Liberal leader Sandy Silver says he’s not “overly political.

“I wouldn’t say that I’m too far to the right or too far to the left; I’ve always been somebody in the middle,” he says.

The Klondike’s MLA believes in “evidence-based decision-making” in politics, he says.

“It doesn’t sound very… It’s kind of academic.”

Two decades ago, holding a Bachelor of Education, and degrees in math and psychology, Silver headed north from Antigonish, N.S., hoping to gain some teaching experience.

With a group of friends, Silver drove across the country to Whitehorse. They didn’t have a lot of money, and lived five people in a house to make ends meet, he says.

Initially, Silver hoped a local high school would let him coach basketball.

But F.H. Collins Secondary needed teachers, the principal told him, and he was hired on the spot.

Two years later, Silver moved up to Dawson, fell in love with the community, and never left.  

“Dawson’s one of those communities, since the Gold Rush forward, we’ve been working together,” says Silver, who is 47.

He was quickly taken by the Klondike’s community spirit. He tutored and coached, volunteered at events and presided over the Dawson City Music Festival.

“Whether it be in my professional career or just amongst my social scene, I’ve always wanted to bring people together,” says Silver.

It’s a premise upon which he’s built a new Yukon Liberal Party, one that, by his description, brings together candidates from all walks of life.

Notably, he’s the only former MLA in the bunch.

The Liberals were crushed in the last territorial election.

They went from official Opposition status with five seats in the legislature, to just two in 2011.

Their then-leader, Arthur Mitchell, lost his riding of Copperbelt North to the Yukon Party’s Currie Dixon – who is now leaving politics.

A year later, Darius Elias, the interim Liberal leader and Vuntut Gwitchin MLA, left the Liberals to sit as an independent. His values no longer aligned with those of the party, he said at the time. (Elias crossed over to the Yukon Party in 2013.)

The move left Silver the lone Grit in the legislature.

But it also meant he could steer the party in a new direction.

Over the last year, Silver has assembled a team he feels is “diverse and talented.”

There’s Jeanie Dendys, the director of justice at the Kwanlin Dun First Nation, who has based her career on bettering the lives of First Nations citizens in the Yukon.

Jocelyn Curteanu is a popular city councillor who won more votes of any other in the 2015 municipal election.

Mathieya Alatini, the chief of the Kluane First Nation, was courted by all three parties and chose the Liberals.

“I look at my candidates and I’m just excited,” Silver says.

Today, the Yukon Liberal Party looks something akin to its counterpart in Ottawa.

Both parties have youthful leaders. Both have said his government’s relationship with First Nations is its most important relationship.  

For Silver, the Yukon’s economy hinges on the territorial government’s good relationships with First Nations governments.

These relationships are also key to land use planning and protecting the environment, he says.

Preserving land, water and wildlife for future generations underpins the Umbrella Final Agreement, a document Silver calls a “roadmap” to the cultural, spiritual and economic success of the Yukon.

When asked what reconciliation meant to him, Silver says:

“Reconciliation, for me, is just part and parcel to all the good things that we as individual candidates want to do.

“It’s not a box that we’re going to check; it’s just something that we do.”

In Silver’s view, leadership is about collaboration and building relationships.

He’s worked hard in the last five years to get out to the communities, meet with mayors and chiefs and councils, and work on those relationships, he says.

But after releasing a platform that, by Silver’s own admission, makes “no grandiose promises,” it remains to be seen if Yukoners will see items on which to pin their votes.

It’s perhaps not surprising that the Yukon Party has pounced on Silver for what they say is the Liberals’ lukewarm endorsement of the resource industry.

“The Liberals have always sat on the fence when it comes to supporting the resource sector, but the lack of substance in their platform is surprising,” Dixon, the Yukon Party’s campaign chair, said in a statement on Monday.

The Liberals say they support hard rock and placer mining, as well as oil and gas development in Eagle Plains, but not in the Whitehorse Trough.

They would protect the Peel Watershed, as per the planning commission’s land use plan, and they’re anti-fracking.

Ultimately, Silver says, “We’re campaigning on just a change of attitude.”