Wood Buffalo’s new mayor hasn’t been in politics before but he’s ready to fight for change.
Sandy Bowman, 50, was sworn in last week and is preparing for his first council meeting. The well-known martial arts instructor defeated council incumbents Mike Allen and Verna Murphy to win the vacant mayor’s seat last month.
Like many Fort McMurray residents, Bowman is not originally from the region.
Bowman moved to Fort McMurray in 1993 from Nova Scotia. He and a friend had decided to move to B.C, but they stopped in Fort McMurray on the way to visit family.
“I was here for six days, I met a girl, fell in love, ended up getting married,” Bowman said.
“When I say home now, this is home.”
Bowman’s passion is martial arts, which he started practising when he was nine.
He brought that to Fort McMurray, teaching family and friends Taekwondo at MacDonald Island Park.
“It steamrolled to kids liked it, kids wanted to get involved with it,” said Bowman.
In 1995, he decided to open a studio called Bowmans Martial Arts. He plans to keep teaching during his term as mayor.
“If I’m finished for the day and want a couple hours to de-stress and workout I’ll just come in here and train and teach,” said Bowman.
Although Bowman is new to politics, he has lots of notable experience with the Western Canada Summer Games, the Arctic Winter Games and Alberta Taekwondo.
Big fight
One stand-out moment in his martial arts career was an MMA fight against Eric “Butterbean” Esch, a well-known boxer and MMA fighter.
Bowman said in 2010 the company needed a win and something to take it out of debt. The plan was for Bowman to fight someone who was “almost unbeatable.”
“Win or lose, people would come to the event,” said Bowman.
At the time, Butterbean, an accomplished boxer, weighed 377 pounds. Bowman weighed 209 pounds.
Bowman won the fight. He said it helped launch “the birth of mixed martial arts era in Fort McMurray.”
Two years later, the municipality passed its combative sports commission bylaw, which Bowman helped write.
Flood troubles
Bowman hopes to put that same fighting spirit to get the municipality’s flood mitigation finished. It’s an issue that has affected Bowman’s business.
In 1997, he didn’t have flood insurance. He lost his studio and had to rebuild the business on his own.
“We were told after that the flood mitigation was done,” said Bowman. But in 2020, the downtown flooded again. And Bowman’s studio, which is in a basement, flooded.
Bowman said he’s thankful to his landlord who helped put in a sewer backup system, which allowed him to get insurance, but knows not everyone is so lucky.
“I know a lot of the buildings downtown are empty and they’re empty because people can’t get insurance,” he said.
Bowman lost his home to the 2016 wildfire. He said he wants to make it simpler for people rebuilding, because many people struggle to fill out the permit forms.
Bowman said he wants to start taking care of the people in Fort McMurray, rather than focusing on trying to attract new people to move to the community.
“Once we do that, I think our population is going to grow,” said Bowman.
He also wants to clean up Fort McMurray’s downtown and invest in beautification.
“Making it look like a place we want to live. And make it look like a place people want to do business.”
The first council meeting is scheduled for next Tuesday.
