Using Power Well: Bob Williams and the Making of British Columbia

The compelling biography of former British Columbia cabinet minister Bob Williams weaves his political and economical insights with the story of his unconventional life.

In Using Power Well, former provincial politician Bob Williams tells his atypical life story: beginning with his childhood in the working-class east end of Vancouver, Williams goes on to describe his early years as a planner in Delta, BC, his political life on Vancouver City Council and in the BC Legislature—including a major impact on the first NDP government in the 1970s—and his more recent contributions in the world of business and co-operative economics. Williams’s legacy is dotted across the physical and political landscape of BC—from the Whistler Town Centre and Robson Square to the Agricultural Land Reserve, the Insurance Corporation of BC and many projects in between. A straight shooter who refuses to mince words, Williams advocates in this highly readable and colourful book for a bottom-up approach to politics and public policy, bypassing bureaucracy in order to use power well.