With less than a week until election day, Postmedia Calgary writers recently sat down with mayoral candidates to learn more about their backgrounds, motivations and interests and to offer voters insights beyond their policies and promises. Today, we continue a week-long series of candidate profiles with Jeff Davison.
If there’s one thing Jeff Davison’s campaign team has had to quickly learn, it’s that the Calgary mayoral candidate is very often late.
It’s why they’ve resorted to the oldest trick in the book — fake an earlier appointment time to ensure he shows up on time.
For example, on a recent Tuesday morning, Davison was told to arrive at 7:45 a.m. sharp for an 8:10 morning interview with CBC where he’d discuss the pros of building communities within communities, repealing the blanket rezoning bylaw and the importance of fast-tracking development to move the affordability needle in Calgary.
He arrived on time — but not without some struggle. Despite trying to go to bed early the night before for his dawn wake-up, parental duties unpredictably interfered, as they tend to do.
“It’d be great for the public to know I’m just an average family guy,” Davison would say later during breakfast at Morning Brunch Co. in West Springs that same day. He pointed out the strawberry banana pancakes I ordered, drenched in chocolate syrup and whipped cream, was something one of his kids would choose.
The breakfast nook is a short drive from Davison’s house, in the southwest ward he grew up in and would years later represent as city councillor.
“The west side tends to be one of those places where, if you grow up in a quadrant of the city, you tend to stay in that quadrant,” he said. “It’s comfortable, it’s home. A lot of my friends who I grew up with, we all stuck around the places in the city where we grew up.”
When asked how his friends and family would describe his younger self, Davison laughed, a tad shyly.
“I was a really shy kid,” he said. The shyness gradually faded as he got older, “but I was never the guy to want to get up and do a presentation or get on stage or be in public spotlight . . . I was always happy to have a good time with my friends.”
Yet his career trajectory would present a different personality — one that appears trained in the public eye, accustomed to the spotlight and comfortable at a podium. Davison wanted to be a journalist, obtaining a degree in broadcasting at SAIT, and made his way into filmmaking and graphic novels.
“I always liked the long format side (of storytelling),” he said. “Having some experiences in school, I just didn’t feel like the storytelling was doing justice in a minute and a half. And I just wanted to get more behind the story. There’s more to tell here.”
Initially he planned to venture into documentary filmmaking. “At the time, there really wasn’t a lot of distribution channels out there for doc,” he said. “It’s very different today with streaming services and other things.”
In Los Angeles, he met comic book writers Steven Grant and Shane Riches with whom he would create Paper Movies, a graphic novel publishing company. The idea was suggested by one of his partners, Davison said, which turned into a conversation of wanting to take the books to the screen while staying true to the comic book format.
“We all love comic books, so how do we take that medium and turn it into storyboards for movies,” he said. Alongside Paper Movies, they also created and ran a tech company that created a search app to find movie theatres and tickets.
“By way of that we got introduced to doing more and more stuff in Hollywood and it just took us on a separate path in the movie industry itself,” he said.
His creativity and that of his three children, he said, comes from his father.
“My dad was an incredible artist, but he was a firefighter,” Davison said. “He didn’t do art stuff. That’s not how he was brought up in Saskatchewan. But all his kids inherited his talent somehow.”
Davison owns the rights to ‘His Name Is — Savage,’ the 1968 comic widely known as the precursor to the modern graphic novel. One project based on the comic is now moving forward with one of the major studios — “which is super exciting,” he said.
He and his partners decided against moving to Silicon Valley, despite urgings it was the only way their enterprise would survive. “We really tried to be like, we can be that Canadian startup that went from here to here . . . a Calgary-based company,” he said. “We probably should have moved to the valley.”
But he never wanted to move to California. Or anywhere else for that matter.
“You realize how good it is for kids to grow up in Calgary versus a lot of other places,” he said.
“I think people come here because there’s a different culture in Calgary of get it done, a different attitude of if you’ve got a dream you can make it happen,” he said.
“I truly believe that’s why people choose to come here and stay here and raise families here and grow old here. It’s a very different culture from anywhere else in the world.”
Davison didn’t move to Hollywood, but his love for filmmaking continued and played a role in his time as Ward 6 councillor between 2017 and 2021.
“In 2017, the industry was dead,” he said. “My passion for film got us the (Calgary) Film Centre, got a deal done with council, got a deal done with the province on incentives and we started drawing talent back here.
“That led to working with one of my best friends, who’s now an executive at HBO, bringing the largest production of our time here. That’s how The Last of Us came in.”
In 2021, the city surpassed its annual film and TV production spending record, at $522 million. In 2025, it was named the fifth-best city in North America for filmmakers by MovieMaker magazine.
“It’s something I want to give back,” Davison said. “You’ve got to have a creative outlet in everything you do. For me, it’s just making graphic novels and helping get some of those stories together in a book, and then seeing them translate into film or series has been incredible.”
Transitioning into the energy industry felt like returning to an “old path.” It wasn’t his first time working in energy; before Davison pursued his broadcasting degree, he had a stint working with Canadian Natural Resources.
“Different group, different problems,” he said.
The role has remained the same. “I’m always someone who believes, let’s have a vision and go deliver it, right?” he said. “Find the common ground.”
It also proved to his children the importance of staying versatile in daily life and keeping a hand in many pots.
“They kind of see, it’s possible to go and do things, be in energy, or technology or politics, but also do something else that’s more on the creative side,” he said. “We’ve always tried to push this idea that you got to earn a living and you want to do what you want to do in that industry but do something else.”
