Frank Leonard & Associates

  On June 1, 2023 my high school alumni recognized my career with this designation.   Here are my comments at the ceremony. Thank you Mayor Dean Murdock for the introduction; congratulations other alumni for the recognition – it is an honour to be in your company; and a special thanks to my family – all members of my family for so much support for so many years. Allow me to make three comments: 1.         Just how much this means to me.   I attended nine schools in 12 years – my father was transferred around BC, and we rented once or twice at each stop - so it would be remarkable if anyone even remembers my attendance – thus to be presented with a recognition like this is extraordinary and I am truly grateful. 2.         As I look to some here who are travelling similar paths to mine, I want to stress that the goal was never to collect titles and positions – the goal is to make the most of these...

  Clara Isabella Leonard (nee Akwa) was born in Vancouver August 21, 1930 to Edward and Queenie.  Mom’s Dad – Eddie – was born to a German mother in Finland while her Mom was born in England.  Mom was raised in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood of Vancouver; in fact she attended Mount Pleasant school across the street from her home which was attached to her Dad’s tire and auto wrecking business. Mom was a pretty good softball pitcher and seemed to have a pretty happy childhood albeit within a family that had to be fairly frugal.   She and her sister Edna helped her Dad with his business – Mom liked to talk about that ‘Mr. Pattison’ that would come around looking for used tires for cars he was selling and to be amazed to see that he is now BC’s very own Jimmy Pattison.   Her grandmother – Nanna – lived upstairs in their home and seemed to entertain a lot of different gentlemen, let’s say. The spelling of her last name changed during the WWII as her dad told th...

  Francis Vernon Leonard Dad was born in Vancouver on January 27, 1930 to Frank Leonard and his wife Alma.   Frank Leonard died when Dad was a young infant as his lungs suffered from working at Britannia Mines and being gassed at Ypres in WWI.   Alma soon married Frank Gowan and Dad and his brother Stan grew up in Kitsalino while his stepdad operated a gift shop at Prospect Point in Stanley Park. Unfortunately Frank Gowan died when Dad was a teenager so he quit high school to support his Mom and brother.   Dad would sometimes say he’d done well for a kid that started out with a single mother on welfare. Dad worked at a flower shop, had other odd jobs and then met my mother Clare while managing a Moose Club bar and dance lounge.   Mom and Dad were married in 1951 and celebrated their 70 th anniversary in May 2021.   Dad was working for the Nutty Club when I was born in 1954 and his father-in-law and tire dealer Eddie Akwa insisted he learn the tire busi...

  Routine for you; Once in a lifetime for them We had hopped on a small private plane after our business meetings in Vernon for a beautiful flight to Vancouver Island when the latch on the door I was sitting next to popped up.   “Don’t worry about that,” said the pilot, “happens all the time; just push it back down and you’ll be fine.”   So you bet I pushed it back down and I did so again when it popped up a few minutes later.   In fact, I pushed down hard on it for the rest of the flight. ‘Happens all the time’ meant that this was just routine for the pilot but obviously this was not routine for me – it was once in a lifetime and thankfully I’ve been able to talk about it for decades since.   This is also true for those in public office – just another council meeting, just another speech, just another greeting may be routine for you but you need to remember it may be once in a lifetime for others. For example, I’m surprised when a parent comes up to me with...

  Know what you know; Know what you don't My Regional District colleague and I were preparing to propose ‘clean air bylaws’ in the early 1990’s, which is a political way saying we were going to ban smoking in quite a few private and public places.   We had excellent advisors but wanted a second opinion so sought out a coffee meeting with a public health official in Metro Vancouver. My colleague had a background in health care so the two of them took off in conversation about many things I knew very little about but when the official said, ‘and what about that Mogilny trade?’ – my colleague froze.   He knew a great deal about health care but no matter how long he searched his memory, he could not seem to find anything about a Mogilny procedure, level of care or disease .   Fortunately I’m quite a sports fan and jumped in to say ‘wow, I hope he plays on a line with Bure.’ You see I knew I didn’t know health care issues to the level that they did so my role was to s...

  Leveraging Community Volunteers One of the most important aspects of serving in local government is the relationship you have with community volunteers.   Local government politics may be the front line of democracy and in a vibrant, healthy community the front line is populated by active community volunteers. So I developed three rules for myself that helped to leverage their efforts into what I called ‘happy endings.’   Rule #1: get out of their way. Our municipality owned a rundown heritage home and the neighbourhood wanted to restore it and create a unique seniors’ centre.   Most of my colleagues were skeptical and municipal staff were aghast at the potential cost but I just kept clearing ‘yah-buts’ out of the way.   I wasn’t their champion – the volunteers were the best champions such a project could possibly have – I was their ally.   I opened doors to Cabinet Ministers that could obtain grants, service agencies that could provide advice and i...

Compensation for Local Government Politicians   At time of writing, several Provincial MLA’s are retiring or are ‘being retired’ and the value of their pensions and severance pay is being reported.  This tends to increase the comments to me when I’m out in the community such as ‘how’s the retirement going, are you enjoying your pension?’ I tend to lightheartedly reply that I’m not very good at retiring and maybe that this is because I don’t have a pension.  This shocks almost everyone – they assume that my 28 years on Saanich Council - 18 of them as a fulltime Mayor - created a pension benefit.  So let’s get this out of the way: the only municipal council in BC which is part of the Municipal Pension Plan is the City of Vancouver. Every local government has annual compensation for elected officials and many have some benefits such as extended health and dental.  Some in Metro Vancouver have a contribution to a RRSP plan and a very few have a ‘transition pay’ upon...

