Chair, Roberts Creek Official Community Plan Commission

The Official Community Plan sets what gets built in Roberts Creek, what gets protected, and how the two are balanced. The regional district is renewing it, so in February 2026 the commission and a team of community volunteers ran a town hall to find out what people here actually wanted in ours. I organized it and nine volunteers facilitated the tables. About 175 residents gave up a Sunday afternoon at the Heritage Hall, across eight facilitated tables, and 220 filled in the survey that followed. I wrote the report we submitted to regional district planning staff, with the support of the commission and a team of community volunteers.

In that report we published the weaknesses in our own method: which responses came back incomplete, and where the survey design may have skewed the result. I would rather hand someone a finding with its flaws attached than a clean number that falls apart under the first question. That is the standard I would bring to a school board table.

What residents put first, by a decisive margin, was that water supply and infrastructure come before any further growth. Second was the forest. Fifth was keeping decisions about Roberts Creek in Roberts Creek.

Alternate Director, Electoral Area D

I step in for our area’s director at the SCRD board when needed. That is the table where water, waste, parks, fire protection and land use get decided for Roberts Creek.

Vice President, xwesam-Roberts Creek Community Association

The association that looks after the hall and much of what happens in the Creek. It is the organisation that renamed itself to honour the shíshálh placename for this place.

Performer, Coast Improv

I get on stage with Coast Improv. It is the least serious thing on this page and the best listening practice I have ever found. You cannot do improv while you are waiting for your turn to talk.

School trustee, sixteen years. Board chair, five.

Elected four times to a half-urban, half-rural board. I pushed hardest on mental health supports, on the connection between schools and the communities around them, and on making sure technology served teaching rather than the other way round. Chairing a board is not a bigger vote. It is the job of running a meeting so a decision actually gets made and everyone knows why.

Vice President, six years

OPSBA represents Ontario’s English public boards to the province. Six years on its executive is six years of arguing the case for public education to the people who write the funding formula.

Negotiating team member, OSSTF central bargaining

I sat on the OPSBA team that negotiated the provincial collective agreement with the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation. Central bargaining is where class size, staffing and working conditions in every secondary school in the province get settled. It is slow, technical work, and it taught me more about how a school system actually runs than anything else I have done.

Founder and past President, Guelph Solar Community Co-operative

A community-owned co-operative I started so ordinary residents could invest in local rooftop solar and keep the returns in town rather than sending them somewhere else.

Past President, Old University Neighbourhood Residents’ Association

The residents’ association for the neighbourhood I lived in. Planning applications, traffic, trees, and the ordinary work of getting a city to listen to the people who live in a place.