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Richmond Coun. Harold Steves first became interested in politics in 1959 when Richmond city hall’s quiet rezoning of his family’s farmland into residential quadrupled their taxes.
Steves, now B.C.’s longest-serving politician,was 22 at the time and only learned about the designation change when he applied for permission to open a dairy farm and was told there would no more agriculture additions allowed.
“That’s what got me going,” said Steves, who is now 83 and recently announced he won’t seek re-election in next fall’s municipal vote, the first time his name won’t be on a ballot since 1968.
Council’s 1959 rezoning affected about 1,000 farms and 160 angry, mostly older farmers held a meeting but “they didn’t know how to fight city hall, so they went home,” recalled Steves.
He heard from the village blacksmith in Whalley about a land bank in Saskatchewan to preserve farmland and said, “OK, that’s what we want, a land bank.”
