Hazel McCallion, who served as Mississauga’s mayor for 12 terms, died this weekend at 101. From the archives, a look at her final years in office
, marking articles with yellow stickies. There is no time for breakfast, either, so she shoves her work papers into cloth shopping bags, orders the dog into the cage that takes up a corner of the living room, and heads to her grey Malibu hybrid parked in the driveway. The darkness of the early hour is punctured by a surprise snowfall, fat and heavy, and the car’s windshield is covered in a sheet of ice.
Perhaps it is mere ageism, with a little sexism thrown in, that prompts one to wonder if a bath is the only thing a 90-year-old woman should be running. But there she is, day after day, year after year, surrounded by office buildings and malls that she OK’d, as if she waved a wand and a city was built. Her office faces Hazel McCallion Walk, an entryway to the Square One shopping extravaganza of department stores and chain restaurants.
She won, but her enemies on council kept at it. In January, as the hearings into the land deal dragged on, an unknown source leaked a memo to reporters indicating that city hall was willing to pay for councillors’ tickets to the mayor’s 90th birthday gala—a gravy train-ish moment that looked like partying on the taxpayers’ dime.
There’s nothing contrite in McCallion, no hint she’s aware that by pushing the private deal she may be in conflict with her public duties In the arena’s stands, McCallion talks to some of the boys from a Toronto team who have just finished a game. “Mississauga is taking over Toronto, don’t you know?” she jokes. They look bewildered. The hockey dads and a few teenage sisters pull out their cellphones to take pictures of the 11-year-olds flanking the mayor. She is shorter than many of them.
When McCallion became mayor, the population was 280,000 and predominantly of European descent. Now it’s 740,000, and 49 per cent are visible minorities. Toronto has its much-trumpeted fantasy of diversity, but multiculturalism is really a suburban enterprise. McCallion has been accused of being slow to appreciate her city’s diversity. In 2001, she complained to thecolumnist Diane Francis about the burden of immigrants on hospitals.
“She was supposed to come Tuesday. We had 200 people, but she couldn’t make it,” says Panchmatia, a little forlorn. Still, about 20 people mingle throughout the store, waiting to meet the mayor. In here, politics feels like celebrity, with its adoring throngs, its endless assertion that you matter more than you ever could. “Hi Hazel! I’ve always wanted to meet you!” a clown in a red fright wig shouts as she paints children’s faces.
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