Naheed Nenshi made history recently when he became the first Muslim mayor in Canada, winning his office in what most people think is one of the country’s most conservative cities—Calgary, Alberta. Nenshi sat down with The Epoch Times to talk about his family, the work to come, and what it means to be an immigrant son in the land of Canada.
Q: Many say your successful story is not only a tribute to Canada’s multicultural strategy, but also the integration of next-generation Canadians. What do you think?
A: You know, one of the most interesting things about this election is how very little the issue of my being a first-generation Canadian or my faith or my skin colour had anything to do with it. Shortly after the election, suddenly the national and international media were very interested to know, “Hey, how does a Canadian city end up with a mayor who looks like this?”
The most interesting part of that for me was that, in fact, I had been in Calgary longer than either of my two rivals, because I grew up in this city. And much of what I am is much of what this city is.
I grew up in East Calgary, in a very working-class family. My parents immigrated here from East Africa just before I was born, and I never shied away from that. You know, I can’t walk away from my skin colour or my faith and pretend it doesn’t exist—it’s all part of who I am. But equally, my education, my experiences, my ideas are also all part of who I am. And I think that’s what Calgarians saw; they just saw this crazy mix that made up me. But it’s also part of the crazy mix that makes up Calgary.
So I’m excited to live in a city and in a country where that’s possible, because sometimes we take that for granted. Sometimes we think that because anyone can succeed in Calgary and in Canada that anyone can succeed anywhere, but it’s actually kind of special and I think that the Canadian experiment in multiculturalism and pluralism has worked so very well that sometimes we take it for granted.
So I’m really happy to be an example to all those kids who follow me that, really, in this city and in this country you can do and be anything you want.
Q: Can you tell us about your family growing up?
A: Well, I didn’t have a lot of money growing up, but what I did have was a lot of love and a lot of opportunities. I have one sister and my parents worked very hard as we were growing up to make sure we had good opportunities. My sister and I both went to university. She’s a pharmacist and I was able to do two degrees—one in business and one in public policy.
And education and community service were really the key elements in my life growing up—that’s what my parents cared about. “You must do well in school, you must better yourself,” and “You must remember that you’ve been given many, many gifts, and it is incumbent on you to return those gifts by doing work in community.”
And I think those were the values with which I was raised, and that’s what’s made all the difference in my life.
Q: I heard that you were shy at school as a kid.
A: It is true, actually. I got over that I think.
Q: How?
A: Eventually I just said to myself, “You know, those kids who are outgoing seem to be having a better time of it than me, so I should try this.” I was a pretty quiet kid early in my years, but when I got into my teen years I really tried to become more outgoing, try to get more engaged in my school communities and so on. And I haven’t stopped talking since.
Q: Many first-generation immigrants are challenged to overcome characteristics that make it hard to join mainstream society.
A: This is an interesting issue, because the challenge we have when we look at communities that are multicultural … and pluralistic is that balance between becoming part of the mainstream or assimilation, on the one hand, and maintaining the strength and power of your own culture on the other hand. And it’s really easy to get yourself tied in knots about “What am I? Am I Muslim first or Canadian first, am I Indian first or Northeast Calgary first?” To me these debates are not very helpful, because I believe that it’s possible to be all of these things.
So one of my favourite things in the world is in my part of Calgary, when I go to T & T Supermarket—the Chinese supermarket—there’s probably about 50 percent of the people in there who are of Chinese origin and the other 50 percent are from everywhere and I just love seeing mainstream Caucasians as well as Afro-Caribbean Canadians all shopping and trying to find the right noodles at T & T.
To me that really is an example of how as a society, as a community here in Calgary, we’ve gotten beyond these endless and unhelpful debates around assimilation or keeping your own culture and just gone, “Look, there’s great value in all of us, and we can figure out ways this value works.”
So if you look at me, and I have the good fortune of growing up here, I speak with a Calgary accent, even when I speak French I speak with a Calgary accent. But I still go to religious services. You know, I still am able to speak a little bit of the languages from India that my ancestors use. I still eat that different kind of food at home.
So to me there’s no conflict here—it’s just all part of being Canadian. I don’t think that Canadian society forces upon us any way of being other than being the best person that you can be, and do good work in the community. And I think those are universal human values.
Q: It’s really good to view both cultures.
A: Well of course, that’s why I say that’s where the strength of Canadian society comes from—the fact that we’re able to amalgamate the best of all these different cultures altogether.
