Q&A: New Harrison mayor looks to provide steady hand for village

Harrison Hot Springs Mayor Fred Talen may be relatively new to the community, but he already has a lot on his plate: stabilizing council and reviewing a report with updated wildfire risks in the community.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Current, Talen talked about how he plans to address council dysfunction, why his background as an Indigenous rights negotiator in the Northwest Territories may help, and whether a secondary evacuation route will be built along Rockwell Drive. (This interview took place shortly before the destruction of local hot springs–seemingly by Harrison Hot Springs resort–prompted outrage among locals.)

This is part of a series of mid-term interviews with the mayors of Fraser Valley communities. You can read the others here: Ross Siemens (Abbotsford) | Paul Horn (Mission) | Ken Popove (Chilliwack) | Victor Smith (Hope); interviews with the mayors of the valley’s other municipalities will be published later this fall.

This interview between Talen and Fraser Valley Current Local Journalism Initiative Reporter Josh Kozelj has been lightly edited for clarity and concision.

The move to Harrison

FVC: You spent decades in the Northwest Territories. What led you to Harrison?

Talen: I retired from public service in the Northwest Territories and my wife and I were planning on retiring in southern Canada. We have family in BC, and in this area, so we just looked around. We did a tour of southern BC, the Okanagan, Sunshine Coast, Vancouver Island.

Harrison Hot Springs just checked off all the boxes for us. We thought it was access to wilderness, beautiful scenery and setting. Harrison Lake is lovely. There’s hot springs and it’s close enough to centres and families. It was just a really great fit for us. Since we’ve moved here, we’ve come to appreciate it more and more.

FVC: What inspired you to run for mayor?

Talen: There wasn’t any one thing. There were multiple things that led me to do that. I had some encouragement from a number of friends in town, and obviously a lot of support from my family. And to be honest, over the last couple of years, leading to the by-election, I watched council, and seeing the struggles they had in conducting the business of the village, it just seemed to not be running very smoothly.

I knew I could chair meetings, I’ve done a lot of negotiations. I thought I had the skills to lead a meeting and build a consensus on council, in the village, and realize some of the great potential and opportunities that are out here.

FVC: Oftentimes, mayors run in a community they’ve called home for many years. I was curious how challenging, if at all, it was to run for mayor in a place you’ve called home for a relatively short period of time? [Talen moved to Harrison in October 2021]

Talen: I just really loved the place and appreciated it all. And again, just encouragement from friends and family saying I’ve got a skill set and a background of working with people. I know I can chair a meeting and I’ve been here long enough, three years, to come to appreciate what makes Harrison Hot Springs special and unique, but also not so long that maybe I am tied to some of the legacy issues that may be in the village.

So sort of a fresh perspective, and I thought my skill set would be well-suited to the job of mayor. The voters said the same thing.

FVC: I guess it wasn’t too challenging moving to a new community and ingraining yourself?

Talen: We’ve been so welcomed here. The community is so welcoming. Our neighbours are fantastic. The friends we’ve made are often friends with long, long times to the community—decades, 20-, 30-plus years.

Addressing council dysfunction

FVC: Harrison has made some headlines for council struggling and being dysfunctional. How do you hope to build trust with residents to have a council that’s fully functional?

Talen: It’s just going to be one day at a time, one council meeting at a time, one public hearing, one public meeting at a time, one conversation at a time to try and build those relationships and have people understand and listen to each other. And then, hopefully, the village sees council can have debates, discussions, different views of matters but try and keep the focus on what’s good for the village.

FVC: In what ways, specifically, do you hope to align the mayor’s office, councillors and CAO?

Talen: I guess it starts from a place, for me personally, to try and treat people with respect. We all have roles to do. They’re all a bit different. They all need to complement each other.

Obviously, the mayor has a unique role, setting the tone for council meetings and how administration is engaged. And likewise, councillors have a role, they need to be heard, they need to be listened to, they have the right to speak. To date, I have been 100% impressed with the administration. They have been professional, very confident. I’m learning on a daily basis. My appreciation for the skill, confidence and knowledge is growing day by day as they brief me on matters in the village. So far, it’s been a great working environment for me. I’m looking forward to the next couple of years.

FVC: How would you grade the first few council sessions since you’ve been elected?

Talen: I’m chairing the meeting as best as I can. I’ve got lots of help and support. The staff has been great keeping me on track where I stray from strict procedure and make sure we follow that. The first couple meetings, what I’ve heard from people is there’s a very different tone. We’ve had some fairly lengthy agendas and longer council meetings. But I think the tone has been good.

Emergency response

FVC: What are your main goals going forward for the village?

Talen: There’s a number of big pieces going on. Obviously there’s emergency response and preparedness—whether it’s wildfire risk or flood mitigation—those are probably some of the two bigger things that council is going to have to wrestle with and deliberate, discuss and come to a consensus on what’s in the best interest of the village.

