Ryan Kiedrowski
May 29, 2006
When asked how he got the position intern CAO for the City of Brooks, Dan Quinn said “it’s a long story.”
With a background in politics, Quinn completed his thesis at Queens University and was ready to continue on in the world of science.
“I started off in a life sciences program in Queens, but I spent enough time in the lab to know it wasn’t for me,” he told The Chronicle. “I didn’t want to be a lab rat; although I really like science.”
With the 2003 Iraq was raging, Quinn decided that foreign policy was more his style, and through the course of his time in politics, Quinn found that public policy was his interest.
“I had an internship in Washington D.C. at the New Zealand department of Trade and Enterprise,” said Quinn. “It’s fascinating work with the World Bank but as glamorous as any internship in Washington sounds, they don’t pay.”
Quinn was then faced with the dilemma of either accepting the internship work for three months or stay with what he loved which was a chance to volunteer with the election.
“I had always wanted to do that – experience the most political sign of politics, which is the election,” Quinn explained. “I put all the eggs in one basket and decided I would help the local candidate defeat the local incumbent (Bob Vaughan, Prince Edward-Hastings riding) so I was a policy advisor.”
As fate would have it Vaughan, a Liberal candidate, was defeated by Conservative Daryl Kramp.
“Even though he didn’t get in, I don’t regret the experience to just get in there and have an impact,” said Quinn. He noted that the big issue in the riding was agriculture, which he admitted to not being an expert in the field.
“I didn’t know anything about agriculture and I was supposed to be advising him as to what to say,” said Quinn.
With the election over Quinn made another life-altering decision. With the realization of how broad-based and conceptual federal politics is, he decided to get back to basics to where he could meet people head on. This was where the Internship program fit in.
“Municipal administration appealed to me as it was far more decentralized work, face-to-face with people and you see the impact of your decisions because it’s on a smaller level,” Quinn explained.
While the yearning to enter politics at the federal level still pulls at Quinn, he realized that it’s a game of life experience.
“I don’t have reason enough to be a politician yet,” he said. “I think you should be a politician because you want to affect change, you want something to be done, you want to have a vision of your own or at least be part of one and for me, that takes a lot.”
“The way I look at it, there’s no better place to start career than at municipal administration and getting a sense of how a community is governed,” he concluded.
The internship program, which has been around since 1981, is designed to familiarize those interested in the municipal administration field and a way to prepare for an upcoming shortage.
“It’s basically designed to fill the void that the Alberta Municipal Department of Administration will be facing over the next few years,” Quinn explained, adding that many administrators will be retiring in the coming years.