MISSISSAUGA MUNICIPAL (UNOFFICIAL) CAMPAIGN updates

[FutureMayor]

Re: Miss. election

I'm fired up for 2010 already!

Louroz

 

[The Mississauga Muse]

LIVE! From Mississauga Civic Centre GREAT HALL! (two days l

It was fun to see FutureMayor Monday night.

Here goes.

The Mississauga Corporation Great Hall Election Photo Essay


It was a foggy night. The tower eyeballs did their best to look festive and failed miserably.

As I walked up the steps to the Main Doors, I was told to go to --

the NORTH ENTRANCE.

*GULP*

The passageway to the NORTH ENTRANCE did its best to look menacing and succeeded.

The moment I stepped into The Great Hall, I was struck with Just How Much I Didn't Belong There.
(And of course, that's why I stayed to the very end. Observer Walt isn't the ONLY "Observer" in Mississauga.)

The Mayor was over at the right being interviewed by Rogers Cable. John Stewart of The Mississauga News
(green jacket -middle) examined results coming in.)

John Stewart, of The Mississauga News (right) now minus his jacket, talks to probably someone I should know.

John Stewart is TERRIFIC. John Stewart ROCKS! Mississauga needs more John Stewarts!

The Corporation Bosses --obvious conclusion? That Mississauga is a Matriarchy.

Mayor Hazel McCallion being interviewed by Rogers Cable.

I watched Rogers Election Night coverage last night and loved Mayor McCallion's "I don't have to campaign"
comments.

Then, after the interview, she thanked Rogers Cable for doing a terrific job...

The Incumbent in my ward was a shoe-in so aside from oh yeah, excellent, back for four years, I paid little
attention to my ward's results.

So yes, I admit to taking my councillor's victory for granted --it's a luxury.

Two races interested me. Ward 6 --and Ward 7. I was hoping that FutureMayor would win but he didn't.
Imagine. Only 3705 people in all of Ward 7 voted for a Separate School Trustee...

With 100% of results in, Mayor McCallion shook hands of supporters, then left The Great Hall.

For the record, while I didn't go up and offer her my hand or congratulations, I was happy that she won.

I still stayed. --long after even most of the media had packed up. There was something I needed to do.

I set my camera to self-record-video and performed Semaphore under the watchful gaze of no less than
three Corporate Security personnel --none of whom could read Semaphore.

For the record, I flagged:

G.O.O.D. N.I.G.H.T. M.I.S.S.I.S.S.A.U.G.A.

This image however, was taken earlier on in the evening by a kind, cooperative soul who had asked me to
take pics of him.

For those of you who can't read Semaphore (jeeze, really, you CAN'T?!) I flag the Letter M.

Video of Election Night will be posted to YOUTUBE later. I asked, and received permission, thank you,
FutureMayor, to upload video of his Ward 7 speech/comments to YOUTUBE as well.

Signed,
The Mississauga Muse

 

[ganjavih]

Re: LIVE! From Mississauga Civic Centre GREAT HALL! (two da

Thanks for the entertaining photojournalism, Mississauga Muse. And congratulations for avoiding getting kicked out by security for wearing your unusual Mississauga superhero costume.

 

[The Mississauga Muse]

Re: LIVE! From Mississauga Civic Centre GREAT HALL! (two da

ganjavih, you wrote:

Thanks for the entertaining photojournalism, Mississauga Muse. And congratulations for avoiding getting kicked out by security for wearing your unusual Mississauga superhero costume.

Thanks for the congrats, ganjavih, but there was no big deal to it at all. First I emailed to make sure regular-people could attend the big Grand Hall Election Night media event.

Next, I actually took the precaution of emailing security to let them know I'd be wearing a bright orange jacket complete with flags!

My whole flag-thing idea is all the result of reading The Corporation's press releases and stuff about Placemaking and making Mississauga into an exciting People Place.

mississauga.ca has an e-store that sells flags with pitches like "Show your civic pride with a City of Mississauga Desk Flag. Perfect for the office or as a gift!"

Well, ganjavih, these flags are also perfect for the Civic Centre Great Hall!

And a good thing too that I showed up with my "costume" Monday night.

I actually received email about it.

Subject: your cameo appearance on CITY-TV last night


So I'm flipping beteen CITY-TV and COGECO, and they show a reporter in a fairly deserted Mississauga City Hall, where Hazel has won (obviously) but there is no party going on-- in fact the hall is pretty quiet and empty except over on the reporter's right, over her shoulder, she refers to a few "flag-draped fans" and I say, that's no fan, that's TMM! Taking pictures.

