation just as exhaustingly busy as the one Sutherland leaves behind. Residential building, development applications and other activity indicators have all been on the upswing in recent years, and the Olympics are still nearly two years away.

As for Sutherland, he admits to being approached by Liberals to run as a candidate in the next federal election, which will be no later than 2009. While he was quick to announce his departure from local politics, he’s much more hesitant to nail down plans for his future.

“If I do run,” he smilingly says, “I plan on winning.”