The family of John Weston, MP for West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country, has pulled up its roots and moved to Ottawa.
The decision was a tough one, said Weston, particularly for his three young children.
"They love their schools, they love their friends, they love their soccer. It's been an incredibly great community for them to grow up in. They're not keen on the change - they love the North Shore. They'll be back here for Christmas and for summer. But our family is a really important part of our lives and our family will be healthier if we're together more nights. Certainly it gives me a chance to be a better dad."
With the job certainty that came with the Conservatives' majority win in May, Weston and his wife Donna took a hard look at how his hectic travel schedule was taking away from his family life.
"So 30 weeks out of 52, Parliament is in session," Weston said. "Thursdays, you get out of the House of Commons having packed your bags in the morning. . . . You make sure the taxi is waiting so the moment you get out of your last meeting, whether it's Question Period or a committee, you're sprinting for the airport and usually narrowly making the airplane. I get into Vancouver about nine, just in time to tuck the kids into bed on the Thursday night."
On Fridays and Saturdays, Weston splits his time between his family and his roughly 120,000 constituents, who are distributed around a sprawling riding that takes in urban, rural, island and resort communities.
"Sunday morning I'm surreptitiously packing my bags so my wife and kids don't notice, as if they don't already know that by 2: 30 p.m. I'm heading for the airport again to start over, arriving in Ottawa around midnight or 1 a.m."
The solution, the Westons concluded, was to move the family to the capital.
"The kids need their dad - and hopefully Donna needs her husband," Weston said. "So we can be sleeping under the same roof four nights a week instead two nights a week. Meanwhile I'm still sleeping in the same room in the same house when I'm here. It's not that I'm moving, it's that they're moving."
Aware that the move might lead to criticism that he is less invested in the
community he serves, Weston said if anything, it will improve his accessibility while in the riding.
"When I'm back, I'll be exclusively committed to constituents. Secondly, I've moved my executive assistant role from Ottawa to the riding. That's a big change. We've also set up office hours in Whistler and Squamish."
The lifestyle for all West Coast MPs, said Weston, is "a real challenge."
"It's a health challenge for many people . . . You have to totally love your job, you have to have the commitment of your family and a great team of staff and volunteers. Happily I have all those things going for me."
Speaking from Ottawa and "up to her ears in boxes," Donna Weston also acknowledged that leaving their Dundarave home was difficult. "The new schools, the new friends, the new community, that's pretty hard," she said. "But I'm trying to see it as an adventure. Three years ago I said no way. But then there was no clear mandate. Now we're looking at four years of what's best for the family.
"I think it's much more complicated for me, dealing with the kids and everything. But we are taking it one day at a time and for me it means the family will be together."
