English | Français Beyond Politics

Conservative MP Garry Breitkreuz certainly didn't expect to get elected when he ran for the first time in the 1993 election. After all, the riding of Yorkton-Melville had been held by the NDP for the previous 25 years without interruption. But Garry, riding on the Reform wave, won. It never occurred to Gary to run in the first place, he was only egged on by friends and supporters, who knew Garry as a teacher and farmer who grew up outside the community of Springside. Garry attended a one-room school house, milked the cows by hand, and as the eldest of three boys and one girl, learned about responsibility at a young age. Garry had no plans to leave the farm until one of his high school teachers suggested that he pursue a university degree. Gary took the advice and became a teacher, first in western Africa in Cameroon, and later in the Solomon Islands, after the last of his four children were born with wife Ldia. Now a grandfather of nine, Garry Breitkreuz talks to Catherine Clark about his life Beyond Politics.