Unexpected View
Young Gun Brings Innovation to Cochrane
Truper McBride, BA’04, discovered a passion for politics while watching an
American presidential race unfold. Now he’s bringing that zeal to his role
as mayor of Cochrane.
By Matthew Fox
Is there an interesting story behind your given name?
I nearly died at birth and my dad said I pulled through like a trooper. My mom liked the name but not the spelling so she changed the spelling to Truper from Trooper.
When did you first become interested in politics?
In 1992, when I was 15, my dad’s house was under renovation so we lived at my grandmother’s house for a couple of months. The American presidential election was on and she loved it, it was like a soap opera for her. I thought it was really interesting as well. In Canada, we went into a leadership race for the federal PC party in 1993 to replace Mulroney-Campbell. I got involved at that time and I ended up in Ottawa as a convention delegate. When I moved to Cochrane [from London, Ontario] in 1995 for my last year of high school, it dropped away for a while, until 2000 when I became re-involved with the party and I ran in the federal election against Myron Thompson in the Wild Rose riding as a U of C student. After that, the PC party said to me, “You should keep your name out there, you’ve got lots of ideas, run municipally.” Every few weeks for several months, I spoke to two or three people in high-profile positions in the community. The more I learned, the more I started seeing how large a role municipal government plays in the everyday lives of people. In 2001, I ran for Cochrane’s council. I scored third, and the top six get elected.
What changes have resulted from Cochrane’s rapid growth?
The town seems to assimilate people into two camps. One is pro-growth and the second really wants to keep it as a small town. They even keep different social circles—before they end up in front of council, they’ve never seen each other in their lives, and we’re only a town of just under 15,000 people. There are people saying, “Leave the small town behind. Get rid of that western heritage architecture. Accept that we’re a city, and move on with life.” Then there is the other side, saying, “This isn’t why we moved here. Close the doors, cap the population.” I think there’s a way to do both but what we’ve been missing is a collective, shared vision. What is the town going to look like in 15, 25 years? What I think is very important is that we don’t turn into a bedroom community for Calgary. There’s that risk that we—Cochrane, Airdrie, Okotoks, Chestermere—are running right now and some have accepted it, but Cochrane doesn’t want that. We have to work hard on our economic development, on practicing sustainability, on making sure we’re paying attention to the social and cultural fabric of Cochrane, as well as the environment, and giving everything equal weighting.
What’s happening in Cochrane that’s innovative?
The community is pushing for a regional heavy rail transit system.
I ran in the last election on this platform, as part of the development of a new regional land use plan. We are still very early in the process—for it to happen Calgary Transit would need to morph into a regional transit authority and that would be the organization we would deal with. Using existing CP lines, it would link Cochrane, Airdrie and Okotoks [through Calgary] with future expansion to High River, Canmore. Strathmore is on the CN line and it would tie in with Chestermere. Where I would like to go further is have it stop at Cochrane, then at Stoney Nation, then shoot it out as a link into the national park system. You can achieve environmental benefits just by removing vehicles from the road, but the economic development spinoffs are generated by people who can more easily take day trips to Cochrane or the mountains without having to get into their cars. U
Read more from this interview with Truper McBride.