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Making a Difference—Big Time
BC’s Brian Garland wins CADA Laureate Award for Ambassadorship
BY LAUREN KRAMER, BLACK PRESS CONTRIBUTOR
Brian Garland is one of those rare individuals who sees a need in his community and acts quickly and quietly to fill it.
“When you know you can make a difference, you have to be there for the things that are needed,” he says gently.
Garland, president of Cariboo Chevrolet Williams Lake, recently received the CADA Laureate Award for Ambassadorship, the most exclusive recognition dealers can receive over the course of their careers. His community work spans efforts to support youth sports teams, provide university scholarships and even create a new program at the Thompson Rivers University campus in Williams Lake.
Laureate award winners are selected by the Ivey Business School at Western University in London, Ontario, from a group of 15 national finalists. According to professor June Cottes, “As the ‘unofficial mayor’ of Williams Lake, Brian Garland has helped build his community over decades. What is particularly striking is the diversity of his efforts to build and strengthen the community above and beyond the confines of his business interests. His efforts to establish the TRU Grit group to save the local university are very notable, and his initiatives on youth and music education are truly inspirational. Across very diverse areas, Brian Garland has shown truly exceptional Ambassadorship.”
Garland is the first to admit the credit is not his alone.
“There were half a dozen key people that made this work and while I was proud to be a part of it, I can’t take credit for it,” he concedes.
By “it,” he means the Applied Sustainable Ranching diploma at TRU, an educational offering that didn’t exist five years ago. Garland’s parents worked in agriculture and met in Alberta in 1926, at an agricultural university. Five years ago Garland looked around and noted that despite being populated by some of Canada’s larg-
est ranches, BC still had no ranching program where students could learn about the industry. So he gathered an informal group of like-minded business associates and together they fundraised to create a made-in-BC agricultural program at the TRU campus in Williams Lake.
Fast-forward five years and the diploma program is thriving and growing, with 20 students learning all the tools of the ranching trade. The work of ranchers is absolutely vital, Garland stresses. That informal group of business associates adopted the name “True Grit” and continues to fundraise relentlessly to provide scholarships and bursaries to help students afford the tuition costs of attending university in Williams Lake. Each year, True Grit organizes a black tie gala dinner and adds $30,000 to the scholarship coffers of Williams Lake’s TRU campus.
Garland and his wife, Muriel, are deeply and personally committed to furthering higher education, and they recently donated $90,000 towards the construction of a new science building on campus.
But they also love supporting youth, from sports teams to musical programs, including the Young Fiddlers in Williams Lake. They helped raise funds and donated personally to send about 12 students and chaperones from the Young Fiddlers on an exchange trip to Halifax, he said, adding that this year the group went to Ireland. “We just love supporting music and culture for youth.”
Being the recipient of the CADA Laureate Award for Ambassadorship is a career highlight for Garland, who admits he is deeply flattered to have been selected from some 3,200 dealers across the country.
“When I found out I had won the Laureate award, I was overwhelmed with humility, and honoured to be in the special company of previous winners,” Garland said to CADA Chair Mike Stollety when he learned of the award. “People often come up to me and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got an idea for something.’ I think they know that car dealers can make things happen. Nobody’s waiting there to make it easy. You just have to make it work.”
