Sadly, Gordon Chow’s name will be missing from this year’s Kamloops civic election ballot

THE ARMCHAIR MAYOR (COLUMN) — Something will be missing from this year’s civic election — the name of Gordon Patrick Chow.

He’s the guy credited with getting Peter Milobar re-elected in 2011. Chow got 441 votes, which is quite a bit more than the number by which Milobar defeated second-place finisher Dieter Dudy.

One theory is that most of those 441 votes were a protest against Milobar and that if Chow hadn’t been in the race they’d have gone to Dudy, and Dudy would have been mayor.

Chow died a week and a half ago. He was 65. The obituary was three sentences long. It didn’t say anything about who Gordon Chow was.

He was a likable, soft-spoken guy. He ran twice for mayor — once in 1988 against Phil Gaglardi, and again three years ago against Milobar. Neither he nor anyone else thought he had any chance of winning either time.

Some people misjudged him. He was smart. He was a laborer by trade and he was missing a few teeth, but he knew about math and economics. He knew what made a community and a country tick.

I used to see him once in awhile on Fortune Drive waiting for the bus to get to wherever he was working that day.

A feature about him in The Kamloops Daily News in 2011 began by saying, “Perhaps it’s his weathered straw hat, the half-dozen beat-up lawnmowers in his front yard or his low profile on civic affairs, but some people question whether Gordon Chow is a serious candidate for mayor.”

I never saw it that way. No, he couldn’t win, but the fact he wanted to run was what was important. His candidacies were a reaffirmation that our democratic system works.

It’s a system in which anyone has the right to run for public office, to have an opportunity to try.

Chow ran in 2011 because he was afraid Milobar would get in by acclamation. He was hoping Denis Walsh would run but when Walsh opted out Chow turned in his nomination papers at the last minute.

As it turned out, a couple of others thought the same way — there ended up being four candidates.

He promised he’d spend tax money carefully if he was elected, and listen to what people had to say.

“When you create a community like Kamloops, you want to be able to have input to be able to have it serve you rather than you serving them.”

The Daily News feature said Gordon Chow’s favourite movie was the Harry Potter series and his favourite book was Boomer Economics.

Not long after the election, resident Bob Gretzinger wrote a letter to the editor telling the story about how he gave Chow a ride to City Hall and ended up signing his nomination papers, then finding a passerby to provide the required second signature.

Chow filed his papers with about a minute to spare.

“I like Gordon Chow,” Gretzinger wrote. “He is a direct, ordinary labourer who wants to be involved in his community. Gordon, who lives at the end of my street, doesn’t own a car or cell phone. When I first saw him I knew I would help him even though I didn’t know anything about his platform, etc. I just felt there was something right about an ordinary citizen being able to run for office.”

A community needs people like Gordon Chow. Ours is not quite as good as it was when we still had him.

armchairmayor@gmail.com