“Metchosin just got a little quieter, a little more docile and definitely a little less colourful,” Robin Tunnicliffe wrote Monday. “A library of local history has been burned.”
Yes, it’s true. Bob Mitchell — farmer, local politician, thinker, agricultural evangelist, defender of rural ways, ex-con and someone his old sparring partner the mayor calls a true Metchosin icon — is gone at 83, and his community feels like a duller place.
No more tales of him marching outside in bathrobe, bathing suit and crocs to kick open a blocked culvert, as he did during November’s atmospheric river. No more anecdotes about ducking out of prison to go to the pub. No more stories about nurturing young farmers like he nurtured the crops he grew so well.
“He had such a big personality,” says Tunnicliffe, who with her husband, Sasha Kubicek, was recruited by Mitchell to manage his Sea Bluff Farm nine years ago.
Mitchell, who died of cancer Sunday, belonged to a Metchosin family legendary for being up to its gumboots in agriculture, politics and social causes.
Bob’s father, Geoff, who brought the Mitchells from Saskatchewan in 1949, was a friend of NDP idol Tommy Douglas, who would visit a farm that would eventually be divided among the Mitchell children.
Bob’s brother Frank toiled on behalf of poorer countries as an economist in Africa and with the World Bank. Frank’s daughter Violaine has Metchosin’s Stillmeadow Farm, growing grain, pigs and sheep, timing the breeding of the latter to coincide with the other part of her life: She’s the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s rep on the global coalition behind the COVAX initiative that nudges wealthy countries like Canada into getting vaccines, including the COVID vaccine, to developing countries more quickly.
“Uncle Bob was definitely an eccentric in every way, shape and form,” Violaine says. She doesn’t say that in a disparaging way, though. Not at all.
Likewise, Mayor John Ranns lauded Mitchell as “one of the most enjoyable councillors I had, even though he could be really difficult.”
That was just part of the package for someone who held firm beliefs about farming and the need to defend farmland.
“He was just so passionate about agriculture,” Tunnicliffe says.
OK, in the 1970s that passion led Mitchell to grow a crop that was illegal, leading to a stretch behind bars. “He did federal time for something the feds subsidize people for now,” Ranns says.
At least the experience allowed Mitchell to bill himself as the only candidate with “real conviction” when he ran for Metchosin council in 1993.
That was the same year that a council discussion about security at William Head prison led Mitchell to recall his own experience there. “We had a boat on the grounds and we would row in to the pub and spend the evening there before returning,” the Times Colonist quoted him as saying.
After authorities found the boat, inmates would have friends drive to the prison to pick them up. “You could walk through the gate, but that was too easy,” Mitchell said. “We would swim around the gate because it was more impressive for people on the other side if you were dripping wet when you got to the car.”
Later, Mitchell would become a valued representative on the municipality’s prison liaison committee, Ranns said.
The mayor is a fan of Mitchell, even though the two of them would lock horns, particularly in the early days of Mitchell’s seven years on council. (Don’t be fooled by the pastoral image. Metchosin politics aren’t for the faint of heart. Note that Ranns was once hanged in effigy.)
Ranns figures Mitchell let his guard down when he realized other councillors respected and trusted his voice, though it wasn’t as though that voice was always gentle. In a place as aggressively rural as Metchosin, Ranns appreciated how fiercely Mitchell would fight to protect the community’s character. “He loved that part of Metchosin, the fiery part,” says Violaine.
Mitchell’s devotion to rural life included bringing in Tunnicliffe and Kubicek to Sea Bluff Farm, structuring the agreement in a way that will see them continue to work the land.
It’s a year-round operation now: 45 types of vegetables, plus apples, pears and plums, all sold from a Tuesday and Saturday farm stand. Right now they’re bringing in January King cabbage, winter carrots, parsnips, beets, rutabagas, chard, kale ….
“He lived farming,” Tunnicliffe says. “He was out there every day on his knees, weeding.”
Mitchell’s enthusiasm never waned. Some nights he would get excited about some new farming idea and come banging on the door at bedtime. He was also enthused about helping new farmers take root.
In fact, Tunnicliffe said that in lieu of flowers, mourners are asked to donate to the Bob Mitchell micro-loans program for new farmers.
