Bose too busy to run for council
by Gordon Clark, Staff Reporter
The Province, November 30, 1997, A.13

VANCOUVER, B.C. -- Former Surrey mayor Bob Bose says it is unlikely he'll run in a council by-election. "I am pretty busy and I am pursuing other things," said Bose, who lost the mayor's seat to Doug McCallum in the November 1996 city elections. "It may be the wrong dynamic for me and for council," said Bose. "Is it an appropriate role for me? That is the biggest question." The by-election will be triggered by the soon-to-be-announced resignation of Coun. Pam Lewin, who is moving to Trail in the new year. Her husband, Richard, was recently posted there by his company. Lewin has been commuting to Trail at weekends but has found it difficult being away from her husband and children. The by-election will pit McCallum and his right-wing Surrey Electors Team -- which currently has six of council's nine seats -- against the New Democrat-linked Surrey Civic Electors. SCE has two seats on council. There is one independent councillor. Bose said he is busy running his land-use-planning consulting business and training for his new passion -- marathon cycling, called randonneuring.

The 65-year-old Bose, who only began riding two years ago, recently qualified for the 1,200-kilometre Paris-Brest-Paris race in the summer of 1999. After 16 years in politics, he says he misses little about political life. "You are out of all that conflict, which is something I don't miss," he said. "The backstabbing, the petty politics of it all. "It didn't matter if you were doing useful things -- the whole nature of the political contest is to tear the other guy down and it's not what I want to do." McCallum and Lewin could not be reached for comment.