We’ve had some new information, particularly on the risk of wildfire. Positive information, in my view: the risk is lower. So we want to take the time to review that and make some informed decisions. There’s work to follow up on. Flood mitigation with the dike—raising that and how that should proceed and in what form. And there’s a number of developments coming before council for good things that need to be carefully reviewed.

FVC: Just for clarification, is that development referring to housing, shops, or a bunch of different things?

Talen: There’s some housing proposals coming forward. There’s also a hotel on Esplanade Avenue that’s working its way through the process.

FVC: The previous council unanimously voted to put warning signs on Rockwell Drive and address safety concerns on the narrow road. There’s also been reporting done on Rockwell Drive becoming an emergency evacuation route with the District of Kent. Is there any update on the progress on either project?

Talen: Past councils had been looking through Rockwell Drive and through provincial parks as a secondary exit, egress route, of the hot springs. Those are past council decisions. They’re out there. The question you ask is timely. The information we received this week was a reconsideration, or an adjustment if you will, on the risk of wildfire for the village from a higher level to what they describe as a lower risk. Council needs to sit down, look at that with the authors of the report, understand and take that all in and then have a good discussion… I don’t speculate as to what changes in priorities might be or how that might impact a secondary egress route. That’s a matter for council to discuss.

FVC: What are the facts that contributed to reducing the wildfire risk?

Talen: Those are good questions. Those are some questions I have. We received the report, we reviewed it, we reviewed it back to staff and council and we’re going to have a meeting with council and the authors to answer that question, which is one I have, along with a long list of other questions.

FVC: What was the general reaction from council seeing that report? Because I know wildfires have been a concern in recent years throughout the province.

Talen: The initial reaction, if I could summarize from the council meeting, was we take it as good news. Maybe the risk is lower than what was considered several years ago. We want to understand how it’s lower and why and go from there.

FVC: How will the recent provincial election impact the emergency route along Rockwell?

Talen: Again, I would love to answer that question today, but I’m just not in the position. I don’t want to speculate on what might be the outcome.

FVC: Maybe I’ll ask a broader question, because I know that project involves your neighbours in Kent. What’s it been like working with them?

Talen: I had an opportunity to have an introductory meeting with Mayor Pranger last week. It went well and we’ve scheduled a first introductory, joint council meeting next week. [Week of Oct. 28]

FVC: What’s the importance of working with your neighbours and having a meeting like that?

Talen: You can’t understate the importance of having a good working relationship with the District of Kent and also the Sts’ailes as well. We’re in their traditional territory and that’s important to me to acknowledge that. Harrison Hot Springs is a small village. There’s lots the village can do, but I think there’s lots of ways where collaborating and cooperating with other governments is going to be in the village’s best interests.

The runup to 2026

FVC: I don’t want to put words in your mouth and we talked about this earlier. But is maybe another goal providing stability to the local government? How are you thinking about that going forward for the next two years?

Talen: Absolutely. Obviously, for me, having a council that can function, have discussions on hard topics, ask hard questions, ask the uncomfortable questions, get the answers and have a way of dealing with the stuff—recognizing that we're still all neighbours in a pretty small village. We need to get along with each other at the end of the day.

FVC: What did you learn in your time in the Northwest Territories, an Indigenous rights negotiator, that may help you in this role regarding stability?

Talen: That’s a big question. The main takeaway for me is just appreciating lots of different perspectives on any particular thing.

If you’re talking about a certain subject, there are lots of different ways of looking at issues, at a subject matter, and sort of learning the ability to listen and try and understand and see things through other people’s eyes. If you can do that, I think you have a way of understanding where someone comes from and you can frame a problem or challenge in a particular way that allows people to see it through common eyes, make good decisions and come to a consensus. That takes time.

FVC: What are some memorable or important things you worked on with Indigenous groups in the Northwest Territories? Do you have a good example of two people coming together to negotiate and have a positive outcome for both parties?

Talen: There’s many things. For me, there’s the work I did on the Délįnę self government agreement. Délįnę is a small community on the shores of the Great Bear Lake. The work there was to design an entirely new community government that wears two hats. It's a First Nation government, and it’s also a municipal government for all residents.

Designing that with the federal government and people of Délįnę was interesting. [It was] designing a government from the ground up that does several different things. A single government for a small community that serves all residents but represents the First Nation. An interesting collaboration; an interesting solution to a challenge to do several things with one government.

FVC: Obviously, you’re a busy man. In your mind, what is the biggest thing that you have to do in order to be happy with your term as mayor here?

Talen: This is the question you’re asking me so when you interview me in two years, you’ll say if I’ve achieved my goals. [Laughs]. I just hope that council can continue the way it has the last couple of meetings and have conversations we need to have in a respectful way.