Canada’s Youngest Mayor Has a Message for Youth Today

Clayton Smith (L) shakes hands with the late Halvar Jonson, then-MLA and Alberta health minister, during a youth forum in Edmonton in the 1990s, not long before Mr. Smith became mayor of New Norway, Alberta, at the age of 19. Courtesy of Clayton Smith

Clayton Smith, 19, returned to his parents’ house after being sworn in as mayor of a central Alberta hamlet in October 1995. “I guess you can refer to me as ‘your worship’ now,” Mr. Smith joked with his father.

“Not while you’re living in my basement,” his father quipped back. But in all seriousness, his parents were proud; his mother wrote eagerly to her family back in the Philippines to let them know they now had a mayor in the family.

Mr. Smith was the youngest mayor ever elected in Canada, and he still holds that record almost 30 years later.

So what qualities did this kid living in his parents’ basement have that landed him the role of mayor for New Norway, Alberta?

The hamlet’s size helped—New Norway’s population was about 300 at the time, so he didn’t have a lot of competition. But a good measure of pluck, hard work, and a civic-minded upbringing was involved as well.

Early Influences, Meeting People

Mr. Smith’s advice for young people today is this: “Get involved in the community, get to do some volunteer work, get to meet people and network with people,” he said in an interview with The Epoch Times.

“You never know who you‘ll end up meeting, and you never know the kind of influence or ideas you’ll get from somebody.”

That’s how he got his start. His first summer job, when he was 16, was with the city. In a bigger town, his experience might have been limited to trimming hedges or cutting grass on city property. But in New Norway, he was able to take a peek into many aspects of the city’s operations.

He helped the town foreman with water testing, maintenance, and many other tasks around the community. He got to know the village administrator, who managed the hamlet’s operations. He was all over New Norway, meeting store owners and other townspeople.

It was an offhand comment by the town foreman that planted the idea of getting into politics.

The two would sometimes discuss local politics and village happenings. When a vacancy came on council, the foreman said, “Why don’t you run?” He followed that musing with, “I guess you’re not old enough yet. You’re not 18.”

When Mr. Smith turned 18, he was ready to run for council. He was doing a “stinky” job at the time—helping build an addition to a pig barn just outside of town—and was eager for a change anyway, he said.

He had recently graduated from high school and wasn’t sure about his next step. Council seemed like a good move to make. He picked up a nomination form, and got the requisite five signatures—three of them came from former mayors, so Mr. Smith was strongly endorsed.

On a lunch break from the pig farm job, he filed his nomination papers.

It was shortly before the deadline to submit at noon that day, so he stuck around. “Twelve-o'clock rolled around, nobody else filed their papers. So, I was on village council at that point just by acclamation,” he said. The administrator shook his hand and congratulated him.

‘You Got It, Young Man’

A little over a year later, there was a general election for council. He campaigned on maintaining a balanced budget, continuing the smooth operation of the village, and purchasing a new fire truck.

“I got the most votes for the council election,” he said.

He had 60 percent of the town’s vote, so his fellow councillors chose him as mayor. Mr. Smith accepted. “You got it, young man,” one of his fellow councillors remarked.

No one made an issue of his age. “Most people thought I was 30,” Mr. Smith said with a laugh. He looked older than 19.

A campaign flyer from when Clayton Smith was up for re-election in 1995. Courtesy of Clayton Smith

He served for the next three years, with one of his outstanding accomplishments being the realization of his campaign promise to get the hamlet its own fire truck.

He also helped strike a deal with a developer who had bought up a large chunk of the town’s land. The developer failed to do anything with it, so the town bought back the land and established incentives for people to buy and develop it within a year.

By the end of his term, the lots were all sold and the once-empty land was filled with houses.

Looking Ahead

Mr. Smith was interested in pursuing politics further—perhaps provincial office, or even federal office one day. But he realized he needed more life experience first.

“I couldn’t be the mayor in my parents’ basement forever,” he said. “I hadn’t paid a mortgage, I hadn’t paid my own bills.”

His parents’ house was where he first developed an interest in politics.

In the early 1980s, Mr. Smith was captivated by what he saw while watching the news with his father—the nuclear arms race, the economic turmoil of the time. His father had to go on employment insurance for the first time in his life, and that impressed upon the young Mr. Smith how much the broader political and economic conditions can impact individual Canadians.

“He’s a blue-collar guy. He was a truck driver, welder, machinist—a handy guy,” Mr. Smith said of his father, who is now retired. “He wasn’t a politician or anything, but he paid attention to the news.”

Being a kid in his parents’ basement did have its benefits, Mr. Smith said. He wasn’t busy with a family of his own and all sorts of adult responsibilities, so he was able to devote himself to his work for the town.

A Lasting Impact

Over the following years, his job as mayor gave his resumé a major boost.

“It was a big part of my life, because some of the job opportunities that I had—basically having that on my resumé got my foot in the door,” he said.

Clayton Smith, former mayor of New Norway, Alberta, is now a civil engineering technologist. Phoebe Marinakis

Since those days, Mr. Smith has always had some involvement in politics, but is now a civil engineering technologist by trade. He has volunteered with various constituency associations, which are volunteer-run organizations established by political parties, including in Edmonton where he now lives.

“The role of mayor and serving on council helped me to pick a career path,” he said. “I had the chance to go over engineer drawings and plans, and that helped me pick a career in civil engineering and surveying.”

In his current role, he feels he can still help communities thrive by establishing good infrastructure. He remains civic-minded.

He suggests young people get out to volunteer, and that their parents encourage them to do so.

“When you volunteer, a lot of people that care about the community, that are involved in the community, they’re also volunteering. So you can meet quite a range of people,” he said. Some of them would probably be keen to help a young person run for office as well, or continue in other ways on the rewarding path of contributing to one’s community, Mr. Smith said.

“You never know where you go from there.”