Telling family and friends in 2017 that he planned to run for city councillor and taking his first shot at the mayor’s seat four years later didn’t spark much surprise.
“Not from the perspective of, ‘oh we always thought he’d go into (politics),’ ” he clarified. “But people were like, ‘yeah I get your leadership style. I get what you’ve done.’
“I’ve always, in my career, been a bit of a turnaround guy . . . I get brought into work with companies that turn things around or expand things or move forward with something that maybe wasn’t working. And I’ve always found that’s where it all comes together.”
Asked if he kept any memorabilia of old film and movie projects, he replied, “Not really.
“The memories are really about making the project and the people you meet. Being in a movie theatre, when you see that project finished,” he said.
It’s about looking forward to the future rather than ruminating on the past. “The windshield’s bigger than the rearview mirror for a reason,” he said.
When he opted to run for councillor in Ward 6, where he still lives in with his family, the reaction was “overwhelmingly positive.”
“I think when and where it’s a familiar face in the community and somebody who’s trusted, it works out well. You’re not starting from a brand new perspective,” he said.
Davison lost his first mayoral bid in 2021, finishing third behind Jyoti Gondek, who is seeking re-election, and Jeromy Farkas, another former city councillor, also in this year’s race.
It wasn’t just hard on him, but also on those around him, he said.
“It was hard on the kids,” he added, but it also allowed an opportunity to show that loss isn’t avoidable.
“The greatest thing for me was just showing the kids that sometimes it just doesn’t work out, sometimes you don’t win (but it’s) one foot in front of the other. Let’s go.”
Being a father meant he “didn’t have time to stick your head in the hole and feel sorry for yourself for two years,” he said. “You kind of have to learn that lesson.”
He kept busy in the past four years, working with Invest Alberta and in 2022 took on the role of CEO at the Prostate Cancer Centre.
“Going into a charity after the last election, it was like how do I continue to give back to the community,” he said.
He was approached for the position at the centre, which was facing a myriad of challenges surrounding funding and clinic expansion.
“They were kind of struggling to figure out, how do we kick the ball down the field?”
“I just came in and took everything I’d learned from being at the city and being in other roles . . . we rebuilt the team, we got everything focused,” he said. “Coming out of the city, you learn how to get in contact with a lot of people that can help write cheques.”
Better funding helped drive the centre’s construction scheduling, fundraising and programming forward, out of which Davison highlighted a 12-week workout program designed for men to decrease complications around incontinence, sexual function and other factors.
“These guys, they’re now post-surgery, a lot of them come back and want to be a part of it. And I say, no, what you need to do is get an F25 membership,” he joked.
At home, life continued on the same as well with busy schedules, weeknight dinners and movie nights.
Thursday night is his night to cook, Davison said, which usually means the family is ordering out.
“I’m good at barbecuing,” he added, as justification for a self-acknowledged lack of culinary proficiency. “But in the winter months, it’s less about barbecuing and I go to two staples — spaghetti I can make, and tacos. That’s probably it.”
The family is big on movie night — when they can decide what movie to watch. With the kids at different ages, the decision can be a challenge, but not impossible.
The last movie they watched was — “no word of a lie,” Davison assured — Dumb and Dumber, a 1994 Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels comedy classic.
“We’re at an age where we make all of the jokes around the movie and so we’ve gone back to this situation where a lot of the movies our generation made quotes out of or saw, we’re starting to now watch with the teenagers,” he said.
For Davison, it’s all about getting “back to basics.”
Get rid of blanket-zoning and fast-track development with the goal of building communities in communities with diversified housing. Freeze bike lane expansions for four years to consult with residents and businesses on existing bike lanes with the goal of gradually taking bike lanes off-road. A promise to coordinate road construction with city departments and companies in response to the longtime woes of affected small businesses.
Add more police presence — Davison estimated 200 more officers are needed — to transit lines, downtown and high-crime communities, combined with mental health, addictions and wrap-around care.
His campaign pledge? A four-year freeze on taxes. The offset, he explained, would be managed by increasing the tax base and a new management of existing reserves, investments and risk profiles.
“The biggest problem that people have with taxes today is that taxes over the last four years have gone up 28 per cent and people don’t know what better value they’re getting today than they were four years ago,” he said.
He cited the $45 million allocated in the upcoming budget for bike lanes — “yet we can’t keep the 1,100 kilometres of walkways we have clean over the winter months,” he said.
During Davison’s time in council, he had led negotiations for the Calgary arena deal, a then-$550-million venture to replace the Scotiabank Saddledome with a new multi-purpose venue, which would have seen the city put in $300 million, receive a portion of concessions, ticket sales and other event income.
The new deal in 2023 brought the total cost up to $1.22 billion with the city putting in double the investment with fewer avenues to recoup costs.
“I firmly believe we had one of the best deals in the NHL . . . now I think we have the worst deal,” Davison said.
But the facility, he said, is integral to his vision to bring in a “vibrancy” to the city that he says will build the tax base, “more important than this facility itself.”
If he wins, Davison will have to contend his vision with a roster of potentially first-time councillors, a party system ideology and bandaging a fractured relationship with the province.
“It’s the thing I’ve learned in leadership, not everyone is going to come from the same angle all the time,” he said. “We’re probably going to have a lot of independents elected. We’re going to have people from various parties elected . . . at the end of the day it’s our job to say, here’s what we need to be successful . . . and how do we formulate a plan together so that council is moving in one direction.
“The hardest thing we’re going to have to do is rebuild trust with the public and it’s going to be incumbent on every member of council elected to be a part of how we do that. My job is to co-ordinate them.”
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