Evan Dean believes the jobs he had as younger person working with customers prepared him for being a city bylaw officer and now the director of protective services in Williams Lake.
Working at places such as Value Village, Zellars and Domino’s Pizza in the Lower Mainland were the biggest benefit to him, he said.
“I learned pretty quickly that people get upset when their Maslow’s hierarchy of needs are messed with. If they don’t have the food they need they get pretty upset and definitely if they don’t have the shelter they are looking for.”
Born and raised in Chilliwack, Dean moved to Williams Lake with his wife Victoria when their daughter Eleanor, 12, was four months old.
He had been working as an animal control officer in Chilliwack and Victoria was working at a vet clinic and trying to get ahead.
“We had this strategy that we did not want to raise our daughter in a townhouse complex in Chilliwack so we put out resumes to everywhere.”
They had decided one of them would work and the other would stay at home with Eleanor, depending on what seemed to be the best fit.
In the end, Dean accepted a job as a city bylaw officer in Williams Lake, starting on Oct. 17, 2011.
Fast forward to 2023, they have two more children Riel, 10, and Vernon, 8 and Victoria is a maternity nurse at Cariboo Memorial Hospital (CMH).
Her experience having Riel at CMH was the inspiration for her to go into nursing which she studied at Thompson Rivers University in Williams Lake and Kamloops, Dean said.
Dean has been the director of protective services since November 2022, when he replaced Erick Peterson who obtained a fire chief position with the city of Abbotsford.
“I love it,” he said of the job. “I spent until 2019 in the bylaw spot and then I moved to the RCMP as the manager of RCMP municipal services.”
When Peterson left and Joan Flaspohler resigned to run for city council, Dean moved into the city’s fire inspection and training officer position.
In 2016, his parents moved to Rose Lake in the Cariboo to be closer to them.
“It was a big help because when my wife was going to school in Kamloops I was single parenting and my mom was very, very helpful through all of that.”
His parents built a home there and love living on the lake, he added.
When he is not working, Dean enjoys being with his family as much as possible. They enjoy being a snowboarding family in the winter and camping and mountain biking family in the summer as best they can.
“Obviously with my wife being a nurse and me having my job, things get busy but we do our best.”
Dean “absolutely” loves the Cariboo.
During the annual Fill the Boot for Muscular Dystrophy campaign, he was chatting with one of the newest fire department members, a local doctor.
They shared stories about their first experiences in Williams Lake and how friendly and genuine the people are.
“I was telling him I remember being at Save-On-Foods looking at salad dressing and someone came up to me and said, ‘salad dressing, there are too many choices.’ I laughed because that was not an interaction you would ever have in the Lower Mainland. It was so candid and I relaxed immediately, which suits my personality to at tee.”
He said what he loves about the fire department is that it is a giant family that takes care of each other, which is a tiny reflection of the Cariboo.
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