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BCBUSINESS.CA And now he chugs on toward the two big projects he campaigned on almost exclu- sively. Those would be switching Surrey's big new transit project from light rail to Sky- Train and shifting the city's RCMP service to a municipal police force—two moves that have stirred up a lot of questions from both Surrey residents and politicians around the region about how doable or expensive those projects might be. For the more than half-million residents of B.C.'s second-largest and fastest-growing city, it's been an unsettling time. Surrey, once a vast tract of farmland, has changed dramatically since McCallum was ‚irst elected to council in 1993. Then the popula- tion was just creeping past 250,000, three- quarters of whom lived in single-family houses spread out along the city's agricul- tural road grid. Barely more than a quarter were classi‰ed as "visible minority." McCallum ‰t right in as mayor, with his pleasant house in Crescent Beach that he'd bought for a mere $80,000 in 1988, shepherding a suburban community that was primarily focused on cheap hous- ing for families whose wage-earners were expected to commute elsewhere to earn a living. Many voters identi‰ed with him, a guy who had moved away from the city—he was a grad of Magee Secondary School in Kerrisdale—for a new life in the suburbs, a small-business owner with a modest home décor business in Richmond. Now this city with some spectacular views of mountains, ocean and river has become a di"erent place. It's as big as Van- couver was in 2011, edging toward 550,000, with six distinct neighbourhoods that range from mansion-prone South Surrey to a Downtown Eastside–like strip of despair in Whalley. It's one of the region's prime landing spots for refugees and a home to never-ending development. And McCallum's house is now valued at $1.5 million. SURRE Y FIRS T FINISHE S SECOND Many people didn't expect McCallum, who reigned as Surrey mayor from 1996 to 2005, to win last year, even though he'd won every election handily during that time on his no-tax-increases, keep-the-city- problems-out-of-our-suburb platforms. But he'd been soundly beaten in 2005 by then– city councillor Dianne Watts. Watts went on to attract œattering atten- tion with her plan to turn Surrey into a real city, with a downtown and fusion festivals and bike lanes. McCallum tried for a come- back in 2014 and failed. He only entered the 2018 race in mid-July, the day after former BC Liberal deputy premier Rich Coleman, who'd been courting his support, decided not to run, a withdrawal that came shortly after the ‰rst of B.C.'s money-laundering reports blew up in the media with accusa- tions that the Liberals, with Coleman a key player, had allowed that mess to fester. To some obser vers of the cam- paign, McCallum seemed kinda old and out of it, repeatedly referring, in his sometimes quavery voice, to "Youber" (a mash-up of Uber, which he meant to talk about, and YouTube) and displaying other signs of a person occasionally living in the previous century. But he won his bid for a comeback—and a ‰nal act that could help erase his earlier defeats—thanks to what almost everyone describes as Surrey's weird political land- scape, where campaigns often seem to be less about the issues than tribal alliances. As Jagdeesh Mann wrote in the Georgia Straight during the campaign, Surrey's South Asian community has a complex dynamic. "There are many fragmented groups, and extended families who are often at loggerheads with each other, jock- eying for inœuence in one form or another." In that world, McCallum didn't win by the landslide that he unfailingly suggests. He won largely because the party Watts had created, Surrey First, ripped itself in half, with three councillors leaving for a new party. The stake was even more ‰rmly driven into the heart of the old Surrey First when Tom Gill, the councillor chosen as the mayoral candidate for Watts' party, struggled with anonymous suggestions in œyers distributed around the city, as well as heavily negative coverage from the Punjabi- language radio station that broadcasts from Point Roberts, just across the Canada-U.S. border. (McCallum got his share of backlash on social media, but it didn't seem to stick.) But the mathematical reality is that McCal- lum only took 41 percent in a low-turnout vote, while most of the rest was split equally between the two Surrey First factions. MEE T THE NE W BOS S , S A ME A S THE OLD BOS S? That's all "whatever, it's history" territory now. Now the biggest mystery for many in Surrey is what is going to happen in the next three years. Not only with McCallum's two big projects—SkyTrain and police transition —which are increasingly mired in the kind of Gordian-knot complication that comes with trying to radically change the course of multibillion-dollar operations that involve the federal and provincial govern- ments. But what is going to happen with the dozens of other city decisions that will inevitably land on his desk. Besides the political wrinkles, early pub- lic consultations showed that while Surrey residents appear to be enthusiastic about the switch to SkyTrain, they're twitchy and dubious about the potential cost of redoing the police force. Now their city is led by the guy who picked a ‰ght with the RCMP when he was mayor before because he didn't like them making crime statistics public, adamantly opposed homeless shelters and never seemed to meet a development he didn't like. That last topic is particularly key, as Surrey keeps pushing through dozens "I want to give thanks to a person who is the reason I'm here today," said McCallum, his voice straining as the then-74-year-old struggled to make himself heard over the raucous celebrations. "I've known him 40, 45 years. He worked with me tirelessly. Truly, he's a friend of mine. I want everyone to thank very much Bob Cheema." That's pure McCallum, strolling nonchalantly through mine‰elds where others fear to tread. During the campaign, the unassuming-looking candidate —balding, on the short side, with his rimless glasses and standard-issue suit jackets over open-necked, sometimes slightly wrinkled shirts—blew past opponents who dismissed him as a doddering senior citizen, talking over them in debates to drive home his simple, easy-to-understand points: Get rid of the RCMP. Get rid of light rail. Get development away from nice single- family areas and put it beside transit. Post-election, he brushed aside a TV news story about his tendency to live in a world of his own magical facts. JULY/AUGUST 2019 BCBUSINESS 35

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