With the incumbent mayor retiring , Lake sought to be elected as mayor in the November 2005 election . He faced two others : public relations worker Al McNair and crime-prevention officer Pete Backus . City debt emerged as a primary point of contention during the campaign , with Lake arguing that the debt is an investment in the community and was at a manageable level , and McNair arguing it was too high and uncontrollable . Lake won the election with an unexpectedly high number of votes ( 11,727 ) while spending $ 38,564 . He identified airport expansion as his top priority . However , WestJet resisted flying to Kamloops by demanding guaranteed revenue and federal MP Betty Hinton and provincial MLA Kevin Krueger both saw highway upgrades as higher priorities . In 2006 , Lake was appointed to the board of governors for B.C. Transit . Also in 2006 , Lake opposed his council who voted in favour of sending a letter to the province requesting a ban on uranium exploration and mining and Lake sought reforms to the Agricultural Land Commission ( via a motion to the Union of B.C. Municipalities ) after they refused two Kamloops development applications . As a board member of the Thompson-Nicola Regional District , Lake suggested the province should enable local governments ( outside of Metro Vancouver ) to levy a gasoline tax so that local public transit could be removed from property taxes . While Kamloops was struggling with a bylaw to ban cosmetic pesticides , Lake advocated for a province wide ban . Lake traveled to Japan and China in October 2007 promoting Kamloops ( and resulted in Chinese speed skaters using facilities in Kamloops to train for the 2010 Winter Olympics ) , and to Sri Lanka in January 2008 as part of a volunteer organization re-building homes lost in the 2004 tsunami . Lake would return to Sri Lanka in January 2011 to continue his volunteer work
2004 tsunami
2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami
Terry Lake