About Me

Mike McLoughlin was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. He attended Saint George’s School for Boys from 1965 to 1976. In his undergraduate training, he attended Queen’s Univesity, The University of British Columbia and the University of California, Riverside Campus.

His father is Brian McLoughlin, QC (1927 to 2014). Brian was a lawyer in Vancouver and served a term as the Treasurer of the British Columbia Law Society. Brian also raced motor cars as a past time.

Mike’s mother is Sarah McLoughlin. In addition to raising two children in Kerrisdale, Vancouver, Sarah was an accomplished artist specializing in the Vancouver skyline. She was an avid gardener and lifetime member of the Vancouver Garden club. She developed a Filbert Nut Orchard in the Courtney Comox region on Vancouver Island. The property was deeded to the Comox regional district and is now a public park entitled McLoughlin Gardens.

Mike’s sister is Margo McLoughlin, a French language teacher, British Columbia storyteller, Yoga instructor and Mindfulness coach. She attended Harvard Divinity School, where she learned to translate the writings of the Buddha so she could have source material for her stories.

Mike is a fifth-generation British Columbian. His great-great-grandfather, on his father’s side, was William Salsbury, who arrived in Vancouver on the first passenger train to British Columbia in July 1886. William Salsbury was Treasurer of the CPR and founding member of Vancouver General Hospital. On his mother’s side, his great-great-grandfather was Henry Colin Cummins, who is buried in the cemetery in Nelson, BC.

Mike has lived in Kelowna for over 30 years. He is married to Sue, a family doctor. He has three adult children.

His oldest son Sam lives in Kelowna and operates a videography company. Sam recently completed a sports documentary, the Pride of Katanga, about the first female boxer to compete internationally for the country of Uganda.

His younger son, Ben, graduated from Thompson River University with a Masters in Business Administration. Ben is currently working on a software coding project to create a Canadian Financial planning application for Canadians interested in developing a financial plan.

Ben served in the Canadian Armed Forces in Afghanistan for seven months in 2009. Ben is carrying on a family tradition of military service. The tradition began with Mike’s maternal grandfather, Hugh F. Pullen, who was a Rear Admiral in the Canadian navy and fought in the battle of the Atlantic in the second world war.

His daughter Stephanie Walker is married and has two children, Finlay and Everly. She is married to Brandon Walker, who is the son of Paul Walker, the former CEO of MedAccess. This Kelowna Electronic Medical Records company was recently bought out by Telus Health. Stephanie designs and makes by hand a clothing line at a clothing company called Peplum Co.

After graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Geophysics from the University of California, Riverside campus in 1981, Mike attended the University of British Columbia and graduated with a Masters in Business Administration in 1983.

During his University years, Mike worked summers in eastern Canada with the uranium mining company Urangesellschaft Canada, in Calgary with Amoco Petroleum and in Northeastern BC with Imperial Oil Mineral Exploration division. He also worked with the Bank of British Columbia in their human resource department.

Mike was involved in student politics at the University of California. As Student Body President, he was an advocate for minority rights. He led a student protest against University condoned violence against gay students that was reported in the Los Angeles Times in April 1981.

Upon graduation from the UBC Business program, Mike began his career in business and social enterprise working for the BC & Yukon Division of the Canadian Cancer Society. He managed the Cancer Society’s annual fundraising campaign and oversaw the BC segment of Stephen Fonyo’s journey for lives event in May 1985.

In 1988, he accepted an offer to be Executive Director of the Central Okanagan United Way. He moved his young family to Kelowna in April 1988 to manage the United Way fundraising campaign and coordinate funding to the United Way’s 20 social agencies.

After working for the United Way, he launched a marketing business called Okanagan Target Marketing in 1989 and oversaw the management of a cherry Orchard owned by his father. Knockie Cherry Orchard in lower Kelowna Mission, which grew and exported over 60 tons of cherries annually.

In 1994, the McLoughlin family moved to Zambia for two years to teach young people small business skills in a ministry with Youth with a Mission.

While in Zambia, In 1995, he founded the Christian Enterprise Trust of Zambia, a microfinance institution dedicated to relieving poverty through microloans for small businesses. CETZAM Financial Services Ltd. operated for 15 years in Zambia, providing financing to over 10,000 Zambian small enterprises through a loan portfolio of $5 million US dollars. Since its inception, CETZAM has supplied over 107,000 loans and employed more than 2,000 Zambians.

In 1998, Mike & Sue McLoughlin incorporated Sue’s professional medical practice and opened their first Walk-In medical clinic, Medi-Kel, in the Dilworth Shopping Centre, in October 2001. Since then, they had opened medical clinics in Rutland in 2008; inside the Real Canadian Superstore in 2010 and inside the downtown Pharmasave at Harvey and Ellis in the Lakeland plaza.

Over the past eighteen years, Medi-Kel Family Practice and Walk-In clinics have serviced over 110.,000 patients from the central Okanagan. As Managing Director at Medi-Kel, Mike has recruited 15 family doctors to work in Kelowna to serve 30,000 patient visits annually.

Mike is a former member of the Downtown Kelowna Business Advisory Committee, Kelowna General Hospital Board, Kelowna Chamber of Commerce and Youth With A Mission BC Society. He ran for Kelowna City Council in 1999 and 2014. He ran as a BC Conservative candidate for MLA in 2013. Out of 60 conservative candidates, he placed number 5 in the percentage of the popular vote for his riding of Kelowna Mission.

Mike is retired in 2020 to his family farm at 3190 Hall Road. Creekside Pond and Garden operates an urban vegetable garden alongside Mission creek.

If you want to know more about Mike, you can follow these links. Facebook profile for Mike McLoughlin or Linkedin profile for Mike McLoughlin.