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.
Epoch Times: Many say your successful story is not only a tribute to Canada’s multi-cultural strategy, but also the integration of next-generation Canadians. What do you think?
Nenshi: 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.
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.
Epoch Times: Many first generation immigrants are challenged to overcome characteristics that make it hard to join mainstream society.
Nenshi: 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 Caucasian 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.”
Epoch Times: Who did you respect when you went to school?
Epoch Times: Many say your successful story is not only a tribute to Canada’s multi-cultural strategy, but also the integration of next-generation Canadians. What do you think?
Nenshi: 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.
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.
Epoch Times: Many first generation immigrants are challenged to overcome characteristics that make it hard to join mainstream society.
Nenshi: 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 Caucasian 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.”
Epoch Times: Who did you respect when you went to school?
Nenshi: 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 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 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.
Epoch Times: What changes have there been since you came into office as mayor?
Nenshi: 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 re-focus 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.
Epoch Times: What morals guide the mayor’s decisions?
Nenshi: 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.
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 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.
Epoch Times: What changes have there been since you came into office as mayor?
Nenshi: 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 re-focus 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.
Epoch Times: What morals guide the mayor’s decisions?
Nenshi: 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.
