Hazel McCallion, the longest-serving mayor in Canadian history who turned the sleepy Toronto suburb of Mississauga into a multicultural dynamic and the country’s sixth-largest city, died at her home there on Sunday. January 29, nine years after she ended her life at the age of 36. ran five. She was 101 years old.
Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario and a close friend of Ms. McCallion, said she died of pancreatic cancer.
When Ms. McCallion was first elected in 1978, Mississauga was a large, centerless community of about 250,000 people, just a little more than an extension of Toronto, its much larger neighbor to the east. Today, it has a city center dense with skyscrapers, powerful arts institutions, and 750,000 people.
And while Mississauga in the 1970s was heavily white, the city is now one of Canada’s most diverse, attracting immigrants from East and South Asia.
Ms. McCallion not only survived but thrived through 12 terms by combining frugal pragmatism with armed open-minded populism.
Although she leans slightly to the political left, she does not adhere to the party program or ideology. Her sole goal was to bring prosperity to Mississauga, which she did by cutting the budget — the city rarely goes into debt or raising property taxes — and isn’t afraid to assert her interests. city before neighboring countries or the provincial government of Ontario.
“Hazel McCallion is not cautious,” Toronto Life magazine wrote in 2003. “She scolded. She cheers. She, well, bit people’s heads.
But if politicians and bureaucrats fear her, voters love her.
After deciding not to run for re-election in 2014, she chose her successor, Bonnie Crombie, who won by a margin. No one was surprised: Mrs. McCallion left office with a Approval rating 85 percent. They call her Hurricane Hazelmore a tribute to her rough style than an allusion to the weather disaster that killed 80 people in Toronto in 1954.
Her reputation was cemented just a few months after she took office, when a train carrying tons of toxic and flammable chemicals flipped near the middle of Mississauga. She immediately ordered most of the town, about 220,000 residents, to evacuate. For days, she was there with police and firefighters, bringing everyone to safety, undaunted by sprained ankles along the way.
And when it was all over, she fiercely demanded compensation.
“That would be a huge amount of money,” she told reporters, “and someone would get the bill.”
McCallion played hockey professionally in the 1930s, and she remained the image of rosy health throughout her time as mayor, a fact that made her beloved by voters. Even in her 80s, she still carries a hockey stick in the trunk of her car, in case she catches a game. She fished, hiked and once, when she was 87 years old, cycled 5 miles to work to promote alternatives to driving.
She came to politics from a career at an engineering firm, beginning in 1964 as a candidate for a municipal office in Streetsville, a village within the borders of Mississauga. After the two entities, along with several others, combined to create the city of Mississauga, she easily made her way into the mayor’s office after beating the incumbent by just 3,000 votes in the five-year race. his 1978.
She has never faced another heavyweight, and in her two elections she has faced no opponent, and won by acclamation. She did this without campaigning or fundraising; instead, she encourages supporters to be willing to open their wallets to charity.
“You know, I don’t run a campaign,” she told the Canadian Press in 2010. “I was there with them for four. I don’t wait for the election to come to campaign.”
She was a key promoter of Mississauga, promoting it as a dynamic place welcoming businesses and the influx of immigrants to Canada during the 1970s and 1980s.
She is not without her critics, who see her as bossy and even authoritarian. And she admits she has tight control over the Mississauga City Council, allowing for very little dissent, at least in public.
In 1982 and again in 2009, she was accused of failing to disclose conflicts of interest: first when land she and her husband owned was put into a viable development, and then was when she lobbied for a hotel project of which one of her sons was the owner. an investor.
The first instance case was not illegal at the time, and the second case, which went to court, was dismissed by a judge in 2013. Taken together, it’s a record that the defenders considered pure for her political career just beginning. before most of her voters were born.
Hazel Journeaux was born on February 14, 1921, in Port-Daniel, a small town on the Gaspé Peninsula in southeastern Quebec. Her father, Herbert, runs a fishing and processing company, and her mother, Amanda (Travers) Journeaux, is a nurse.
The family moved to Montreal when Hazel was still a child, and after graduating from high school, she took secretarial and business classes before being hired by MW Kellogg, an engineering company.
She spent several years as a professional hockey player in Montreal, cementing a lifelong love for the sport. She played centerpiece for a team sponsored by Kick, a cola brand, and earned $5 a game, the equivalent of about $65 US today. In 1987, the Women’s World Hockey Championship named its trophy the Hazel McCallion World Cup.
Her hockey career ended in 1940, when Kellogg opened an office in Toronto and she was sent to manage it.
She married Sam McCallion in 1951. He died in 1997. She is survived by sons Peter and Paul; her daughter, Linda Burgess; and a granddaughter.
Ms. McCallion spent more than two decades as a manager for Kellogg before leaving to work with her husband and his printing business and get involved in politics in Streetsville. After three years on the village council, she was elected mayor of Streetsville in 1970.
After founding the city of Mississauga, she served on the city council for four years before being elected mayor in 1978 at the age of 57.
Before, during, and after her time as mayor, she led a grueling workday, getting up at 5:30 and starting meetings at 7. She brushed off questions about leaving office, even long after most people her age had retired.
She told The Toronto Star in 2001, when she was 80 years old: “Having free time is unacceptable. If I quit my job, I will have to find something very difficult to do. And what could be more challenging than being mayor?”
Finally, after her term as mayor ended in 2014, at the age of 93, she continued to work. She served as the first principal of Sheridan College’s Hazel McCallion Campus, a technical school in the Toronto area; she advised Mr. Ford, the prime minister of Ontario; and she oversees the Greater Toronto Airport Authority, a job that in 2019 took her on a tour of the world’s busiest airports.
In a 2022 interview with The National Post, she summed up her philosophy by recalling what her mother asked her when she was a child: “What do you want to achieve in your life? life? Do you want to be a follower or do you want to take advantage of the opportunity to be a leader?”
