for budgeting and being able to
deal with very diffi cult times, I
have a lot of experience and am
not easily deterred.
How did getting cancer at the
age of 21 defi ne you?
It was a very, very hard experience to
go through. It almost, in an odd way,
made me feel invincible. You can't
control it. All you can do is try to fi ght
through it, and you have to believe—
to the extent that you can—that some-
where in you, you have the ability to
make it at the end of the day. It starts
to make anything seem possible. It
starts to make your life feel extremely
valuable—but not in a way where, for
me, I reacted in any cautious way.
Life has to be extraordinary. These
things that you hear people say—it's
almost like a Hallmark card: how
important every day is, you never
know what could be around the next
corner. I never had to learn any of
that. It just happened to me, when I
was 21—and I've lived ever since.
Did living through cancer make you
a tougher person?
On a personal level, it made me
tougher with myself, and being able to
take on or deal with negative circum-
stances or challenges that the world
may throw at you. Not tougher in
terms of an understanding of others.
I'm not easily taken off course as
to what's meaningful and what needs
to happen. In fact, I feel a sense of
purpose—that I lived through all that
for a reason. There are tough things
that have to happen for the good of
everyone. It's important that there
is meaning in what you're spending
your days doing. Public service is
a passion of mine because, for me,
there's nothing that has any more
meaning than dedicating what you're
doing to providing programs and ser-
vices and considering the well-being
of the people of British Columbia.
•
34 BCBusiness OCtOBER 2014
