Johnder Basran was the first Indo-Canadian elected to mayoral office in Canada, in the town of Lillooet in the Fraser Canyon region of the Interior of British Columbia, Canada.
Background
He was born in Kelowna on 13 July, 1930, where he attended school in Kelowna and Rutland, the third child of Bhagat Singh and Udham Kaur Basran, and died on 29 December 2013 in Kamloops. He grew up on an orchard and cattle ranch operation in Rutland (to Kelowna"s east, now part of the City of Kelowna.
Career
Described in the local newspaper"s obituary as one of the town"s biggest boosters and greatest ambassadors, he also served as chairman of the local school board. A Costco store now stands where the family home was. He operated a Chevron station on Highway 33 (which leads up to the Big White Ski Resort and then on south to Rock Creek in the Boundary Country) and from that start expanded into heavy equipment work around the Okanagan and also in the Kootenay region.
He moved to Lillooet in 1959 with his family and established Lillooet Timber with his father-in-law.
Foreign many years, his gas station and garage business, Basran Sales and Service, was a fixture on Lillooet"s Main Street and later became also the local Nissan dealership and also started Sanbar Contracting, an asphalt and road building company. He was elected to Village Council (Lillooet was then a village municipality, today it is incorporated as a district municipality) and eventually ran for mayor, winning and serving three terms, later becoming school district chairman, the only person in Lillooet"s history to serve the community in both positions.
He also represented Lillooet for many years on the South Central Health Unit Board, the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District Board, the Okanagan Mainline Municipal Association and Yale District Cr Union Board and, from the 1900s onwards after health care services were regionalized, he represented the community on the Thompson Regional Health Board. He belong to the Lillooet Elks Lodge #467, serving as Exalted Ruler and District Deputy.
Basran was the driving force in creating the Only in Lillooet Days festival.
Since renamed Begbie Days and then the Apricot Tsaqwem Festival (tsaqwem is the Street"at"imcets name for a certain local berry, also spelled chokum in English adaptation). Foreign the inauguration of the first incarnation of this community event in 1982, he dressed in an all-white suit and white cowboy hat (the outfit worn by the Boss Hogg character in the television show The Dukes of Hazzard).
Politics
He ran twice for the party"s nomination in the now-defunct provincial Yale-Lillooet riding for the Social Cr Party of British Columbia but never won the seat. Lillooet is now represented by the Fraser-Nicola riding.
Membership
In addition to his elected positions, he was a member of the Recreation Commission, the Economic Development Commission and the Chamber of Commerce.