Getting to Know Stephen Hill: entrepreneur, family man and life-long conservative

By Andrew Zwicker

Literally from age zero onward, Stephen Hill has been a conservative. As he makes his second bid for election in the Southern Interior, he’s hoping to come full circle and take office for the party he’s supported his entire life. It all started in 1962 when he was born and immediately was involved in a federal election campaign. 

“I have a picture of me at home as a baby with Diefenbaker,” recalled Hill. “Everybody wants to know how Diefenbaker got such big landslide victories. Well, I was the cute baby in his photos. Olive Diefenbaker was my fifth grandmother that I never knew.” 

From that point onward, conservative values were deeply engrained in Hill's psyche. In elementary school he volunteered to work on Stanfield’s national conservative campaign. In high school he then worked on Joe Clark’s campaign. In university he worked on Mulroney’s team and in the 1990s, Hill worked for Preston Manning of the Reform Party before ultimately coming back to the Conservatives when they merged with the Reform/Alliance. 

Hill  attended the University of Western Ontario where he studied political science and graduated with a business degree. While at Western he happened to be working on a project with Teck Trail Operations. It was that project that ultimately brought Hill to Rossland, where he’s lived for the past twenty years.

Travelling back and forth between London, Ontario and Trail, Hill spent a good eight months living out of the old Uplander Hotel, now the Prestige Mountainside Resort. 

“I was still living in London, Ontario at the time and thought “Hey, this is a pretty nice place to live.” 

Having seen the dream lifestyle that is life in Rossland, Hill eventually found a way to get back to the area that enchanted him. That route took a detour through Halifax. Hill moved out east to get his Master's degree at Dalhousie. While there he met his wife and ultimately had their first child together. The eldest child, now 19 years old, moved with them to Rossland when she was two months old. 

“Rossland has been a fabulous place to raise children. We lived right on the high school grounds. Our kids played in the field behind RSS for the first seven or eight years of their lives and then we moved to where we live now in Lower Rossland and they went to Cooke Avenue School for its 100th anniversary and its last year before they tore it down on them.” 

Working for  British Consulting Company when he moved to Rossland to stay he was still tele-commuting daily to the management consulting business he had started in Halifax. 

Volunteering as the Treasurer at St. Andrew’s United would lead him serendipitously into his next career in the world of financial management. 

“I was recruited to work for Walter Seimens at Curriers Financial. He saw the work I was doing at my church. I was the Treasurer at St Andrews. He recruited me out of my tele-commute business into their financial services division.” 

After working for several years at Curriers, Hill found his niche in the financial services world and went on to form his own company Septen Financial in 1997. 

Naturally, it was Hill’s views on financial management that was a natural fit with the Conservative Party. 

“I’m a fiscal conservative. I believe in individual responsibility and I think the Conservative party does that best. It’s not about a hand out: it’s about a hand up. I think that the Conservative Party does that quite well. The other political parties have a position where they want government to do everything for you. As opposed to giving you equal opportunity, they want to create equal outcomes but they want the government to be involved in the raising of your kids and the government to be involved in your job and your home. We believe in equal opportunity where we give everyone the equal opportunity to go to school, get an education and go out and get a career. We believe that individual Canadians will make better decisions than the provincial or federal government will.” 

Having run his own business throughout high school and University, it was a mystery to Hill why he had to pay into unemployment insurance when he never planned on collecting from it. To that extent he wrote a letter to Prime  Minister Pierre Trudeau in the 1970s asking just that question. While he didn’t receive a reply, 40 years later he’s proud to claim that he has never collected EI even though he’s paid in for his entire career. 

Life has not been all politics and numbers, however. The primary reason Hill moved to Rossland to raise his family is one shared by many in town. Plain and simple it was all about the lifestyle. An avid downhill and nordic skier, Hill’s political interests cut short this year’s ski season. 

“We like to get as many ski days in as possible. Unfortunately while we had the best ski season in a long time going they called the election which sort of cut off my last ten or 15 days of skiing.” 

Come summer, when the skis are put away, the Columbia River system calls his name. One of his bucket list items has been to paddle the entire Columbia River system. 

“Sure enough, in the last ten years we’ve done about 3,000 miles and I think I have about another 3,000 miles to go. It’s all about the lifestyle; that’s why I’m out here. 

In Hill’s ideal world,  the Southern Interior is a place with a growing population, high value, high wage jobs and schools that are full. 

“People tell me it’s a provincial matter that we are losing our hospitals and our schools. I say BS. It’s a federal economic development issue. When you have federal economic development occurring within your riding, you’ve got jobs and that means you’ve got students and that means you have open schools and when you have a vibrant , healthy community you have healthcare.” 

One way Hill hopes to do that is by replicating what he’s facilitated in Midway with the re-opening of the mill. 

“Two weeks ago we had the ribbon cutting and all of the politicians were there, the forest industry reps were there, MLAs, RDKB representatives  and the mayors and councils but the most important person at the ribbon cutting was Theresa, the School Board 51 chairperson. She said “I understand the relationship between economic development and schools. 70 jobs in Midway, a town of 500 means 140 kids which means the schools in Midway, Greenwood and Rock Creek stay open.” That’s the message I’ve been trying to get across.” 

The admittedly “hard-nosed businessman,” that has been affiliated with the Conservative party since birth,  hopes to get the opportunity to put his entrepreneurial spirit and business background to work should he be elected come May 2nd.