Avenue Magazine Edmonton

It’s 7 P.M. on a bitter November night. A troupe of eager 20-somethings with cellphones encircle a table at the Bogani Café in a strip mall south of 23rd Avenue: clean-cut boys and sweater girls. Rick Miller, Liberal MLA for Edmonton-Rutherford, organized the gathering as part of his “Young Rutherford” series. Tonight’s featured guest is Edmonton’s youngest city councillor, the newly elected Don Iveson, on this day still just 28-years-old. But he’s not here yet — he’s stuck at Southgate Centre waiting for the No. 41 bus.

He arrives a half hour later, brimming with apologies, the cold air spilling off his six-foot-four-inch frame as he untangles himself from a bulging backpack, overcoat and necktie. “Let’s de-formalize for a minute,” he says, undoing the top button of his blue dress shirt and ordering a cappuccino. Iveson is among four councilors who accepted a challenge this week to commute using only public transportation, which makes it tricky to stick to the swelling schedule on his BlackBerry.

The current or aspiring university students in this group pepper him with questions about his campaign, the workings of council, budget talks and his first month on the job. He’s been running on no sleep, catered chicken and mints but his fervour is undiminished, especially when it comes to the budget. He knows Robert’s Rules of Order like some people know the NHL rulebook. He lives for this stuff —even if others don’t.

Leaning forward, hands gesturing, he starts criticizing the federal and provincial governments for chronically underfunding cities at a time when urban infrastructure is either inadequate or crumbling. What will Canadians really gain from shaving one per cent off the GST, he asks? And why didn’t the feds just give that one per cent to municipalities? He pauses, registers the blank looks around the table, sits back and lets the flush drain from his face. “This is nice,” he says. “None of you is aggressively lobbying me about anything.” He flashes that handsome smile and every single person smiles back.

That’s classic Iveson: equal parts earnest and charming. He’s got a good vocabulary but it’s there for precision, not pretension. He looks you in the eye and tells you what he thinks, but only after careful reflection. Philosopher, scotch-in-the-evening homebody, politician, BlackBerry slave, romantic softie, Arcade Fire fan, policy nerd, only child, Trekkie: these are a few random pieces of Don Iveson.

Shortly after 9 p.m., the meeting winds down and he’s out the door with a couple of friends. They spot their bus and take off in a sprint. Iveson looks like a gangly teenager, scarf flying in the wind and backpack full of budget materials bouncing wildly with each vaulting stride. They reach the bus with seconds to spare.

He rose at 6 a.m., he’ll get home around 10 p.m. He’ll put the budget book on the table that rolls overtop his bed — the one he and wife Sarah Chan bought so he could be “near her” when he’s reading reports at 2 a.m.—and he’ll study it for hours. At least once a week, he’s up until 4 or 5 a.m. “I’m always thinking about work. I’m watching a movie and see a bridge and I start thinking about infrastructure,” he says. “It’s pretty relentless.” In one month, Iveson has transformed from a polo shirt-and-jeans university of Alberta Students’ union advocacy director to an overworked, buttoned-down municipal representative. And he couldn’t be happier.