News and Features
Her Worship
By Frances Bula published Jan 1, 2009
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Dianne Watts transformed herself from an ignored, bullied, and abused young woman into a highly effective and appealing mayor. She’s remaking the oft-abused city of Surrey in much the same way
My travels with Surrey mayor Dianne Watts take me to a Christian prayer breakfast at a golf course near the American border, where various local politicians boost each other with phrases like "We have God's blessing that He gave us the skills to be of service"; an international wrestling match at the Guildford Community Centre, with 2,000 people-mostly men, mostly South Asian-packed into a cavernous gym on a Saturday night; and a high-school reunion at the Cloverdale Agriplex, where couples circulate in the echoing space.
Driving from place to place, we watch Surrey unroll around us: the very old Surrey of farmland and forest and ranch houses parked on huge swaths of lawn; the late-20th-century Surrey of strip malls, split-levels, churches, mini-
storages, and low-slung business parks; and the newest Surrey of tight-clustered townhouse and mini-mansion developments interrupted by occasional signs of almost-urban density and liveliness. It's a complex, multilayered place longing to grow beyond being a collection of culs-de-sacs and highways to become a city. To do that, it's thrown itself behind a woman who has herself transcended a difficult past and who epitomizes the new suburbanism.
Everywhere we touch down, Watts delivers a little speech-nothing fancy or particularly oratorical, just a "Welcome to Surrey" or a "Have a good time in this great facility." Afterward, people flock to her. A young man from a Christian environmental group introduces himself: "We're not the kind of activists who are in-your-face." An older woman from a church group asks for help in working on homelessness. A high-school-reunion attendee thanks her for putting an end to the bad jokes about her hometown.