Doesn’t mean we bring everything. You know, there are certainly cultural traditions in some cultures that are not compatible with living in Canada. But the great thing about living in this country is the ability to accept the best of everywhere—from around the world—and be able to build a more powerful, more resilient society as a result.
Q: Who did you respect when you went to school?
A: I’ve been so lucky in my life to have so many teachers and mentors and others who helped guide me along the way—starting of course with my family, with my parents and my large extended family.
But one of the really fun things about being in this job is just across from this office is a library which is called the Grant MacEwan Library, after one of the early mayors of Calgary. I had the great fortune of meeting Grant MacEwan when I was young. I was a great admirer of his. He was a politician and a writer—a real renaissance man.
I remember when I was in junior high school I wanted to meet him so I looked up his phone number in the phone book and I phoned him and asked him to come to our grade nine graduation. And there’s a picture that I will have on my desk here in the mayor’s office of me—just a little guy—and Grant MacEwan, who at that time was very old and very, very tall—must have been six and a half feet tall.
So this tall, old man and this little kid are standing together. And isn’t it funny that I ended up in the same office all these years later.
Q: Out of high school, the University of Calgary, and Harvard, which period of time was the most inspirational to you?
A: Well, I’m one of those people who believes in continuous learning—that I am constantly changing as a person. So I’ve had tremendous opportunity.
I graduated from outstanding public schools here in Calgary with an incredibly high quality of education and that was, of course, an incredibly important time. I’m really happy that I chose to stay in Calgary for my undergraduate degree, because that allowed me to create connections and networks that persist to this day. Every day I meet with someone who I went to university with or was at the University of Calgary at the same time.
I was thrilled to be able to go and live and work in Toronto and New York and other places around the world when I was working in big business. And I was really happy to be able to spend a couple of years at Harvard doing my graduate work. So all of it sort of adds up to a package of the experiences I’ve been able to have that have formed who I am today.
Q: Your secret to success—is it your smarts?
A: No, I think it’s my extraordinary good looks and my outstanding head of hair. You know, what it really is is hard work. I don’t think I’m much smarter than your average bear, but what I did have was a family that really talked about the importance of education and I think that was really key in my upbringing.
But there was also this second piece—that I referred to before—which is this constant, constant drumming into me from a very young age that community service must always be a part of your life. And I think that’s really what it was—the fact that I have never been satisfied with the status quo.
Now, that particular nature of mine has gotten me into a lot of trouble over the years. You know, when I arrived at Harvard, at graduate school, the university had been around for 350 years and yet I was still going, “Oh, that doesn’t work very well, let’s try to change this.”
And it was a bit strange; it was not the culture that they expect there. But that’s how I’ve always been. I’ve always been constantly looking for the next improvement—how can we make things better. And so if there’s a secret to my success I think it’s the relentless drive to try and improve things.
Sometimes that can lead to trouble. Sometimes people say, “It’s not broken, why are you trying to fix it? Why are you breaking it?” But to me I think it can always be better.
Someone said yesterday in describing me in this beautiful quote that I understand that tomorrow cannot just be a better version of yesterday—that we need to think about things in new ways. I don’t know if I always believe that, but I think I do have that relentless drive to always change things. So I think that’s really where it all comes from.
Q: What changes have there been since you came into office as mayor?
A: We’ve done a number of things really very quickly in my first couple of months in office here. We managed to get rid of that park-and-ride fee that people hated, we managed to refocus our budget priorities on things that Calgarians have told us were important, like public transit and snow removal and libraries. And so Calgarians will see a lot of very concrete changes in the services they receive, starting in January and over the course of the next couple of years.
What’s more than that is the beginning of a shift in how we think about ourselves in civic government and at city hall. How we think of the way that we serve citizens and how we deliver services.
I’m very keen on changing the culture here at City Hall from a culture of regulation to a culture of problem solving. We exist to help citizens live their lives better. And I think that that is really a key. It may not be as visible as some of the other changes to the general public, but as we start to shift around this great organization that has 14,000 people working in it, Calgarians will really start to see their lives running better, because the city is focused on how to make our lives better.
Q: There’s less conflict now in city hall. You helped bring this about, right?
A: Well, I have been very pleased with the atmosphere at city council. The previous city council was very divided. They were ... towards the end they felt angry and bitter—every vote went eight votes to seven and it was always the same eight to the same seven. People weren’t listening to one another anymore and they were angry at one another and I really wanted to change that. I really wanted to build a system where we were listening to one another and working together more effectively. So I worked really hard on that. And I’m pleased, because I think it worked.
