38 BCBusiness JUNE 2014
A heavy engraved crucifix hangs
around Joanne Monaghan's neck. She is
a woman of faith. A Minnesota native,
she arrived in B.C. in the late-'50s with
her husband at the time, a seminarian
with the Conservative Baptist Church.
"We spent summers up here on the
coast, in Bella Bella, on a marine medical
mission. On the coastal villages, the pas-
tors usually leave for the summer, and
we would fill in: marry, bury, do bible
schools—things like that. I really liked
being up here on the coast, because it
was a lot different from what the prairie
was like back in Minnesota."
The couple eventually settled in El
Paso, Texas, but then Monaghan's hus-
band was sent to Vietnam as an army
chaplain. He never returned, killed in
service. When the U.S. Army called and
asked where she wanted to go for her
final move, Monaghan, remembering
fondly her time up north, said, "Smith-
ers, British Columbia, Canada." The year
was 1965.
She had studied communications
in El Paso and got work at a radio sta-
tion in Smithers. She remarried, to an
RCMP officer, and within two years the
couple relocated to Kitimat to open a
series of tire shops. "The forest industry
was going crazy," she recalls, "and they
needed a lot of tires for their trucks." She
also opened a gift shop, as well as a heli-
copter adventure-tour company that she
has to this day.
Her second husband, Paul Monaghan,
went into politics, becoming mayor of
Kitimat in 1975. The move sparked the
political fire in Monaghan—"I went to
every council meeting and I decided I
really like it." Her husband's political
career ended two years later, as did their
relationship, but Monaghan's career was
just taking off: she ran for council in 1980
and won, and has been there ever since.
"When I became mayor, in 2008, it
was pretty bad," she says, in an accent
that still hints at her Midwestern
upbringing. "It was a really doom situ-
ation here. Everybody had left. People
were abandoning their homes, there
were more U-Hauls going out than you
could shake a stick at, schools were clos-
ing—it was dismal."
A devout Baptist, she gathered all
the local ministerial associations, along
"When i became mayor, in 2008, it was pretty bad. it was
a really doom situation here. Everybody had left. People
were abandoning their homes, there were more U-Hauls
going out than you could shake a stick at, schools were
closing—it was dismal" – Kitimat Mayor Joanne Monaghan
p36-49-Kitimat_june.indd 38 2014-05-01 1:30 PM
