Party President and Provincial Policy Chair
Email: robertallington@gmail.com
Robert Allington was a founding director of the party, and its first policy chair. He served as the Executive Assistant to the DR BC House Leader at the British Columbia Legislature in 2005.
Robert brings to the party many years experience in communications, government and post-secondary education. As a writer, editor and publisher he has travelled Canada from sea to sea to sea, and his stories of the land and its people have appeared in numerous national and regional magazines, weekly and daily newspapers, and literary and scholarly publications.
He is known to readers in British Columbia as a former senior editor for Westcoast Publishing Ltd, and the editor of several regional trade publications including Westcoast Logger, Travel and Adventure in British Columbia, Business Farmer, Good Morning News and Westcoast Reflections. In addition he has edited numerous book-length works of non-fiction on subjects as diverse as Soviet cinema, regional government, First Nations land issues and Peruvian culture. He edited and published the weekly Agassiz-Harrison Advance and the seasonal travel monthly The Fraser Sun, and was a long-time contributor to The Victoria Naturalist (published by the Victoria Natural History Society).
A strong believer in experiential learning, Robert helped to establish the
Creative Writing Co-operative Education Program at the University of Victoria,
where he taught journalism and non-fiction writing for six years. Among the
book-length works he has edited are: Local Government in British Columbia [Union
of British Columbia Municipalities], Native Land Claims and Resource Development
[Institute for Research on Public Policy] and Glasnost Soviet Cinema Responds
[University of Texas Press]. In addition he was a contributing editor to the
Encyclopedia of British Columbia [Harbour Publishing]. He is also the author
of several works of shorter non-fiction. His book, We Are Not Amused, BC Premier
Gordon Campbell and Her Majesty’s Pleasure [Flapback Books] was an analysis
of the constitutional implications of the Premier’s drunk driving conviction.
His government experience includes five years as the Secretary-Treasurer of the Muskoka Regional Land Division Committee prior to coming to British Columbia, two terms on the Bracebridge Ontario Library Board, and service with the Agassiz-Harrison Arts Council in British Columbia.
Robert was born in the United Kingdom in 1945, educated in England and Canada, studied philosophy at McMaster University and became a Canadian citizen in 1971. His writing and editing career began as a student at McMaster University where he was the managing editor of The Silhouette. He was soon writing for the Ontario dailies including the St. Catharines Standard, the Barrie Examiner and the Globe and Mail. Later he became the editor of the Bracebridge Herald-Gazette, and the publisher of the Times of Minden. He settled in British Columbia in 1981, lives in Victoria, enjoys gardening and is an avid cyclist.
