Originally published by the Comox Valley Record on May. 18, 2016 10:00 a.m.
Politician, actor… super hero?
If there’s one city official sure to be at any kind of costume party, it’s Bob Wells.
From Star Wars to superheroes, Councillor Bob loves dressing up.
It’s not surprising, when one considers his background in theatre.
Bob’s love of the theatre goes back even further than his love of politics.
“I took theatre education at university – technology was not in my frame of mind in any stretch of the imagination,” said the Courtenay city councillor, and owner of My Tech Guys. “Performance, improv, all that kind of stuff I just love. I did community theatre for 10 years when I was in high school and shortly thereafter.”
He’s even performed internationally.
As a teenager he went to South Africa “to fight apartheid,” as a Rotary Youth exchange student.
“I was attending a school over there and I actually got to perform in three different plays while I was there – they have a great national arts festival there,” he said. “But I also love the superheroes stuff – Batman, Superman…”
And it runs in the family.
His wife, Michelle, gets in on the fun whenever she can, like at the Comox Valley Chamber of Commerce Community Awards, where she donned a colander as part of her homemade R2D2 costume, to complement Bob’s Darth Vader get-up.
(It was a Star Wars theme this year.)
“We wore those again at the InCON Convention (last month)… and then our kids, they came in their costumes as well. Our youngest loves Spider-Man, so everything he has is Spider-Man.”
Bob said his background in theatre has helped him from time to time in his political career.
“There’s a few things – obviously sounding like you know what you’re talking about… I joke about that, but that really has been so helpful in any career that I have had.
“The big thing about theatre, you often have a lot of people coming together, and you just have to make it work. So it teaches you that beyond everything else, we all have our differences, but we have to respect each other.”
As for theatre, Bob said his days on the stage are not over yet. In fact, he hinted there could be another chapter to his theatrical life coming up soon… but left us with that cliffhanger.
Will Bob Wells get back on stage?
Will Michelle Wells join him?
Stay tuned… same Bat time, same Bat channel.