A Nanaimo city council candidate will be balancing his election campaign with current city council duties elsewhere.
Peter Kent, a District of Squamish councillor who grew up in Nanaimo, went on to become a Hollywood stuntman and has recently moved back to Vancouver Island with his family, announced he is running for council in his hometown.
Kent’s interest in politics meant he wasn’t paying attention only to the Sea-to-Sky region the last couple of years – he couldn’t help but notice what was going on across the Strait of Georgia.
“Municipally Nanaimo has had its share of darts thrown at it, and some for a very good reason,” Kent said. “And with my experience in council, myself, looking at that, I thought, some of these things are just, for want of a better term, outrageous. Having the experience and wanting to come back, I thought, perhaps I can be of some help.”
He said Squamish council was comparatively “copacetic,” and while councillors there didn’t agree on everything, they limited any in-fighting. Kent said his political experience hasn’t only been about working with other councillors, though – it’s been about representing citizens.
“If I learned anything, it’s that you really have to listen to the public and let those sentiments guide you, because again, that’s who put you where you are,” he said.
While Squamish is only about one-fifth to one-quarter the size of Nanaimo in population, Kent said some common issues exist, with growth pressures, homelessness and infrastructure challenges.
“And everyone, I think, is concerned about how their families are going to move forward, and jobs and economic development in the place where they live,” he said.
One project he mentioned as important in Nanaimo is supportive housing, and lack of available land isn’t a good reason to stall, he suggested.
“Council needs to buckle down and start rezoning some of that land in order to make it usable so we can go to the B.C. Housing commission and say, look, we have Plan A, but also B, C and D as well,” said Kent. “I think that was the failing of the Chase River project – there was no fallback plan.”
If Kent is elected and finds himself on the city council video feed each week, he’ll be comfortable in front of the camera – he’s an actor and stuntman with more than 100 credits listed on IMDB.com. He was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s stunt double for about 15 years, working on blockbuster movies such as The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Total Recall. He counts Schwarzenegger as a friend.
“That’s not to say that I sort of took away that, and when he went into politics, attempted to mirror that. It may seem that way,” Kent said. “But I think what drove me to the politics side … was just a sense of wanting to be a part of the team that could do good things and do the right thing for the community that you care about.”
To read more interviews with local government election candidates, click here.
editor@nanaimobulletin.com
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