Mild-mannered Seiling getting ready to say goodbye
The longtime regional chair will be watching Monday’s municipal election from the sidelines
WATERLOO REGION — Whoever wins the election to be the next Region of Waterloo chair, there’s a good chance Ken Seiling will be quietly watching — out of the spotlight, and from the back of the room.
Seiling, 70, has never needed to be front and centre. In an age of bombastic politicians and divisive, overheated politics, he’s an old-school advocate for civility and quiet diplomacy.
For 33 years, Seiling has led the region in his low-key style. As he prepares to hand over the keys to a new chairperson, he took some time to look back at his career — and explain why he didn’t need to be the loudest one in the room to get things done.
“That’s just not my style,” said Seiling, who was celebrated at a goodbye dinner at Bingemans Sunday night.
“I think I learned early in life I wasn’t the funniest guy in a crowd, I wasn’t the loudest, I wasn’t the most verbose. So I learned to do the things I could do in a way I thought was helpful.”
Seiling, who entered politics in the 1970s and first became a Woolwich Township councillor and mayor, didn’t back away from confrontation when necessary. But he long ago earned a reputation as an approachable, modest politician who did his work without burning any bridges along the way.
“If you alienate people, if you make them angry with you, at the end of the day your ability to do things is pretty limited,” he said.
“I’ve never thought the job was about me. The job was about doing things for the community, for other people. I never really worried if I had the profile or not. I was quite happy to go to an event and sit in the back row.”
Some of that approach was modelled after his grandfather, Albert Seiling, a successful chicken hatchery owner and former township mayor who quietly supported community projects with little fanfare.
Seiling will officially step down in early December, when the new chair is sworn in. In between now and then, he’ll be packing up decades of memories from his office and helping his replacement adjust to their new job.
He says he’s not sure how to transition to private life, after decades in regional politics and attending a neverending cycle of community events. He has no real hobbies, he said, and no plans for retirement yet outside of spending more time with his five children and nine grandchildren.
Seiling admitted it will be difficult to leave a job he’s had for more than three decades. But he also doesn’t plan to vanish from the public eye, and wants to stay involved in the community.
“There’s a part of me that’s grieving a little bit. I’d be less than honest if I didn’t admit that,” he said.
“But there’s a side of me that says, maybe it will be nice getting up every morning and not worrying if I should open my email.”
Seiling also shared some of his concerns about what lies ahead for his replacement, at a time when the regional government’s relationship with the province has never been more unpredictable.
“Nobody has a good feel for where things are going,” he said, phoning on a Saturday after watching his grandson’s hockey game. “I think there’s going to be an interesting time ahead for municipalities.”
Monday will be the first time since the creation of the regional municipality that Seiling’s name won’t be on the ballot. After decades of winning elections, he said it feels a little strange to not be hoping for voters’ endorsement this time.
“I’m going to miss finding out whether people are validating what you’ve done in the past,” he said.
Seiling has guided the region through a remarkable period of growth, overseeing a regional government with an annual budget of $1.5 billion serving a community of about 580,000 people. He’s especially proud of policies that have protected farmland and preserved some of the region’s rural character as it grew — an approach that early in his career drew some criticism.
“I was never anti-development. I was looking for balance,” he said.
“We can’t stop the clock. We’re going to grow and we need to have economic growth ... But at the same time we need to maintain the things that are really important to the community.”
The outgoing chair knows there’s still work to be done. But Seiling hopes his communityfirst, amenable style of local politics will live on, long after he’s gone.
“We’re a strong community rooted in good values and good people and good organizations. They need to continue to work together to continue to reinforce that,” he said.
“We’ve got something very special here. And we always need to be vigilant to make sure it survives and carries on.”