'When I win as mayor, I'll get another tattoo': Jeff Leiper on life's twists and turns so far

'When I win as mayor, I'll get another tattoo': Jeff Leiper on life's twists and turns so far

The ink on candidate Jeff Leiper's body marks some of his many turning points

Over the past few months, the candidates vying to be Ottawa's next mayor have been laying out their campaign platforms. This week, we get to know the people behind the policies. Today: Jeff Leiper.

Most times Jeff Leiper feels like he's lived through something big, he gets a tattoo.

One shoulder has an artistic reimagining of the City of Ottawa coat of arms to mark his election as a city councillor. His forearm has a heart with a shovel stuck through it to mark a heart attack that struck him while digging out from a snowstorm in 2019.

Those tattoos lay out some of the twists and turns of a man who's been through many transformations in his career, in his life and in his politics.

"When I win as mayor, I'll get another tattoo," he said.

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Leiper, 56, headed the Hintonburg Community Association and occupied senior roles at the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission before serving three terms on city council.

He said his proudest moments, like launching a popular 5K run in his neighbourhood or working on a music strategy for Ottawa, are about bringing people together.

Now he wants to take that same focus to the mayor's office.

"What I'm interested in is community building," he said. "Being able to focus on that is a real joy."

Leiper was adopted at the age of three months. His family lived in Nepean, then Blossom Park, before moving to the Ideal Village Co-op in Orléans.

When they arrived in the early 1980s, it was the focus of community life for Ottawa's practitioners of transcendental meditation, including his mother.

He remembers the co-op as an idyllic place. He recalls good bus service and kids playing safely on car-free streets, or hopping over a ravine to get to school.

He calls it a "15-minute community" where people looked out for each other, much like what he's tried to promote during his time heading council's planning and housing community.

A young Jeff Leiper, at right, at the Ideal Village Co-op with his brother Corey and his father Dennis. (Submitted by Jeff Leiper)

While Leiper doesn't practice transcendental meditation, the strengths of that community have stuck with him 45 years later as he runs for mayor.

"A lot of the themes of what I think about as a politician often come back to that experience growing up in the Ideal Village Co-op," he said.

From Mulroney to Roosevelt, but Springsteen forever

It was a quick walk from the co-op to St. Joseph Boulevard, where Leiper got his first job at Buddy Bear's restaurant serving what he calls "roadhouse food." He worked in the kitchen washing dishes before graduating to making nachos and seven-layer dips.

"We had the radio blasting in the back, so all that music from the 1980s was just constantly a soundtrack to my workday," he said.

Music is still the soundtrack to his life. When asked to do an interview at a significant place, he decided to take CBC News to The Record Centre on Wellington Street West, where he and his wife Natalie have often perused new releases or dug into the used record bin.

He estimates his collection of vinyl has grown to about 1,500 records. His tastes are eclectic, from rock to jazz to electronic dance music.

But one thing has been constant: his love for Bruce Springsteen. He figures he's seen the Boss more than 30 times.

Leiper said he has seen Bruce Springsteen play live more than 30 times. (Arthur White-Crummey/CBC)

Leiper's early politics have been less enduring. In his teenage years, he joined the Progressive Conservative youth wing and volunteered on a local campaign in the 1988 federal election.

Free trade was in the air and Leiper was a true believer.

"I became excited about the potential for free trade," said Leiper, now viewed as part of the left-leaning wing on council. "I'm less excited about that now."

Today, his favourite historical figure is former U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who Leiper said had "a vision for a country in which people took care of each other and implemented that in the face of incredible opposition."

Leiper took his first stab running for office at age 24 for Cumberland Township council, placing last with 70 votes. Looking back now, he said he "didn't do a very good job of it."

It would be another 20 years of work in journalism, federal telecommunications policy and community activism before he was back for another try.

Chronicler of Silicon Valley (North)

Leiper's early ambition was to become a high-school teacher. He studied at the University of Ottawa and earned degrees in history and English.

But a professor said he had no respect for deadlines and suggested he try a one-year journalism program at Algonquin College before coming back for a masters degree attempt.

He took that advice, but never came back.

Leiper ended up enjoying reporting and by the late 1990s he was working at a tech-oriented newspaper called Silicon Valley North.

It wasn't an obvious fit: Leiper said he had no idea how fibre optics worked and his knowledge of technology didn't go far beyond "futzing" with his personal computer.

But Ottawa's high-tech sector was booming and Leiper soon found himself in the middle of it.

He later moved on to trade newsletters, delivering blow-by-blow accounts of arcane industry happenings like spectrum auctions.

His reporting led him to cross paths with someone he'd meet again: Mark Sutcliffe — a 2026 mayoral rival — was then at the Ottawa Business Journal. Leiper wrote a cover story on "something new and exciting that was called e-commerce."