To date, a lot of things passed 15 to nothing, some things passed 10 to five, and yeah, we had some eight to seven votes, but it was always different people and they were able to make the decision and move on. Which is always what I wanted for the city council. So I’m really pleased about it. I think it gave us a much better outcome, but I also think it helps to create a team that will be able to work together for the best of Calgarians going forward.
Q: What morals guide the mayor’s decisions?
A: That’s an excellent question, and a lot of folks ask me, because of my faith which is a minority faith community, “Does that make you different than everyone else?” And to me I think that it’s pretty straightforward—there are some universal values that we hold as a community. The value of dignity for everyone, the importance of assisting the less fortunate, the importance of assisting our neighbours whether they’re less or more fortunate than we are, but all working together as a community. And I think that’s very simple and very basic in terms of the things that guide me.
Every decision that we make, every action that I take in this office, I ask myself, “How is this helping people in the community? How is it making their lives better?” And if it isn’t, then I really have to go back and ask myself, “Why am I doing this? Is it because of ego? Is it because I want to aggrandize myself for my own politics, or is it action because we’re helping people in the community?” And I think continually asking that question is what serves as my moral guidepost.
Q: Your top three priorities going forward?
A: Oh boy, we’ve got a lot of priorities going forward. Number one is to continue this element of cultural change. We’ve started a movement within the city and we have to keep working on it.
Number two is we’re going into a three-year business planning cycle so I want to make sure we craft a really terrific program to help the public tell us what their priorities are as we develop our plan for the next three years and that’s going to consume a lot of my time, particularly early in the year.
And then number three is there are a bunch of issues—I’ll just lump them all together so I get more than three—that we just need to take quick action on. One of them is building the underpass that will allow us to have access to the airport and across east to west across northern Calgary. Another is finally moving on secondary suites and affordable housing, and there’s also some really interesting changes to public transport that I’d like to see happen over the next year.
Q: The new year is coming. Any holiday words?
A: You know, one of the great parts about this job is being able to get a good view during the holiday season of the generosity and care that all Calgarians are demonstrating right now. And it doesn’t matter what their faith is, whether it is Christmas or Hanukkah or Eid, all Calgarians are in a holiday spirit now.
So I’m excited about it and I want to say, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone, and also encourage all Calgarians too, at this great time of joy in the community, to think about our neighbours who have less joy and make sure that we’re being generous and spreading the joy that we’re feeling to our neighbours here in Calgary and around the world.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!
Q: Many say your successful story is not only a tribute to Canada’s multicultural strategy, but also the integration of next-generation Canadians. What do you think?
A: You know, one of the most interesting things about this election is how very little the issue of my being a first-generation Canadian or my faith or my skin colour had anything to do with it. Shortly after the election, suddenly the national and international media were very interested to know, “Hey, how does a Canadian city end up with a mayor who looks like this?”
The most interesting part of that for me was that, in fact, I had been in Calgary longer than either of my two rivals, because I grew up in this city. And much of what I am is much of what this city is.
I grew up in East Calgary, in a very working-class family. My parents immigrated here from East Africa just before I was born, and I never shied away from that. You know, I can’t walk away from my skin colour or my faith and pretend it doesn’t exist—it’s all part of who I am. But equally, my education, my experiences, my ideas are also all part of who I am. And I think that’s what Calgarians saw; they just saw this crazy mix that made up me. But it’s also part of the crazy mix that makes up Calgary.
So I’m excited to live in a city and in a country where that’s possible, because sometimes we take that for granted. Sometimes we think that because anyone can succeed in Calgary and in Canada that anyone can succeed anywhere, but it’s actually kind of special and I think that the Canadian experiment in multiculturalism and pluralism has worked so very well that sometimes we take it for granted.
So I’m really happy to be an example to all those kids who follow me that, really, in this city and in this country you can do and be anything you want.
Q: Can you tell us about your family growing up?
A: Well, I didn’t have a lot of money growing up, but what I did have was a lot of love and a lot of opportunities. I have one sister and my parents worked very hard as we were growing up to make sure we had good opportunities. My sister and I both went to university. She’s a pharmacist and I was able to do two degrees—one in business and one in public policy.
And education and community service were really the key elements in my life growing up—that’s what my parents cared about. “You must do well in school, you must better yourself,” and “You must remember that you’ve been given many, many gifts, and it is incumbent on you to return those gifts by doing work in community.”
And I think those were the values with which I was raised, and that’s what’s made all the difference in my life.
Q: I heard that you were shy at school as a kid.
A: It is true, actually. I got over that I think.
