Beyond the Politics: Mel Arnold, Conservative Party incumbent for the North Okanagan-Shuswap riding

Beyond the politics takes an up-close and personal look at the five North Okanagan-Shuswap candidates running in the federal election, October 21.

The purpose of these stories by respected local journalist Josh Winquist is to present the candidate, not party platforms or policies.

Thank you to all the candidates for participating.

The profiles will be published in alphabetical order with one each day from Oct. 7-11.

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Profile on Mel Arnold, Conservative (Oct.7)

Profile of Kyle Delfing, People’s Party of Canada (Oct. 8)

Profile of Cindy Derkaz, Liberal (Oct. 9)

Profile of Marc Reinarz, Green Party (Oct. 10)

Profile of Harwinder Sandhu, New Democratic Party (Oct.11)

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Mel Arnold would tell you a life of federal politics is demanding if you asked him about his career path.

He spent the past four years representing the North Okanagan-Shuswap riding in Ottawa as a Member of Parliament and he is back at it, representing the Conservatives in the 2019 election.

“There is still the stress that comes with it,” Arnold admits about running for office. “Basically, I have been in a four-year job interview but it comes down to these last few weeks, people are really looking closely at what I have done.”

In the face of pressures that come with a high-profile public position it’s been long days with heavy workloads, never-ending phone calls and meetings, constant travel, and of course, the ever-present public criticism. Through it all, Arnold has remained, to many of his constituents, approachable.

“That word approachable keeps coming from others. It is one of the things that I never really considered about myself but it came out in the 2015 campaign and it keeps coming up again. So, there must be something to that,” he says with a smile.

Arnold admits it is his wife, Linda, who keeps him grounded through it all.

“She is always there. When I come home and when I need to vent, she’ll let me vent,” he says. “She has days like that too. We understand that is part of life.”

Arnold says sometimes after a particularly hard day, the couple will just sit on the deck at their Salmon Arm home and look out at the view — not saying a word but knowing that the support for each other is there.

“We just know how each other feels,” he says. “That is over 40 years of being partners. It is struggling through the hard times that make the better times so much more enjoyable.”

The couple has been through a lot over the course of their 40-year-marriage, but in all that time, Arnold says, they have never once raised a voice at each other.

“We have always been close ever since we decided to get married. We have been a partnership, or a team, always. It is just because of that support, it is a lot easier to get through those tough times. We know that someone is going to be beside you, whether you are up or down, they are there with you.”

Arnold recalls a time early on in the couple’s marriage—in fact, it happened the day his daughter was born —when he was laid off from his job with the Canadian Pacific Railway.

He and his wife had just bought their first house and the CP Rail job was going to help provide stability for the young couple.

He remembers going to the hospital to visit his wife and keeping the news to himself. He waited a few days to tell her.

“Knowing that you only had a couple of weeks’ notice, unsure if you were going to have a job. That was a pretty stressful time. I can relate to people who have had life struggles like that,” he says.

“We just said, ‘Whatever, we will survive. We’ve been through tough times and we’ll get through this.’ Just knowing that there was no panic, no extreme anxiety about what are we going to do next, we just knew that we had the support of family and friends and we were just going to get through it.”

To this day, Arnold says the couple doesn’t live an elaborate life, just one filled with appreciation, support for each other, and of course, love.

It has been that way from the beginning.

For so many in life, it is only when we look back at where we came from that we can see and just how far we have come. It’s no different for Arnold.

Growing in the Shuswap on a dairy farm in Notch Hill, Arnold, born in 1958, was the sixth of eight children.

“It was incredible,” he says of his childhood. “You created your own entertainment. You have seen the bumper stickers out there [that say] ‘We need more tackle boxes instead of Xboxes’ and that is what we did as kids. Our family was just outdoors.”

The time on the farm taught Arnold the importance of hard work and dedication, something, he says, he brings to his role as MP.

“At that time, there wasn’t much leisure time. All family members worked on the farm. It taught me a good work ethic. It taught me how to continue slugging through no matter how big the piles got to be, you just keep working at it and do your best.”

Beyond working hard, Arnold’s parents taught him the importance of community as well.

“Even though you were busy, busy, busy with the farm life and work, there was always that commitment to volunteering and giving back to the community as well. That has been a big part of who I am, and why I am doing what I am doing.”

Arnold remembers his mother as a caring person; always volunteering, always looking out for someone else. His father, as Arnold recalls, was a ‘just do it and get it done’ type of person.

“I think I ended up being that compromise of both,” he says. “Maybe that is why I have been able to accomplish what I have; it’s that compromise of caring about others and doing something about it.”

The age difference between Arnold and some of his siblings was quite great.

He remembers his eldest brother graduating high school just as he was entering elementary school.

Even still, the family was close.

Eventually, when Arnold was 12, his father sold the farm.

Many of his older siblings had left and the work became too much.

The family moved into a house in Sorrento, right across from the Sorrento Elementary School which is where Arnold called home until after he graduated high school. He moved to Salmon Arm shortly after.

It was also during that time when Arnold and his family were struck by tragedy.

When Arnold was 18, his younger brother, who was 16 at the time, was lost to a drunk driver.

“My brother was only two years younger than I was,” he recalls. “We were a lot closer. Losing him, it probably changed me in ways I still don’t even realize.”

Arnold pauses for a moment, before adding in a subdued voice, “I understand the loss of family and how difficult that can be.”

Earlier in life, he also lost a sister to a brain aneurysm.

While he didn’t know it at the time, Arnold says looking back it is clear, his journey to Parliament Hill began more than 20 years ago.

Back in the mid-1990s, the then Liberal Government of Canada introduced the Canadian Firearms Registry which required the registration of all restricted and prohibited firearms in Canada.

Arnold had a deer hunting rifle his father gave him for his 14th birthday. Unsure of how the new law worked, Arnold went to the local fish and game club to find out what he had to do to keep his rifle.

“I wanted to know what the laws were to make sure I could legally own that gun,” he says. “One of the old-timers in the club, I had met him on a housing construction project, took me under his wing and he said, ‘Mel, you should join the club,'” which he did.

It didn’t take long before Arnold became a director at the club. From there, he became its vice president before he became president.

He was making connections and soon his involvement in the fish and game club led to his involvement with the Shuswap region of the BC Wildlife Federation.

It was the same pattern at that organization.

‘You should become a director, Mel, you should be vice president,’ he recalls the members saying. Eventually, he served two years as the president of the BC Wildlife Federation, which also put him on the board of the Canadian Wildlife Federation. He served there as the governance committee chair for about six years.

It was during that time he started interacting with government officials at all levels which increased his interest in politics.

“In the beginning, it was more just the pieces falling into place,” Arnold says. “In that last few years, once I had thought about this as something I would like to do, there was a lot more purpose behind it—building the networks and getting to know what was involved and what was required.”

Arnold wouldn’t call himself a seasoned veteran but having been through an election before and winning, he says he is prepared.

“It is a different role this time. Once you have been through it once and had the role of MP, you know a little bit more of what is coming at you the next few weeks,” he says.

“I always look at myself at the end of the day and ask if I did the best I could. I sleep well at night because I believe I did the best I could. It may not be what someone else wanted, but it was the best I can do.”

Voters across Canada head to the polls Oct. 21.