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That focus on technology policy laid the path for much of the rest of his career. Leiper landed a job at the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission around 2007. Leiper said his task was to answer a simple question: "What are we going to do about Netflix?"

Meanwhile, he and Natalie had bought a house in Hintonburg, where they raised their son Nick. Along with his tech reporting, Leiper wrote for the local community newspaper Newswest.

Leiper at a campaign event for his 2026 mayoral run. (Arthur White-Crummey/CBC)

That's how he fell in with the Hintonburg Community Association (HCA). Leiper wrote the newsletter and would end up serving a few terms as president.

He said his community activism gave him one of his greatest accomplishments: launching the Hintonburg 5K run. He said it creates connection and community.

"It will go down as one of the things of which I am most proud in my life," he said.

He was a runner himself, and that led him to get another tattoo: words on his back spelling out the exact length of a marathon in miles and yards to mark the first one he ran.

But he won't delve into the reasons he got another tattoo. It says "First Things First," a recovery slogan. Leiper has been in recovery for 22 years. He mentions the key date, says it was about alcohol, and leaves it at that.

"Sept. 19, 2004, was the first day," he said. "That's my sobriety birthday."

Cheryl Parrott, another HCA board member, remembers Leiper during his time at the association. The area was struggling with the impact of street prostitution and intravenous drug use.

She said Leiper was able to steer them through tough discussions.

"One of the things that I've appreciated about him has been his ability to find a compromise solution when you have opposing opinions," Parrott said. "Sometimes he's just been able to come up with a solution and you think 'Yeah, that would work.'"

But prostitution and drugs weren't the only contentious issues in Hintonburg back then. There was also development — the sense that new towers and infill were changing the fabric of the community.

"There was still a lot of chatter about who's going to run against Katherine," Leiper said, referring to then-Kitchissippi councillor Katherine Hobbs, who he challenged in the 2014 election.

"Then finally, when time was running short to be able to mount a campaign, I simply stepped forward and said, 'You know what, I'll do it.'"

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In that election, Leiper framed Hobbs as too close to developers and won by a wide margin.

Now in his third term, he's found himself leading the committee that approves development at city hall.

He said the influx of tall towers remains contentious, but he's come to realize the limits of what a councillor can do in the face of provincial housing policy and the need to uphold the city's official plan.

"My views on density and development review have evolved," he said. "Rather than fighting every development, one of my chief tasks has been to help residents understand why it's happening."

It's been another transformation: the challenger who promised to limit intensification now trumpets his committee's success approving tens of thousands of units to solve a housing crisis.

'Taking care of First Things First'

In some ways, Leiper's personality doesn't always lend itself to politics in the traditional sense.

He said he isn't a good speaker. He prefers to write.

He said his style is to look at both sides, rather than come out with one clear position and put it in the punchy language of a political slogan.

"I am an introvert. I can be quite shy," he said.

"I tend to think that I'm thoughtful to the point where one of my weaknesses is often to doubt myself. Politicians sort of have to have confidence, and certainly they have to demonstrate confidence when they're out in public, and it took me a long time before I finally developed that."

Leiper has found ways to break out of his shell, like a love for photography he inherited from his father.

He has other ways of unplugging from the fast pace of city politics.

He goes for long road trips where he and Natalie reconnect, driving as far as B.C. and Newfoundland. They're also devoted Ottawa Charge fans.

He reads, devouring about 70 to 75 books per year. He's a familiar face in the Spaniel's Tale bookstore in Hintonburg. His favourite author is John Steinbeck.

He also tries to stick to his recovery program.

"For quite a while now, I've been ensuring that I'm taking care of 'First Things First,'" Leiper said.

His health scare on Feb. 13, 2019 — a date marked in ink on his arm — was another reminder about priorities. He describes it as "a minor heart attack," though his wife is pretty adamant that there's no such thing.

Leiper shows the tattoo he got after his heart attack on Feb. 13, 2019. It is one of many tattoos marking key moments in his life. (Arthur White-Crummey/CBC)

It forced him to make another round of changes. He quit smoking, though he still vapes.

It got him thinking about what's important in life, like wanting to see his son grow older.

"I'd like to see as much of that story as possible," he said. "The thought that I might not see any more of it was truly terrifying at the time."

Asked about the values that guide him, he said everyone should ask themselves two questions — What am I good at? What will make other people happy? — and try to find a path in life that answers both.

"I have been really, really fortunate through volunteer work, professional work and now as a city councillor to help foster a sense of community," he said.

"As a result, I'm a pretty happy individual myself."

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Arthur White-Crummey is the municipal affairs reporter at CBC Ottawa. He grew up in Ottawa, spent years in Saskatchewan covering the courts, city hall and the provincial legislature, before moving back to his hometown. You can reach him at arthur.white-crummey@cbc.ca