Using Power Well: Legendary B.C. politician looks back at a life in public service

From his working-class roots in Burnaby and East Vancouver to becoming an alderman, an MLA, and then a cabinet minister, and later a top bureaucrat as head of ICBC, Bob Williams has led a life full of achievements, many of which we now take for granted.  Now, at the age of 89, he has just finished committing his remarkable story to paper in his new autobiography, Using Power Well: Bob Williams and the Making of British Columbia.

“The people that write the history own it, so I’m developing a bit of ownership.  A little late, but better late than never,” he says.

Williams is perhaps best known for serving in BC’s first NDP government back in the early 1970s.  In its short 39 months in power, that administration passed a dizzying amount of legislation, not seen before or since, much of which is still around today.  As the last man standing from that era, Williams admits to feeling a sense of obligation to go on the record.

“I did feel the story hadn’t been fully told,” he says.  “The little group that founded that government in `72 to `75 under Dave Barrett was an extraordinary gang of folks and it was a joyous place to work and create new policy for the province.”

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Some of the innovations Williams had a hand in include ICBC, the province’s public auto insurer, and the Agricultural Land Reserve, which preserves farmland even now.

“You know, it’s one of the great successes of that administration.  I don’t think there’s any doubt about that,” he says.  “And it’s a pleasure to go out in the [Fraser] Valley and see all the housing out in Abbotsford up on the mountain, and nothing on the farmland below.  It’s pretty impressive.”

A recurring theme is power:  who has it and how to use it.  Williams learned that lesson early.  His first job out of high school was at the Sewers Department in the City of Vancouver.  As he quips in the book, he didn’t start at the bottom, he started below the bottom!

“So, I was at the counter in the Sewer Department on the fifth floor at City Hall and watched people coming and going.  I got to sense the power structure and how it all worked.  The city engineer, after all, had his own elevator and he was the biggest guy in the building, as well, physically.  So, you start [seeing] the patterns and everybody jumped when the city engineers said jump,” he explains.  “But the only ones that didn’t were two of the big corporations, private corporations, the [Canadian Pacific Railway] and the old BC Electric, who there before [BC Transit].  So yeah, it was a great watching spot.”

That experience would serve him well in his next position.  His first foray into elected office would be as an alderman on Vancouver City Council in 1964.  As an East Van kid, Williams thought it was very important to have the east side of the city represented at the council table.

“Yeah, there had been no representation from East Van since the `30s.  And I ran a separate campaign on the east side saying, ‘Vote for Your Side’ and on the west side I said, ‘Vote for a Young Planner’ and both the slogans worked,” he says.

Here too, Williams would learn about the use of power.

“Some of the ultra right-wingers on council couldn’t believe what I was able to pull off,” he says.  “I mean, believe it or not, tenants couldn’t run for public office in those days.  And I got a motion through council, through the legislature, so that renters could run to be a city councillor.  It’s hard to believe [now] when so many rights are well established, but I’m old enough to know that there was another time.”

Williams served one term as an alderman before Victoria came calling.  He was part of a new generation of legislators that arrived in the provincial capital in the 1966 election.  Williams remembers feeling quite the culture shock in the transition from municipal to provincial politics.

“Office conditions, for example.  There was a dozen of us, and we were in one room.  And so, we had a big table in the middle and we separated it with law books to create a little bit privacy at our own desk.  And that was it.  I decided that I wasn’t going to accept that kind of nonsense.  And WAC Bennett, the premier, walked by our office on his way to the legislature every day.  So, I said ‘Hey, I’m not going take this’ and they said, ‘Hey!  Young pup!  Get used to it.  It’s what we get.’  And so, I said, ‘No, I’m moving my office out in the corridor.  To hell with this.’  So, I moved the books and table and secretary, telephone, and the old man almost tripped over my desk as he went to the legislature.  We got new offices right away.  So, that was a sign of times changing.”

By 1972, Bennett was out, replaced by Dave Barrett and BC’s first NDP government.  Barrett appointed Williams his Minister of Lands, Forests and Water Resources.  For all its accomplishments, Williams thinks the Barrett government is misunderstood, even now.

“I don’t think any of the political scientists have figured it out.  Nor do I think they’ve been very interested, he explains.  “I’ve never been interviewed, given my history, for example,” he explains.

Besides ICBC and the Agricultural Land Commission, Williams had a hand in other legacies which are still around today.  The SeaBus, linking Downtown Vancouver with the North Shore, and the Lonsdale Quay development on the North Vancouver waterfront, came together almost hand-in-hand.

“There was a naval architect in Victoria that came into my office one day and he had this plan for a SeaBus and he thought that that could alleviate the idea of a new bridge across [Burrard Inlet],” he explains.  “And so, I passed him on to Jim Lorimer, the minister for transit.  And he was hired and in no time, we had the SeaBus running, and it’s been a great achievement.  But it also meant we had to look at the North Shore.  And so, I ended up acquiring quite a bit of the waterfront right at Lonsdale.  And, as a result, ICBC is there and now there’s a great art gallery there [too].”

What isn’t as well-known is the fact Williams had wanted ICBC headquartered in Kamloops, not North Vancouver.

“Kamloops has suffered unfairly against Kelowna.  It’s really should be the dominant city of the southern Interior.  But because the Bennett family has owned Kelowna for generations, most everything has gone there, including the highway system.  So, that’s still a battle to be fought,” he chuckles.  “In the case of ICBC now, I’d move it to Surrey City Centre.”

Developing Whistler and Robson Square are also points of pride for Williams.

“When we had the Olympics, the centres that were there were centres that I had something to do with.  Saving Whistler with Al Raine was the big thing that created the modern Whistler and then our own Robson Square in Vancouver and then Surrey City Centre,” he says.  “And that’s where all the action happened during the Olympics and it’s something that makes me feel quite proud.”

Williams kept busy outside of elected office.  He bought the Railway Club in Downtown Vancouver and owned it for 30 years.  And once the NDP returned to power in the 1990s, Williams became a “super” bureaucrat, heading up ICBC from 1998 to 2001, overseeing Surrey’s Central City development at the same time.  He also served on the board of the VanCity Credit Union.

Williams also has thoughts on the current NDP government under Premier John Horgan.

“They’ve not been dealt the best cards in the deck,” he says.  “I hadn’t realized that some of the health problems were as serious as they are.  And for the NDP, that’s not acceptable.  We’re known for our health programs historically.“

“In addition, we’ve not taken on the question of the big forest issues and saving the ancient forests.  But if we do work it out with the Indigenous people and decentralize on a regional basis, we can still save it,” he explains.  “I hope some of my friends there will get on with that.”

As Williams writes in the book, the job of the good politician is to use power well.  “It’s [about] being freed to use the best of your own ability, as you apply yourself to the problems,” he says.  “[And] how much we actually can do, if we just free ourselves and understand and talk to one another.”

Using Power Well:  Bob Williams and the Making of British Columbia by Bob Williams with Benjamin Isitt and Thomas Bevan is available from Nightwood Editions.