44 BCBusiness November 2014 roth + ramberg
The Heritage Inn Hotel, like just
about every other business in
Cranbrook, is on Highway 95,
or what the locals invariably call
the Strip. It's exactly what you'd
expect in a working-class town
in the East Kootenays: comfort-
able, beige, overstuffed and a
little worn around the edges. In
the Skylight Café, the Honourable
Bill Bennett—wearing faded work
jeans, a short-sleeved check shirt,
Merrell hiking boots and the ruddy complexion of a
life lived outdoors—off ers his hand in greeting, then
surveys the room.
"OK, change of plans. There's a better place just
outside town—do you mind going for a bit of a drive?" I leave
behind my rental car and jump into Bennett's white Toyota
Tundra pickup, our two photographers following close
behind.
On the drive to St. Eugene Resort—a casino, hotel and golf
course on the banks of the St. Mary River, 10 minutes from
town—Bennett explains why he fi nds his adopted home so
appealing. "It's a very old-fashioned, blue-collar place. I chose
to come here—it wasn't accidental. I like a rough edge. I like
loggers driving by in their pickup trucks with a dog in the back
and a rifl e hanging in a back window. This town's like that—it's
T
raw, it's real, it's true."
Not a bad description of Bennett
himself, actually. With over 13 years
in provincial politics, the
MLA for Koo-
tenay East, Minister of Energy and
Mines, and Minister Responsible for
Core Review has earned a reputation
as the enemy of anything politically
correct. A rough and tumble entrepre-
neur, prodigious dropper of f-bombs,
Bennett's the rebel who was kicked out