Sometimes You Have to Hit Bottom A year with the most ‘highs and lows’ for me was 1996 – being declared elected MLA by TV and radio only to lose 45 minutes later certainly seems about as ‘high and low’ as you can get, at least in political terms.   Yet the year had more to come and I learned quite a bit about myself and my approach to challenges. I had been Chair of the Capital Regional District for five years when I stepped down as Chair and as a Director for the provincial election campaign.   I had been on Saanich Council for ten years and here I simply took an unpaid leave of absence for the election period.   Thus when I returned to Council after my provincial defeat there was an election for regional director – yet since two of my colleagues had been elected MLA’s, my voting bloc of a 5-4 majority was now in a 4-3 minority.   As the Clerk asked for candidates my seatmate whispered ‘don’t run Frank, you’re just going to lose.’   I said ‘sometimes ...

High Profile Doesn’t Mean Approval I was elected Aldermen in 1986 by only a few votes and immediately worked hard at trying to increase my profile.   Not proud to admit that I’d ponder ‘one liner’s’ prior to a Council Meeting hoping to catch a headline – even choose to enrage a colleague so as to give a reporter a confrontation to report on.   My name in a headline would help my profile – a picture would be ideal. When you are starting out in politics, it seems anything that raises your profile is worth it – even controversy - but as time goes by this isn’t the case.   I noticed a couple of high profile defeats during my early days in office.   First there was a Mayor in the region who ran in a provincial election, was known far better than the other candidates but would finish second.   Seems his negatives were so strong that a lot of voters would rather vote for someone they didn’t know than for him.   Another example was when a radio personal...

Chapter – Mental Health and Public Life I’m an introvert.  I’m physically sick before trying new things or hopping on a stage. I want to be in charge.  I want to get things done and most often think I can get it done if I move to a leadership position. These two traits don’t fit.  I’ve hidden this struggle.  Then I crashed.  Now I know how to manage it.  Maybe. The stress of trying something new has always haunted me.  My dad took eight year old Frankie with him to a company golf tournament and I was ill in the car going there.  My dad came to a ‘father/son’ dinner at Cubs and I spent most of the time in the washroom.  I went to 9 schools in 12 years yet shook in fright every first day of school.  At every new school I just wanted to run home, and one time in grade 4 I did only to have my mom walk me back again. Grownup Frank is the same.  I teach a small business course at UVic and for the very first class in ...

Write down your Bucket List The emergency room surgeon said “we’re going to stop your heart and let it restart.”   I had two thoughts: one was a quote from Monty Python; and the other was that I still had things I wanted to do.   The IV went in; my brain heard my heart slow down – like the sound a record makes when the turntable is turned off – and then silence.   And then, restart and all is good...and I tell myself to write down my bucket list. Let me fill in some blanks.   On the medical front, I had the first episode with my heart in 2012.   I’d been battling another sinus infection but my heart rate increased so I went to the local clinic – booked in, waited my turn, and then told the Doctor my heart seemed fast and I was short of breath.   Boom – all hell broke loose.   Ambulances arrived and during trip to the hospital the paramedic kept reporting ahead for our arrival with ‘he’s the Mayor, and he’s 58.’ – Neither of which I thought w...

Want a Solution? Sometimes you have to get out of the room. My uncle managed retail operations and would tell me he’d respond to an employee with a problem by saying ‘that’s interesting; let me know how you work it out.’   In teaching small business management at university, I follow a similar theme with the ‘One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey’ – where problems are personified as monkeys and managers delegate while still maintaining oversight. As I’ve held various governance roles in the public and private sector I’ve adapted this approach to problem solving.   Other than issues with the CEO/CAO, most other problems belong to management.   A board or council role is not to create or find solutions but to choose and approve one.   I cringe when I hear that a local government council is going to hold a workshop to solve a problem – none have the expertise in the particular field – they have employees who do.   I believe their role is to hold those man...

No Surprises I had a brown ceramic easter egg in my Mayor’s office to remind me about my ‘no surprises’ rule.  Visitors would ask about it and I’d just say it was a bit of décor but for me, it was a great deal more. When I assume a leadership role in governance of a public or private sector organization I go through the briefings and hear all that senior management want me to know.  As it starts to wind up, I do work in a few rules that I like to have in place – one of them is ‘no surprises.’ If something has gone wrong, I want management to tell me.  In fact if something is going wrong or they think something might go wrong, I want management to tell me.  Under no circumstances do I want to be ‘out of the loop’ about an issue, incident or something much worse that is within my oversight. Most often there is nothing for me to do – and in fact, doing something might even be inappropriate but I still need to know…..in case there is.  I will choose...

Governance and Workplace Culture My wife and I were visiting her family at their village in southern China when I would slip away for walks.   I’d find women cleaning laundry in the river, merchants preparing chickens for sale and farmers tending to their fields of rice and peanuts.   One day I came across a soccer game: men in their twenties; a somewhat organized game with lots of shouting; and on a field with more gravel than grass surrounded by scooters rather than spectators. At one point a young man approached me and said: ‘Why you here?’   I often consider this question to be profound but in this case it was quite practical as I was the only spectator and likely the only ‘white dude’ for a hundred miles.   I replied in mandarin who my wife was and he stared back and shrugged before returning to his game. Years later I was appointed to lead a public agency and the employees were gathered on short notice to meet me.   I said a few words about m...