ATHABASCA — Chris Parker is settling in nicely, leading Athabasca County administration, after taking the helm in mid-September following a string of interim administrators and a short-lived permanent CAO.
It may feel like a run of bad luck, but for Parker, it was fortunate the position came open again because he is looking forward to working with not only the staff and councillors but the neighbouring communities as well.
“This was always my No. 1 choice and people say, Why? You got nine new councillors, and they need help,’” Parker said in an Oct. 28 interview. "It's a phenomenal council, by the way, it absolutely is. But the problem is when you get elected, it's not all the sudden you get this; now you're a councillor, now you know exactly what to do. So, they need someone who understands that council role, because they've been a councillor, but also understands the administrative role."
Parker started his career switching from the culinary arts, to teaching for several years in Alberta and Hawaii before he moved back to Canada and became a successful councillor in Nova Scotia.
“I've done lots of things in my life and travelled to lots of places in the world,” he said. “I've lived in Hawaii, I've lived in Nova Scotia, in Alberta, up in the Northwest Territories. I've had that ability to travel and get a lot of experiences. When I was in Hawaii we decided to move back; my wife's family is from Nova Scotia, and I'm actually third generation from Banff.”
Parker was elected in King’s County, Nova Scotia, and due to someone else not being able to take part in a Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) project got to travel to Cambodia to tackle the huge waste issue happening in the country.
“Normally, councillors don't get involved in this type of hands-on operational project. But what happened was FCM, they have these projects around the world, and King’s County where I was, asked to sign up for a project,” said Parker. "It is to help municipalities around the world develop projects and develop their infrastructure and develop their governance processes and the project was garbage.”
After Pol Pot’s reign of terror, where he slaughtered one-third of the population and decimated the education system, people did not understand why they shouldn’t be throwing plastics in the rivers or burning garbage in the streets.
“When we first got there, they were burning in the streets, they were throwing food away left, right and centre,” he said. “We developed a plan, a whole educational component, in which we trained the trainers.”
To get around any language barrier, everything was broken down with pictures and the help of interpreters, but the education spread and changes in how garbage was handled were made.
“Within six months, they stopped burning, believe it or not,” he said. “It was just an amazing, amazing thing. The fish took a lot longer, because there's lots of plastic that was in the rivers that they couldn't do anything about.”
But it was during that project Parker had his epiphany – to do the impactful projects, he needed to be in administration.
“(My) job is to make councils better,” he said. “I was a councillor for 11 years, so I know what they're feeling and thinking, I know the pressures they are under. I also understand being an administrator for 11 years of the pressures that they are under. My expertise is trying to bring the two together so you can work in harmony and be functional and I've done that very well in a lot of places.”
Parker is here ahead of his wife, Michele, who is packing up and selling the house in Peace River.
“I call her every day and I say, 'Have I told you how much I love you? Did I ever tell you how much I loved my job?” laughs Parker. “Honestly, the profession is great, it’s phenomenal. I wish I had started 10 years earlier.”
