This fall, Northern Ontario is going to lose 75
years of municipal memory. The mayors of Thunder Bay, Sudbury and
North Bay are retiring from active duty and I do not use the term
lightly. As one put it, this has truly been a combat zone.
I have known these boys Jim Gordon (Sudbury), Ken
Boshcoff (Thunder Bay) and Jack Burrows (North Bay), more or less
from the time they were elected mayor of their respective cities.
They have eaten a lot of rubber chicken in their time, not to
mention the tons of perogies, mangled cheeseburgers, and
mayonnaise-lathered potato salads.
Actually, it is a miracle they live to tell the
tale.
Jack says he never had a burning desire to be
mayor. One thing just led to another. Jim and Ken, it can be
recorded, have been professional politicians for almost all of
their working lives.
They are, given their calling, a remarkably
optimistic group.
Oh, Jim Gordon sometimes wonders if he should not
have stayed in provincial politics to maximize his talents and
energy, and Ken regrets a couple of lost years at the beginning of
his second administration when there was more bickering than
planning around the council table. But they all point with
satisfaction to specific accomplishments along they way.
At the top of the list in North Bay for Jack is
the downtown railway redevelopment program, which is now underway,
the resuscitation of the airport assets after the downsizing of the
Canadian Armed Forces presence and the new hospital.
In Thunder Bay Ken says when he became mayor in
the mid-90s the unemployment rate was 12 per cent, construction was
dead and most importantly the spirit of the community was
disconsolate. Ken feels his leadership has improved the spirit of
the community, and says they have made peace with their neighbours
in northwestern Ontario, engaged the First Nations communities in
the Thunder Bay area and notwithstanding recent challenges in the
forestry sector, things are on the rebound.
For Jim it has been many years and waves of
activities. One of the most satisfying accomplishments in the early
80s, when Jim was still a parliamentary assistant and MP for the
Sudbury area, it was his role in bringing the cancer treatment
centre to Sudbury that most excited him. As he describes it, his
support for Larry Grossman in the Tory leadership contest turned
the tide for Sudbury. As Jim says, “that’s how politics is
done.”
All three mayors without any prompting felt one
of the most important accomplishments for the North has been the
new medical school and they all take pride in the fact that the
North (mostly through the mayors’ offices) worked together, to pull
it off.
In the midst of all this optimism, to a man,
these mayors make it clear the downloading of services to the
municipalities by the Harris government a few years ago has been a
complete unmitigated disaster. Their cities have more
responsibility and no money to pay the bills. They each believe the
property taxpayers have been tapped out and without a major revamp
of funding formulas the future of their communities is grim.
The most intriguing commonality of these veterans
is their assertion of impossible financial conditions on the one
hand and their eternal optimism that somehow things would work out
on the other. I guess that is what it takes - faith.
The one cautionary tale all three alluded to is
the change in community atmospherics; the increased impatience of
voters said one, the rudeness said another, and the disengagement
of citizens from the political process said another. Whatever their
politics and popularity these gentlemen have earned our thanks.
They have been in the game playing their hands as best they
could.
Good luck gentlemen; you have earned your
respite.
Michael Atkins is president of Northern Ontario
Business.