Q: How?
A: Eventually I just said to myself, “You know, those kids who are outgoing seem to be having a better time of it than me, so I should try this.” I was a pretty quiet kid early in my years, but when I got into my teen years I really tried to become more outgoing, try to get more engaged in my school communities and so on. And I haven’t stopped talking since.
Q: Many first-generation immigrants are challenged to overcome characteristics that make it hard to join mainstream society.
A: This is an interesting issue, because the challenge we have when we look at communities that are multicultural … and pluralistic is that balance between becoming part of the mainstream or assimilation, on the one hand, and maintaining the strength and power of your own culture on the other hand. And it’s really easy to get yourself tied in knots about “What am I? Am I Muslim first or Canadian first, am I Indian first or Northeast Calgary first?” To me these debates are not very helpful, because I believe that it’s possible to be all of these things.
So one of my favourite things in the world is in my part of Calgary, when I go to T & T Supermarket—the Chinese supermarket—there’s probably about 50 percent of the people in there who are of Chinese origin and the other 50 percent are from everywhere and I just love seeing mainstream Caucasians as well as Afro-Caribbean Canadians all shopping and trying to find the right noodles at T & T.
To me that really is an example of how as a society, as a community here in Calgary, we’ve gotten beyond these endless and unhelpful debates around assimilation or keeping your own culture and just gone, “Look, there’s great value in all of us, and we can figure out ways this value works.”
So if you look at me, and I have the good fortune of growing up here, I speak with a Calgary accent, even when I speak French I speak with a Calgary accent. But I still go to religious services. You know, I still am able to speak a little bit of the languages from India that my ancestors use. I still eat that different kind of food at home.
So to me there’s no conflict here—it’s just all part of being Canadian. I don’t think that Canadian society forces upon us any way of being other than being the best person that you can be, and do good work in the community. And I think those are universal human values.
Q: It’s really good to view both cultures.
A: Well of course, that’s why I say that’s where the strength of Canadian society comes from—the fact that we’re able to amalgamate the best of all these different cultures altogether.
Doesn’t mean we bring everything. You know, there are certainly cultural traditions in some cultures that are not compatible with living in Canada. But the great thing about living in this country is the ability to accept the best of everywhere—from around the world—and be able to build a more powerful, more resilient society as a result.
Q: Who did you respect when you went to school?
A: I’ve been so lucky in my life to have so many teachers and mentors and others who helped guide me along the way—starting of course with my family, with my parents and my large extended family.
But one of the really fun things about being in this job is just across from this office is a library which is called the Grant MacEwan Library, after one of the early mayors of Calgary. I had the great fortune of meeting Grant MacEwan when I was young. I was a great admirer of his. He was a politician and a writer—a real renaissance man.
I remember when I was in junior high school I wanted to meet him so I looked up his phone number in the phone book and I phoned him and asked him to come to our grade nine graduation. And there’s a picture that I will have on my desk here in the mayor’s office of me—just a little guy—and Grant MacEwan, who at that time was very old and very, very tall—must have been six and a half feet tall.
So this tall, old man and this little kid are standing together. And isn’t it funny that I ended up in the same office all these years later.
Q: Out of high school, the University of Calgary, and Harvard, which period of time was the most inspirational to you?
A: Well, I’m one of those people who believes in continuous learning—that I am constantly changing as a person. So I’ve had tremendous opportunity.
I graduated from outstanding public schools here in Calgary with an incredibly high quality of education and that was, of course, an incredibly important time. I’m really happy that I chose to stay in Calgary for my undergraduate degree, because that allowed me to create connections and networks that persist to this day. Every day I meet with someone who I went to university with or was at the University of Calgary at the same time.
I was thrilled to be able to go and live and work in Toronto and New York and other places around the world when I was working in big business. And I was really happy to be able to spend a couple of years at Harvard doing my graduate work. So all of it sort of adds up to a package of the experiences I’ve been able to have that have formed who I am today.
Q: Your secret to success—is it your smarts?
A: No, I think it’s my extraordinary good looks and my outstanding head of hair. You know, what it really is is hard work. I don’t think I’m much smarter than your average bear, but what I did have was a family that really talked about the importance of education and I think that was really key in my upbringing.
But there was also this second piece—that I referred to before—which is this constant, constant drumming into me from a very young age that community service must always be a part of your life. And I think that’s really what it was—the fact that I have never been satisfied with the status quo.
Now, that particular nature of mine has gotten me into a lot of trouble over the years. You know, when I arrived at Harvard, at graduate school, the university had been around for 350 years and yet I was still going, “Oh, that doesn’t work very well, let’s try to change this.”
