Linda King
A
fter six terms, Linda King has had enough. She’s turning in her Blackberry and agenda packages this fall and won’t stand for re-election to Maple Ridge council. Maybe. Well, at least not for the next three years. It’s not impossible, she’ll try again after the 2011 elections because it seems to work out to serve two terms, six years at a time. On the other hand, King, first elected in 1987, could be finished her career as a municipal politician. “When I was elected, I didn’t know anything,” said King, remembering the early days, She’s learned a bit since and offers this to any successors: “Go in with an open mind and be ready to learn and figure out how to ask a good question. And bear in mind that a question is not a speech.” And listen, she adds. Listen to the people who elected you and be willing to work with your elected colleagues, “whoever they are. “We have a small, tiny government. There are only seven people.” King got on to council as part of a group of women who wanted to increase their numbers in local politics. She was the one chosen to run for office and was surprised when she was elected. Until then, only Betty Dube, Bernice Gehring,
Bell Morse and Mae Cabbott had sat at the council table for the District of Maple Ridge, incorporated in 1874. “It took 100 years to elect one woman and that was Betty Dube,” King said. King joined council when she was a social worker with the B.C. government and earned her master’s in counselling psychology at UBC soon after. Those days, social workers handled everything from investigations, adoptions, foster families and intake. “It was so interesting.” Before that, she taught high school in Toronto and Edmonton after getting her teaching certificate at the University of Toronto and a history degree at Dalhousie University in Halifax. She was born in Montreal and also has lived in Ottawa and Winnipeg. “A piece of my heart is always in Montreal,” she says. Her third non-political career was as a counsellor with the Maple Ridge school district, from which she retired in 2007. King appreciates the education she has and credits her family for putting a premium on that. “It allows you to be really open to the world of ideas. It gives you the skills to be able to assess things and not take them at face value.” And you meet way more people who are smarter than you, she adds.
After 18 years on council, King sees more accomplishments than disappointments. She considers the district’s streamside protection regulations, which usually require 30-metre setbacks along stream banks, as a huge achievement, particularly when the province allowed cities to adopt looser rules in 2005. Protection of the streams started before that however. That actually began in 1988 when teacher Arthur Peake presented photos to council about the sorry state of McKechnie Creek. “I really credit him with it, really.” After seeing that, council decided immediately to protect its streams. “Council was immediately
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18 | Our Community. Our People. | Supplement to the Maple Ridge Pitt Meadows News | August 2011