About Glenn
Hi, my name is Glenn Hubbers. I’d like to welcome you to my blog, and introduce myself.
For a shorter version, here’s my “Official Bio.”
Here’s me on Wikipedia.
Personal:
On the personal side, I’m married to Mollie, live in Aurora, Ontario, Canada, and have a daughter, Madelynne, of whom I am very proud as she is a very smart girl. (I’d like to think that she takes after me, but that’s for other to judge, I guess!) Maddy lives with her Mom in Toronto, but visits us frequently way up north in Aurora.
Career:
In my working life I’m a Professional Engineer, a 1989 graduate from McMaster University, and have spent my career (thus far) working in the energy industry, mostly in design, construction management, and project management. I am currently employed in Business Development at EPCOR in Toronto.
Family History:
On my mother’s side, the family is French Canadian as far back as I know it. Unfortunately, this has done me no good as I don’t speak a word of French, something I attribute to the awful way that the Ontario school system teaches the subject. I think we need a complete overhaul and a comprehensive plan with the goal that every student graduating from say, Grade 6, is fluent in French. Then our kids should choose another language and be fluent in that by the time they graduate grade 12. They do this in Europe and we can do it here. Anything less is a waste of time and money. But I digress.
On my father’s side, he came to Canada in 1952 with his parents, all the way from Nijmegen in the Netherlands. (Actually, a little suburb community called Malden, for anyone who actually knows the place.) And no, I don’t speak a word of Dutch either. My Dad and I visited Holland in 2002. It was a fantastic trip and we spent a great deal of time connecting with family and touring on borrowed bicycles.
Mollie and I returned to visit in 2007, again spending time with family and seeing a lot of tourist sites that I did not see on my first trip. We ended the trip with a few days in Amsterdam taking in such venues as the Anne Frank house and the Van Gogh museum.
We’re looking forward to another visit in 2010.
NOTE: If you are reading this from the Netherlands and think we may be related, please contact me at the link above.
Politics:
My first election after I turned 18 saw the retirement of Pierre Trudeau and the electoral victory of Brian Mulroney. Who did I vote for? I can’t really recall. All I can say is that I have voted Liberal in the past, and I’ve voted Progressive Conservative in the past. I have never voted NDP and I have never voted Reform-Alliance-Conservative. The Liberal sponsorship scandal and “culture of entitlement”, as bad as it was, bothers me far less than the social-conservative policy.
I can say in hindsight that I have never been 100% comfortable with my choices, because I consider myself fiscally conservative but socially liberal. Neither of the two parties I had voted for was a perfect fit, and the NDP was too tied to organized labour and too prone to overspending for my liking, even if I did agree with some of their goals. Like so many others, I didn’t consider that there were other choices available and for many years of my voting experience, there really weren’t.
During the 2003 provincial election in Ontario, I saw Frank Dejong on TV talking about how he was excluded, again, from the televised leaders debate. He seemed to have a pretty good argument to me, running candidates in all 105 (?) ridings and showing a pretty good percentage in terms of popular support, and I thought, “Why would Elections Ontario make that decision?”
Doing a bit of research, I found out that Elections Ontario had nothing to do with it. Actually, it was a decision by media execs who for some strange reason have the authority to choose what the public hears in political debate. So I went to the GPO website and had my first introduction to the Green Party.
May the deities forever bless the internet…
Once I began digging (and I will admit that the platform was pretty light in those days) it seemed to me that all of the policies just made sense, and they fit exactly with my fiscally conservative, socially liberal values. I did not vote Green in that election, because I got caught in the trap of “strategic voting” and I was so against McGuinty that I held my nose and voted for Ernie Eves, even though he had put me out of work when he derailed electricity deregulation. A stupid, stupid decision on his part. The Liberals won a majority, the Liberal won in my riding, and my “strategic vote” was really wasted.
After that election I kept digging, discovering the Green Party of Canada, reading their platform, press releases, basically everything I could get my hands on. The information continued to make sense to me. By the June 2004 federal election I joined the Party and did not waste my vote on someone I didn’t like in order to beat (or lose to) someone I really didn’t like. I voted Green and slept very well indeed, having funded the party with my $1.75 per year. I will never waste another (non) strategic vote again.
During the winter of 2005, a good friend handed me a book. Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. It may sound cliche but this book changed my life. Partly it was the book itself and its sequels, but partly it was the path it led me down with continued reading about sustainability. Ishmael led me to The Ecology of Commerce and Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken, which lead me to others.
Having joined the GPC, I would receive regular email updates about local events, and one day decided to attend a presentation where I met Jim Harris and Adriane Carr, who was the leader of the BC Greens at the time.
The rest, as they say, is history. From that first meeting, Mollie and I got the ball rolling to contact members and supporters in Newmarket-Aurora and within a couple of months formed the Newmarket-Aurora EDA.
The election of January 23, 2006 was a great experience. We were new, with not a single one of us having been involved in campaigns before. But the response was positive.
This space reserved for the 2008 campaign…
Sure could use your help. Contact me.