And it was a bit strange; it was not the culture that they expect there. But that’s how I’ve always been. I’ve always been constantly looking for the next improvement—how can we make things better. And so if there’s a secret to my success I think it’s the relentless drive to try and improve things.
Sometimes that can lead to trouble. Sometimes people say, “It’s not broken, why are you trying to fix it? Why are you breaking it?” But to me I think it can always be better.
Someone said yesterday in describing me in this beautiful quote that I understand that tomorrow cannot just be a better version of yesterday—that we need to think about things in new ways. I don’t know if I always believe that, but I think I do have that relentless drive to always change things. So I think that’s really where it all comes from.
Q: What changes have there been since you came into office as mayor?
A: We’ve done a number of things really very quickly in my first couple of months in office here. We managed to get rid of that park-and-ride fee that people hated, we managed to refocus our budget priorities on things that Calgarians have told us were important, like public transit and snow removal and libraries. And so Calgarians will see a lot of very concrete changes in the services they receive, starting in January and over the course of the next couple of years.
What’s more than that is the beginning of a shift in how we think about ourselves in civic government and at city hall. How we think of the way that we serve citizens and how we deliver services.
I’m very keen on changing the culture here at City Hall from a culture of regulation to a culture of problem solving. We exist to help citizens live their lives better. And I think that that is really a key. It may not be as visible as some of the other changes to the general public, but as we start to shift around this great organization that has 14,000 people working in it, Calgarians will really start to see their lives running better, because the city is focused on how to make our lives better.
Q: There’s less conflict now in city hall. You helped bring this about, right?
A: Well, I have been very pleased with the atmosphere at city council. The previous city council was very divided. They were ... towards the end they felt angry and bitter—every vote went eight votes to seven and it was always the same eight to the same seven. People weren’t listening to one another anymore and they were angry at one another and I really wanted to change that. I really wanted to build a system where we were listening to one another and working together more effectively. So I worked really hard on that. And I’m pleased, because I think it worked.
To date, a lot of things passed 15 to nothing, some things passed 10 to five, and yeah, we had some eight to seven votes, but it was always different people and they were able to make the decision and move on. Which is always what I wanted for the city council. So I’m really pleased about it. I think it gave us a much better outcome, but I also think it helps to create a team that will be able to work together for the best of Calgarians going forward.
Q: What morals guide the mayor’s decisions?
A: That’s an excellent question, and a lot of folks ask me, because of my faith which is a minority faith community, “Does that make you different than everyone else?” And to me I think that it’s pretty straightforward—there are some universal values that we hold as a community. The value of dignity for everyone, the importance of assisting the less fortunate, the importance of assisting our neighbours whether they’re less or more fortunate than we are, but all working together as a community. And I think that’s very simple and very basic in terms of the things that guide me.
Every decision that we make, every action that I take in this office, I ask myself, “How is this helping people in the community? How is it making their lives better?” And if it isn’t, then I really have to go back and ask myself, “Why am I doing this? Is it because of ego? Is it because I want to aggrandize myself for my own politics, or is it action because we’re helping people in the community?” And I think continually asking that question is what serves as my moral guidepost.
Q: Your top three priorities going forward?
A: Oh boy, we’ve got a lot of priorities going forward. Number one is to continue this element of cultural change. We’ve started a movement within the city and we have to keep working on it.
Number two is we’re going into a three-year business planning cycle so I want to make sure we craft a really terrific program to help the public tell us what their priorities are as we develop our plan for the next three years and that’s going to consume a lot of my time, particularly early in the year.
And then number three is there are a bunch of issues—I’ll just lump them all together so I get more than three—that we just need to take quick action on. One of them is building the underpass that will allow us to have access to the airport and across east to west across northern Calgary. Another is finally moving on secondary suites and affordable housing, and there’s also some really interesting changes to public transport that I’d like to see happen over the next year.
Q: The new year is coming. Any holiday words?
A: You know, one of the great parts about this job is being able to get a good view during the holiday season of the generosity and care that all Calgarians are demonstrating right now. And it doesn’t matter what their faith is, whether it is Christmas or Hanukkah or Eid, all Calgarians are in a holiday spirit now.
So I’m excited about it and I want to say, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone, and also encourage all Calgarians too, at this great time of joy in the community, to think about our neighbours who have less joy and make sure that we’re being generous and spreading the joy that we’re feeling to our neighbours here in Calgary and around the world.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!
