OMAR SOLIMAN - running for Mayor

My name is Omar Soliman. I have lived in Tofino for three years and am running for Mayor in the upcoming elections. I believe I have lived a pretty long life in a short period of time. My father was an Egyptian  doctor in Saudi Arabia working for and oil company. He immigrated to Canada when I was young and I received citizenship shortly after. I lived in a small community similar to Tofino in that it was closed off from the rest of the world. After middle school I went to an all boys boarding school in the US. I returned to Egypt where I studied mechanical engineering, moving to Toronto in 2005. Living in Canada was a dream, a reality of pure freedom. I always considered myself a hard worker and never related to working at a desk in front of a computer. So at 20 years old I began my journey as a cook and never looked back. It was and has been the best life experience I could receive, hard satisfying work with well balanced R&R and an absorption of culture you can’t find in most places. Working through the ranks of the kitchen has given me a template of how a community comes together to create something amazing. Moving to Tofino was the best decision I ever made, it is the first place that I have ever been able to truly call home. Just like any family though it has its ups and its downs, but that’s how we learn and how we move forward together to make sure that those hardships don’t drastically affect us. Things are going to change in our town, its how we collectively want them to change that’s going to make the difference. Rather than voting for a single solution to a single problem, we need to vote on the ideals we hold dear to us and that we can all agree on. As mayor I will never make promises that I can’t keep, but more importantly I will never resist the will of the people, for it is the people who make the decisions, it is the people that drive our community forward, and it is the people who make Tofino home.

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Omar sent his bio in, but didn't answer the questionnaire.