The race to become the next mayor of Thompson has its first official candidate: two-term councillor Penny Byer, who announced her candidacy May 7, about five-and-a-half months before the Oct. 24 election.
“I am honoured to have served two terms in office, one of them as deputy mayor, and I have learned much about the challenges of serving at a municipal level,” said Byer in a press release. “I feel I am ready to take a stronger position representing our city and helping us grow as a community.”
Byer told the Thompson Citizen in a May 9 interview that it had been 40 years to the day since she spent the first night in her Thompson home after having arrived in the community May 8, 1978 to start a job as the announcer-operator at the new CBC North Country Radio studio in Thompson. That history, she says, has given her a perspective about the challenges that face Thompson during the term of the next mayor and councillor and what she can expect the outcome to be.
“When we moved here Thompson was just getting out of that bad time and the only thing that people could talk about was how people had been handing their keys in at the bank or, ‘Give me a dollar and you can take over my mortgage,’ or just up and leaving,” she recalls. “I heard so many stories like that. The workforce at the mine went from 4,000 to 2,000. That was a 50 per cent cut. That’s not counting the businesses that were affected that serviced the mine and that’s not taking into account that the population was quite different than what it is now. The job losses [in 2018] are significant, there’s no question around that, but I think we’re much better positioned to grow out of it.”
Similarly, she says that her experience as a councillor during both the second term of former mayor Tim Johnston and the first and only term of current Mayor Dennis Fenske has given her ideas about what it means to lead.
“I’ve had an opportunity to compare two leadership styles and numerous styles of leadership from amongst councillors,” said Byer, who says her strength isn’t swiftness but thorough consideration of all the angles. “I feel it’s important to get all of the facts if you can and as many different interpretations … of those facts as possible to make the best choice possible. Sometimes I am a little slow to make a decision but that’s only because I want to weigh the evidence, so to speak, and I’ve seen what happens on council when you don’t take the time to do that and when you do take the time to do that and the results are generally much better when you take the time.”
For all the doom and gloom scenarios that have been put forth for Thompson with the permanent closure of Vale’s smelter and refinery this summer looming over the city, Byer says there are still signs that people in the business of making money believe that the economy of Thompson will navigate the troubled waters ahead.
“I think were very fortunate that we’ve had the number of people, the number of investors wanting to invest in Thompson,” she said. “We didn’t chase after the liquor store, we didn’t chase after McDonald’s. These are people who believe in Thompson, and Walmart as well, these are people who are making huge capital investments or improvements in Thompson and they did it because, let’s face it, they are major corporations, they do their homework, they know whether a place is worth investing in or not so obviously they think Thompson is worth investing in.”
True to her nature, Byer said she’s been mulling over the decision of whether or not to put her name forth as a mayoral candidate for about half of her second term on council.
“I’ve been thinking about this for about two years now or maybe longer,” she said. “I had to weigh things carefully. I checked with my family and no, not all of my family is thinking this is a good idea. Some of them are. I checked with family and friends and a few professional acquaintances as well just to weigh things out. I had to take a really good look at the things that I’m involved with now and do they really need me or are they just as good getting in other people and developing new people?”
For Byer, the decision is about wanting to leave a good community for future generations of Thompsonites, including her own young granddaughter who lives here.
“Different styles of leadership are required at certain times in history,” Byer said. “I just think that some of the skills that I do have, some of the successes that I’ve had in the past, are the skill set that we need right now in Thompson and I want to continue to grow as a person which you certainly do when you take on leadership roles. I want to help others grow, which is part of leadership. Everybody says they want to give back to their community and I don’t want to just give back to my community, I want to make sure that there’s a fantastic community waiting for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I just want to make sure that we try to put those things in place that, despite the difficult financial times we’re going to be facing, that we can still prevail over it and I’ve got every confidence we will. Thompson has been in a much worse time than it is right now and it came out of it so we can do the same.”
