About Me:

Business experience: A manufacturer in Canada for years – furniture, storage systems, mattresses. Worked as a contractor with builders – Heatherbrae and GMC Properties at Portage West. (80 beds and folding tables in former Dominion hotel – now “Dominion Rocket”, 35 beds in Portage West)

Academic: B.A. University of Victoria, M.A. McMaster University - Specialty in Social Anthropology (what makes societies tick and communities work), Computer Science at University of Toronto.

Employees from all over the world: Vietnam, Philippines, Africa, China, Latin America, England, Europe, etc.

Legal Experience: Helping individuals with complaints against contractors, ICBC, towing companies, and family court procedures, plus precedent setting action against the municipality of View Royal, with personal agent representation in courtrooms for all of these.

Media experience: Articles written for The Martlet, UVIC student newspaper, Photography for the Times/Colonist.

Languages: English plus conversational French and Spanish.

Creative Design: Storage systems, furniture, business concepts and marketing.

Hobbies: Boating, Latin Dance, Classic Car Restoration, Photography.

Grounded - Not a student, not a bureaucrat. A business owner, employer, and consultant.

Personal History & Family: Born and raised in Langford. Lived here most of my life. Post- secondary education in Victoria, Toronto and Hamilton. Four children, two still minors. All delightful!

Manufacturer: These days, when everything comes in a box from Amazon, manufactured in China or Vietnam, Canadian manufacturers are a rare and endangered species.

Over a number of decades, I’ve built businesses that have produced real and valuable goods right here in Canada, and employed quite a number and variety of people in the process.

Personal Attributes: Like my mum and dad, I have always been very open and very personable. As a rule, I get along with everyone, even those who have radically different views. Exceptions can be people who are forcefully or habitually inclined to aggression or extreme rudeness. Even those I often have considerable patience for.

This does not mean I won’t stand my ground. I have famously –sometimes a bit controversially - stood my ground against a number of powerful opponents, and will do so again if it is called for. I do suspect it may be called for from time to time in the role of a councillor in Langford.

Family

A few years back, as a sort of semi-retirement hobby, my dad had a column in the local paper here in Langford, the Goldstream Gazette. He began his writing career long ago, writing for the Cowichan Leader in Duncan as a very young man, but signed up with the air force at the outbreak of WWII. He was assigned to RAF Coastal Command, and spent the war years mostly in Ceylon – now Sri Lanka.

When the war ended, he attended UBC, but returned to Victoria and took employment with the Daily Colonist as a journalist. He developed a syndicated chatty newspaper column that gained a good degree of popularity across B.C. and beyond (All Aboard with G.E. Mortimore).

He joined the editorial staff of the Globe and Mail in Toronto in the 60’s, and later studied for his PhD., changing careers to become a university professor. Someone told him there were no PhD’s driving cabs. That was then.

Always a great friend of working folks and of our native peoples, he won a National Newspaper Award for a series he wrote entitled “The Strangers”, about the mistreatment and plight of our First Nations. He contributed to radio shows and other media on a wide range of topics, including politics and social issues, and advocated for better wages for Canadian labourers and police officers.

As a result of his career, I was exposed to many unusual things, along with some interesting people. The open character this led me to develop, and these experiences as a whole, have stood me in good stead in business – and likely will do so in politics, if I am elected.