Trail: a wonderful place to live

Through his 16 years in office in Trail, B.C, Mayor Dieter Bogs has been dedicated to promoting Trail as a great place to live. Here he talks to Kootenay Business magazine about what makes the area his favourite place to call home.

What do you love about your Trail, B.C., lifestyle?

We have pretty well everything that you might want to do, whether it’s skiing or golfing or fishing. We have nice houses here and everything is a very reasonable cost. We have a wonderful lifestyle, really. We don’t have the cold winters and snowstorms like Saskatchewan, where I come from—we get a fair amount of sunshine. So it seems, from any aspect of life, that this is a wonderful place to live.

I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. It’s a small community; everyone knows everyone. We have good curling, we have hockey, we have pretty well everything you could imagine here.

Tell us about your post-secondary education.

I’m a professional engineer. I came to Trail to work for Cominco.

What kind of challenge brings out the best in you?

I think helping people with their issues and problems, that’s what I really like doing. Most people don’t really have big problems—whether it’s neighbourhood problems or zoning problems or noise problems—I just like working with people and trying to help them so that they also enjoy the community that we live in.

If your city were a person, what would you say is its dominant personality characteristic? 

Just the pride. The pride that the people of the great Trail area have is just incredible. Look at how they donate to the hospital. We have hundreds and hundreds of volunteers working in almost every aspect of the community whether it’s the Communities in Bloom (program) or whether it’s minor sports or building community parks. I mean, what other community is there where the people actually build a park? Our Centennial Park was built by the people and given to the City of Trail as a gift from the people.

My favourite story was when (the hospital) had the upgrading of a pediatric section and they said, “Well, it’s within our eight- or nine-year capital plan.” The people said, “Well, that’s not good enough,” and they literally raised all the money to upgrade the facility . . . People are proud of their community and they want to ensure that we continue to have that kind of community.

Where might you be on a Saturday night?

Usually I go to a hockey game and watch my hockey team. The Trail Smokies (Smoke Eaters junior hockey club) usually play Saturday nights. So quite often, most of the time on Saturday nights, I’m at a hockey game.

As mayor, what would you like your legacy to be in your city?

I’d like my legacy to be that I worked hard to keep Trail the kind of community that people like to live in, that they’re proud of, and that we have changed the image of Trail from a smelting community into a beautiful community to live in. With the Communities in Bloom program we’ve won two national awards—we were the best in Canada for our population size twice. We’ve come very close to being the best community in the world in that program. So that, from my perspective, we have really changed the image of Trail.