The negotiator: Why Harrison Hot Springs’ new mayor says being new to town will help more than hurt

Fred Talen planned to retire in Harrison Hot Springs with his wife. Now he’s the mayor.

After spending more than three decades in Yellowknife, primarily serving as a negotiator on Indigenous rights for the territorial government, Talen moved to Harrison Hot Springs in October 2021.

The couple toured other regions of the province—Vancouver Island, the Sunshine Coast, Okanagan—before choosing the village. They both loved the idea of settling down in a community with access to nature, big city amenities and family already living in southern B.C.

“Harrison Hot Springs checked off all the boxes for us,” Talen told The Current in a recent interview. “It was just a really great fit for us.”

But neither could have predicted that Talen’s negotiating tactics would play a large role in trying to get its local government back on track.

The negotiator

Conflicts and disagreements within local governments are not special to Harrison Hot Springs, with other cities in the province such as Kamloops and Lions Bay also run by dysfunctional councils. But Harrison's troubles were uniquely bad, prompting some to say the local council was the most chaotic in the entire province.

During his first few years in the village, Talen watched council meetings and came to be familiar with the dysfunction that would ultimately make national headlines.

You can read The Current’s extensive coverage here.

The elevation of political newcomer Ed Wood to the mayor's chair in the 2022 municipal election led to council shouting matches, a wave of staff resignations, social media recriminations, and an accusation from the new mayor that his opponents were trying to stage a coup. The turmoil, which was heightened after the election of Wood's ally John Allen in a 2023 byelection—was bad enough to lead some residents to consider moving out of town.

“Seeing the struggles they had in conducting the business of the village, it just seemed to not be running very smoothly,” Talen said.

Observers might deem that an understatement. But the diplomatic tone hints at Talen's background.

With an extensive background in negotiating, Talen thought he had the knowledge on how to chair a meeting and build a consensus on council. So, when a by-election was ultimately scheduled for September, Talen was encouraged by friends and family to run for mayor.

He received 541 votes in the by-election, more than doubling the number of votes by his next closest competitor, Greg Dykstra, who received 204. Allen came a distant third.

Although he’s relatively new to the community, Talen believes people were energized by the idea of having a fresh face on council.

“I’ve come to appreciate what makes Harrison Hot Springs special and unique,” he said. But Talen suggested that his short time in the village might be an asset. In a place where political rivalries can be traced back decades, Talen noted that he hasn't been around long enough to be seen as linked to “legacy issues” that have stirred turmoil over the years.

“The voters said the same thing.”

In the Northwest Territories, Talen worked on a self-government agreement for a small community, Délįnę.

Located more than 500 kilometres northwest of Yellowknife, Délįnę is one of five communities of the Sahtu Dene First Nation. The agreement, officially signed in 2015, gave the Délįnę peoples its own government and ensured decisions that happened within the territory would be made by officials the nation elected.

This time, Talen is not creating a whole new government from scratch in Harrison Hot Springs.

But he said the Délįnę agreement is a good illustration of multiple parties—the federal government, territorial government and Délįnę community—coming together to create a stable, positive outcome. He said he has the same broad goal for the remainder of his two-year mayoral term that runs until 2026.

Talen said he wants to build a council that can function, have discussions on hard topics and ask uncomfortable questions that builds trust within the community.

“We’re still all neighbours, we live in a pretty small village, we need to get along with each other at the end of the day,” Talen said. “It’s going to be one day at a time, one council meeting at a time, one public hearing, public meeting at a time.”

But unforeseen challenges are already arising.

In late October, Hobo Hot Springs—a pair of pools managed by locals but located next to the Harrison Hot Springs resort—were filled in with rocks and dirt. The springs are no longer usable by residents.

Talen, who learned of the matter hours after The Current spoke to him for this piece, said the resort was responsible for filling in the pools. On Oct. 24, Talen told Global News that he was planning to speak to the resort and learn why the popular pools were shut down.

The future of floods and fires

Harrison Hot Springs is not immune to climate disasters such as flooding and wildfires.

Aside from returning to being a functioning democracy, Harrison needs to address its response to emergencies and natural disasters, Talen said. One potential area of improvement is establishing a secondary evacuation route on Rockwell Drive, a road that was destroyed in 2020 due to floods and landslides.

The proposal would remove a small portion of Sasquatch Provincial Park and follow existing roads and old railway grades—making it easier for locals and tourists to escape during an emergency.

The neighbouring District Kent forwarded an application to the province last year.

The future of the project still remains up in the air, according to Talen.

A Rockwell Drive project aimed at improving the road for pedestrians, along with all emergency-related initiatives in the village, may be impacted by an Oct. 21 report that emphasized the importance of establishing a secondary emergency route in the community.

The report, written by the North Vancouver-based forestry consultant company, B.A. Blackwell & Associates, updated a community wildfire resilience plan implemented by the village in 2019

The Blackwell report revised the local wildfire threat to “low to moderate," a change from its previous classification that had described the region as having a high threat for wildfires.

Although Harrison is still vulnerable to wildfires, the downgrading of risk stems from a low likelihood of an out-of-control fire erupting in the community, according to the report. It also said that the wildfire potential within Harrison’s mixed conifer and deciduous forests had been overestimated. (Deciduous and conifer trees and vegetation are most susceptible to fire at different times of the year.) Most fires near Harrison are human-caused and occur between the late summer and fall.

Talen said the village will further investigate why the wildfire risk was reduced. And how it will impact future emergency response plans.

“Council needs to sit down, look at that [report] with the authors, understand, take that all in, and then have a good discussion on what the priorities for the village should be with this new information and new risk assessment,” Talen said.

He declined to speculate on how the report or results of the recent provincial election would impact the secondary emergency route. Although wildfires have been cited as one of the main reasons an evacuation route is needed, flooding and landslides also have the potential to cut off residents in the area.

“The report is pretty fresh for us and we need to take the time to understand it,” Talen said.