He Was Laid Off on a Tuesday. By Thursday, He Was Training the Province’s Next Driving Instructors.

Spencer McDonald didn’t plan to become a leader in driver training. He just wanted to make rent.

It was 1983. He was working at a motorcycle dealership in B.C., and the job had just dried up. Last day. No severance. No roadmap.

Then a customer walked in and changed everything.

“He asked what I was doing next,” Spencer remembers. “I said I didn’t know. He said, ‘Maybe you’d make a good motorcycle instructor.’”

That was it. No fancy recruitment process. Just a gut feeling and an offhand suggestion from a stranger. But Spencer took the bait, applied to the school the guy mentioned, and within weeks was certified to teach riders how to stay alive on two wheels.

That’s where it started.

From the Back Lot to the Front of the Class

That school? The BC Safety Council. Long gone now, but back then, it was a hub for traffic safety.

“They liked what they saw,” Spencer says. “I started teaching, then coordinating. Eventually I was training instructors for the Canada Safety Council. Defensive driving, commercial fleet work. You name it.”

He didn’t just teach the rules of the road—he helped write them. Over time, he became a fixture on national boards, advisory committees, even helped shape instructor certification across provinces.

Not bad for a guy who started out selling motorcycles.

But his journey didn’t stop at instruction.

The Iceberg Beneath the Academy

These days, Spencer runs Thinking Driver, a firm that trains drivers and driving instructors across Canada. But when he says “runs,” that’s underselling it. He’s in the trenches. And lately? He’s deep in the weeds on a project that’s eating up more time than it probably should.

They’re building a new program—an ICBC-approved driver instructor certification course. In simple terms? It’s the kind of course that lets you legally train others how to teach.

There are only a handful of driving schools in B.C. qualified to run something like this. Spencer’s building one from scratch.

“Very few schools both have the expertise to run the program and also to navigate the approvals process,” he says. “It’s a ridiculously high bar.”

It’s intense, bureaucratic, and full of red tape. But Spencer doesn’t flinch. He’s been at this too long to quit just because the paperwork is heavy.

So What Drives Him?

When you listen to Spencer talk, a few things come through loud and clear.

He’s a teacher. Not in title, but in blood.

“You can tell people how to do something,” he says. “But until they actually do it, until they feel the steering wheel shake or see how fast a mistake can happen—it’s just theory.”

That’s why his company blends classroom and on-road instruction. It’s why they push for hands-on learning, real-world scenarios, and behavioral coaching instead of rote memorization.

And it’s why he’s not in this for the quick win.

“Driving is one of the most dangerous things most people do every day,” he says. “But no one treats it that way. We treat it like brushing your teeth.”

He wants to change that. Not with scare tactics, but with respect—for the road, for the process, and for the people behind the wheel.

The Man Behind the High Beams

Spencer McDonald didn’t set out to run a driving school empire. He didn’t even set out to work in safety. He followed curiosity, then opportunity. He stayed humble, but he kept moving forward.

“A lot of what I’ve done just came down to being in the right place and saying yes,” he says.

Now, four decades later, he’s teaching the next generation of instructors how to do the same.

And that glow he hated from the fluorescent office light during the interview? Maybe it wasn’t just the bulb.

Maybe it was someone who’s still fired up about what they do.