Hello, I'm Brian Beattie, and I’m running for City councillor in Ward 1. What an interesting turn of events. To be totally honest, I have thought about this for a few years. It’s really just a carry over of my personal philosophy "if you don’t vote you don’t have an opinion”. This is just the next level. If you have strong opinions and the ability to see things change for good, you should get involved and be part of the solution.
A couple of things pushed the proverbial scales over the top for me. One was the front-page coverage that John Starkey received on September 23rd as he “went out swinging”. Enough said!
But much more importantly, both my boys ran for class reps at their school last week. As we were encouraging them to get involved, and try make a difference (blah, blah, blah… you know… the good parental speeches we all give at times), I realized that I had a similar opportunity before me. The only question - was I going to get involved and try and make a difference?
My wife and I had a discussion last week about what the election process would do to us. How would it affect us? How would it affect our boys and our friends? We’ve always been an upfront couple. We’re very involved in public life both personally and professionally, but obviously this would take it up a notch. Did we want more people wanting our time? Did we want more people talking about us?
The day after we had that discussion I was flipping through one of our “Bathroom Books" (You know the ones that have short enough chapters to make them a good, short read) and came across this quote... "the only thing worse than people talking about you is people not talking about you." Well that became the final word, or keeping with the previous metaphor, the last scale tipping pound.
By the way, it's going to come up soon, so I thought I might as well tell you that this is my first shot at a Municipal Election and public political life. But if you know anything at all about Pastoring... you already know Politics will be nothing new to me.Brian Beattie
