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The straddling man

Can Greg Gardner become mayor of old and new Squamish?
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Greg Gardner

Of all the different sorts of self-awareness, confidence is perhaps the most productive. It’s a lot like a pheromone. In all corners of life, the well poised carry with them an alluring cloud of promise, and those very vapours produce success and more confidence still. It’s hard to wander within sniffing distance and come through unaffected.

Greg Gardner is a man of casual and mostly affable confidence. He carries that self-awareness throughout his body language, which is open and assured as his eyes dart across the map of Squamish mounted on the wall of his General Motors office on Government Road.

Gardner is no stranger to success. Raised in Hope, he was valedictorian in both high school and university. He has a law degree, which brought him employment in three different firms before moving to Squamish in 1994. Once relocated in the shadow of the Chief, he set up Greg Gardner Motors Ltd., the G.M. dealership that carries his name in large letters visible from the Sea to Sky Highway. Efforts on that front won him the Chamber of Commerce’s businessman of the year award in 2004.

Two years after that, he took his posture to district politics. New Directions Councilor Ray Peters passed away, thus triggering a by-election on June 28, 2006. Gardner entered the fray. Facing off against six other candidates, he scored 1,223 votes, leaving Ted Prior a distant second with 392 ballots.

Now, with two years of political experience under his belt, Gardner’s aspirations are for the mayoral chair. Mayor Ian Sutherland — who announced his retirement from municipal government at the beginning of the month — also entered local politics as the champion of a by-election. The following year, he won the mayoral race in the civic election.

While Gardner easily vanquished his opponents in 2006, voter turnout was low, just 24.2 per cent, the lowest of any by-election dating back to 1995. Meanwhile, in 2001, Sutherland faced stiff competition from Norm Verner, who nailed down 1,209 votes to Sutherland’s 1,426. But the turnout was high. Measured at 35 per cent, it was the second highest by-election turnout since 1995, when 41 per cent of the electorate took to the polls. At this stage, Gardner doesn’t have the same degree of certainty as Sutherland, if only because fewer people weighed in on his 2006 success.

Regardless, the man’s casual confidence goes unchecked.

One of the cornerstones of his upcoming campaign, which won’t really take off until after the summer, revolves around the nexus between council and the general public. Many on council, including Patricia Heintzman and Corinne Lonsdale, say that nexus is damaged, that the lines of communication are in dire need of rewiring. Gardner put forward a similar position in 2006, and he’ll be doing it again this November.

“I think there’s two reasons for that,” he says. “One is so we can get feedback from residents, but also so we can advise residents of what decisions are being made and why so there’s a better understanding by everyone.”

The renewed Oceanfront planning process, which gets a public launch this Saturday at Stan Clarke Park, is an example of good connectivity, says Gardner. The district approach in 2006, which saw council courting a private developer, was one of the reasons Gardner ran in the by-election. The crumbling of that courtship climaxed with Councillor Mike Jenson ripping up an MOU between the district and the developer during a regular business meeting.

“There’s no question that Squamish has had a huge volume of work put on our plate on the development side since 2003,” Gardner says. “I think we are growing as fast as any community I’m aware of, with the possible exception of Fort McMurray.”

When it comes to planning that growth, Gardner is largely satisfied, although the process for the Upper Blind Channel is worrying, in part because the Red Point development is getting third reading before consultations on the whole area have wrapped up.

Still, over the past year and half, Gardner says, council has become more cohesive and productive, a necessary state when it comes to managing growth. One of the ways to enshrine that harmony is to chip away at the labels used by some politicians, voters and media. Ask Gardner if he believes in the Old Guard, and his confident demeanour turns almost chastising.

“Absolutely not,” he scolds. “I think those are labels that a) aren’t accurate and b) are harmful to our community. I think that both people who have lived here for 50 years and people who have lived here for five weeks want what’s best for our community, and their visions aren’t that different.”

But those labels do exist, and, a few sentences later, Gardner acknowledges them by framing himself as a bridge between the two communities. “When I ran for council two years ago, (my opponent) Terrill Patterson made the comment about me that I had one foot in each camp. I would like to think I have a good relationship with people who have lived here a long time, and I’d also like to think I share the values of newer residents.”

One of those values is a dense, mixed-use downtown planning strategy, which was a cornerstone in the New Directions campaign that brought Sutherland first as councillor and then as mayor.

Another is regionalism. Whistler, he says, is a powerful brand, one that could serve Squamish. And Pemberton, meanwhile, is in a similar development situation, albeit less intense. And so, while the Regional Growth Strategy raises concerns regarding economic development and excessive influence from outside communities, it’s an important document he’d like to keep working on.

At publication, Gardner’s name was the only one on the mayoral ticket. If he does win the day in November, he’ll follow in his father’s footprints. Bud Gardner operated a car dealership in Hope, ran successfully for council and then became mayor. While Gardner says he didn’t consult his dad for advice on the decision, it’s entirely possible the success of the father fuels the confidence of the son.