I remember the first time I really noticed the smell.
I was driving along the highway through Central Saanich when a heavy, rotten odour came into the car. It was hard to ignore. For people living nearby, though, this was not something they encountered for a few minutes while passing through. It was part of daily life.
By 2013, the frustration was intense.
At the town hall meeting, people described what that meant. One resident said, “You can’t eat properly, your food doesn’t taste right, your clothes smell.”
Another said she was speaking out of “my frustration and my nervousness” and asked, “Okay, now what?”
Someone else said, “I felt like I got kicked in the teeth.”
People talked about health. They talked about their homes and property values. The issue itself was complicated. Central Saanich was involved, the CRD was involved, health authorities were involved, and there were questions about who had the authority to do what.
What I remember from that period is watching people begin to find one another. Residents were comparing information. Someone had spoken with the health authority. Others had met with their MLA or written provincial ministers. People brought names of scientists and environmental engineers into the conversation. One person knew something that somebody else did not.
Council agreed to hold the town hall, and I chaired it (see video below).
As the evening went on, the discussion changed. People were not only describing what was wrong. They were offering contacts, information and ideas.
At one point I said, “There’s a lot of wisdom in this room.”
There really was.
I could see relationships forming around the problem. An individual concern was becoming something shared. People who had arrived with their own experiences were beginning to see what they knew collectively.
Near the end of the meeting, the conversation turned to democracy. I talked about representative democracy and a more direct democratic process, and about people taking greater control over an issue affecting their own community.
Someone called out, “You join us.”
I have thought about that exchange since.
Council still had work to do. We had decisions to make, powers to use and responsibilities we could not hand off to anyone else.
But I was also seeing another kind of leadership in that room. People were developing relationships, sharing what they knew and becoming more capable of acting together.
That experience is part of why I later became so interested in community organizing and in the idea of leadership as enabling people to achieve a collective purpose.
I still see that need in Central Saanich today.
We have important decisions ahead of us about growth, infrastructure, agriculture, our environment, and the kind of community we want Central Saanich to remain.
If you share this view of leadership and public participation, come and talk with me. Bring someone else who cares about an issue too. My Friday coffee is at the Emporium Café from 3:30pm to 5:00pm.
Come with a concern, an idea or a question.
