Town of Banff

Councillor Leslie Taylor

Councillor Leslie Taylor Photo Credit: John Bonner Photography

leslie.taylor@banff.ca

Town Hall - 110 Bear Street
P.O. Box 1260
Banff, Alberta, Canada  T1L 1A1

T: 403.762.1203
F: 403.762.1260

Years In Office

Councillor Taylor was elected as Banff's first mayor in 1989 and served until 1995.  She has served as a Town Councillor since 2007, and was elected to her second term in 2010.

Current Appointments

Banff Housing Corporation, Development Appeal Board, Regional Transportation Steering Committee

Education & Work History

Leslie graduated from the University of Guelph in 1973 with an honours BSc in fisheries and wildlife biology. She worked for fourteen years in provincial and national parks, capping her parks career as acting superintendent in Banff. She left Parks Canada in 1987 to pursue an interest in consulting work (facilitation, training and writing), and was elected as the first Mayor of Banff in the fall of 1989. She served two terms before choosing to return to consulting in 1995.

From 1998 to 2007, Leslie was associate director in the Mountain Culture division of The Banff Centre, heading up the mountain environment programs there. She retired from the Centre in February 2007, and now takes on a variety of contract work as a facilitator, writer/editor and project manager.

You can find out more about Leslie’s work background (and read her council blog) at www.lataylor.com.

Family & Personal Interests

Raised as an “army brat” in France, Germany, the USA and across Canada, Leslie has lived in Banff since 1981. She and her husband, Banff lawyer Gord Rathbone, have two grown children. As a family, they enjoy hiking, skiing and travel.

In the spring of 2007, Leslie did a solo hike of 800 kilometres from Chateauroux, France to Pamplona, Spain. She followed that up in March of 2010 by walking over 500 kms between Pamplona and Santiago de Compostela, Spain.