ARMCHAIR ARCHIVES – Gordon Chow, the man who ran for mayor
Gordon Chow. (Kamloops Daily News photo)
The following column was first published on March 15, 2014 in the Kamloops Daily News.
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.
Mayor Peter Milobar and mayoralty candidates Gordon Chow, Dieter Duty and Brian Alexander listen to questions from the audience during a 2011 election forum at TRU Grand Hall. (Daily News photo)
“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.
“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.
Mel Rothenburger has been writing about Kamloops since 1970. He is a former regular contributor to CFJC-TV and CBC radio, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, and a Webster Foundation Commentator of the Year finalist. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
He was an awesome neighbor :)
LikeLike
I rode the bus to and from the all candidates forum at TRU and was beside Gordon on the bus on my way home. We talked about the election and some of the matters facing the City at that time. He was personable, and friendly with knowledge of local matters. He and Brian perhaps took some votes away from Candidate Dudy but we’ll never know for sure.
LikeLike
I never new Gordon personally, but saw him around town for many years. Thank-you Mel for highlighting his life.
LikeLike
Gordon Patrick Chow was likely not his real name. Having known Mr. Chow personally, I found your article to be a poignant reflection on the challenges faced by Chinese families in Canada, and in Kamloops, where they endured both racism and alienation. By running for political office, Mr. Chow may have sought to confront the stereotypes and complexities of identity that Chinese immigrants grappled with as they attempted to integrate into a society that often deemed them inferior. As you noted, “Some people misjudged him. He was smart.” This observation stands in stark contrast to the prevailing attitude over time, which held that “Oriental” people were inherently less intelligent.
The existence of “Chinatowns” in most British Columbia towns including Kamloops, underscores the widespread presence of Chinese immigrants and their struggle for acceptance. After the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway, many Chinese workers, mostly unmarried men found employment as farm laborers in Brocklehurst. Harsh immigration laws prohibited them from bringing their wives and children from China, leaving many to live out their lives as bachelors.
Your story about Mr. Chow resonates with other literary works that explore similar themes of racism and exclusion. Fred Wah’s Diamond Grill and John Norris’s Wo Lee Stories, for instance, shed light on the discrimination faced by Chinese immigrants in Nelson. Wo Lee, a Chinese market gardener, encountered prejudice whenever he delivered produce to white families, illustrating the pervasive hostility that marked everyday interactions. He was not allowed into the house if the woman was home alone.
It’s possible that Mr. Chow, as you say was smart, was influenced by figures like Sun Yat-sen and Wong Chin Foo, both of whom challenged North Americans to live up to the principles of equality they espoused but often failed to extend to the Chinese in their midst. Wong Chin Foo’s life, chronicled in The “First Chinese American” by Selingman , reveals his role as one of America’s earliest and most prominent advocates for racial equality. Stories like these, alongside Mr. Chow’s, highlight the historical struggles of Chinese immigrants in Canada and the broader fight for recognition and dignity.
LikeLike