About the candidate
Mark has lived in Metchosin with his partner Donna since 2007. Nearly two decades in, they're still overwhelmed by the beauty of the district and by the volunteer network that quietly holds it together.
Donna and I moved to Metchosin in 2007, and neither of us has gotten over the place. The beauty of the district, the volunteer network that quietly holds it together, and the wildlife I count cheerfully as good neighbours, that's still the reason to be here.
My working life has been spent almost entirely in small budgets and small communities. That work has taught me, quickly, what functioning small-community governance looks like when it's working, and what it costs a community when it isn't.
Metchosin's rural character isn't going to sustain itself by accident. It has to be protected on purpose: through a council that spends within its means, does its due diligence before big decisions, listens hard, and treats the volunteers and non-profits who do so much of the actual work here as partners rather than pageantry. That's the job I'm putting my name forward to do.
I studied psychology at UVic, then went to the University of Leuven, in Belgium, for graduate degrees. When I came back to the West Coast, as I'd promised myself I would, I went to work in Victoria's non-profit sector: first with adults leaving prison and trying to rebuild a life in the community, and then, deliberately, with young people at risk of homelessness, in the hope that fewer of them would ever need to have the first conversation.
Non-profit work teaches you two things well: how to treat people with dignity, and how to build something useful on a bare-bones budget. Both of those matter for a council seat.
Since 2018 I've worked with the B.C. Ministry of Post-Secondary Education and Future Skills. Much of that has been working with communities of all sizes, including First Nation communities, experiencing challenges in workforce shortages, especially small communities impacted by such events as mill closures and natural disasters.
For eight years I've been a volunteer with the Metchosin Emergency Program, in the Communications unit learning radio work from the Emergency Radio Coordinator and the Deputy, so that if a real emergency ever took down the ordinary lines of communication, we'd be able to reach the rest of the province and country. I'm grateful to both of them for being such great mentors.
Around the district.
Off-council, Metchosin life looks like this: I swim in Matheson Lake year-round, weather regardless. I try to keep my own property as wild and undeveloped as I can. The wildlife, the birds, and everything else that lives here I count, cheerfully, as good neighbours.
Mark & Donna
Donna and I have been in Metchosin together since 2007, and we plan to stay here.