There ya go.

Fact is, the "flag-draped fans" the reporter referred to was just me. (Use of the plural suffix by CITY was, shall we say, a tad too umm... plural.)

I was taking pics of the results on the screen (interested in Louroz's info and mayoral results) when a reporter came up and asked whether I'd mind CITY shooting me and my flag as part of the background in her report.

I said sure, so long as I didn't have to talk. Then I carefully adjusted the flag over my right shoulder to make sure I showed off the Corporate Crest at its finest.

Then I pretended to photograph (the CITY report seemed to take a very long time --I mean you can only pretend to photograph so long. Even me.)

re: kicked out:

'sides. I mean can you see it?

CITY-TV NEWS AT ELEVEN (Cue Music for News at Eleven)

CITY-TV Reporter peers earnestly into camera:

In a bizarre twist, CITY-TV has just learned that the flag-draped fan who appeared earlier in CITY's Mississauga-Live report (screen now shows earlier CITY-TV footage of me with the Corporate flag proudly displayed over my right shoulder) has just been kicked out of the Great Hall by Mississauga security staff...

(Hmmm... actually, yeah, I can see it...) :eek

Last:

Always squirmed seeing "superhero" and "costume" used together, ganjaveh. To me, "superhero costume" a moral oxymoron.

Superheroes don't wear costumes.

They wear uniforms.

Signed,
The Mississauga Muse

 

[The Mississauga Muse]

City says no go to online voting

[emphasis mine]

Nov 17, 2006
THE MISSISSAUGA NEWS
City says no go to online voting

Joseph Chin
Nov 16, 2006

More than 446,000 Mississaugans were eligible to cast municipal votes Monday, but only 110,248, or 24.7 per cent, made it to the polls.

However, despite the dismal numbers and the apparent success of online ballot casting in other Ontario municipalities, Mississauga won't be switching systems anytime soon to reel in new voters, say City officials.

"We're always looking to upgrade and better the system, but going to internet voting is not on our radar screen at the moment," said Pina Mancuso, the City's electoral officer. "We want to maintain the integrity of the system...and we are not in someone's den to monitor the process."

Councillor Nando Iannicca, whose Ward 7 had the lowest voter turnout (18.2 per cent), also prefers the current system. And, he doesn't understand why people find it a chore to leave their homes to vote.

"It's ironic that elections always fall a day or two after Remembrance Day, which reminds us of Canadians who fought and died for our democratic rights," said Iannicca. "Yet we won't fulfill our civic duty once every three or four years."

Although this year's numbers are up nearly five percentage points from 2003, it was still among the lowest in the GTA.

Iannicca, who was returned for his seventh term, offers a couple of reasons for the lack of interest.

"People won't rush out to vote you in when the city is working well, but they'll rush out to vote you out when they're dissatisfied," he said. "Also, without a big mayoralty race you don't bring out the rank and file..."

As for his ward being the worst culprit, Iannicca points to the inordinate amount of rental units in the area.

"(Renters) remain in the ward a short while, then move on to buy homes elsewhere. They probably feel they're not planting roots here, so they don't bother to come out and vote," he said.

Predictably, voter apathy was most evident in wards with entrenched incumbents.

The biggest turnout was in the newly-created Ward 10, where 29.6 per cent cast ballots to elect Sue McFadden.

Ward 6, where Carolyn Parrish squared off with Ron Starr, saw 27.3 per cent eligible voters return the ex-Liberal MP to the halls of power.

The controversy surrounding Eve Adams in Ward 5 didn't hurt the first-term councillor, with 26.5 per cent coming out to vote.

Numbers in the other wards looked like this:

Ward 1 - 23.8 per cent of 32,675 eligible;

Ward 2 - 23 per cent of 35,378 eligible;

Ward 3 - 24.2 per cent of 41,550 eligible;

Ward 4 - 25.3 per cent of 40,864 eligible;

Ward 8 - 24 per cent of 47,926 eligible;

Ward 9 - 22.7 per cent of 38,135 eligible;

Ward 11 - 20.8 per cent of 34,374 eligible.

 

[The Mississauga Muse]

Excellent Hazel McCallion article --from The Globe

Excellent article in the Globe about Hazel McCallion.

The last paragraph emphasizes just how like McCallion is as others of her Greatest Generation. This part:

"My family keeps after me -- 'Mom, spend more of your money' -- and I say, 'Well, I can't do it. I wasn't brought up that way.' "

Here it is:

Hazel: At 85, still a hurricane

ANTHONY REINHART

Assumptions have a way of piling up around Hazel McCallion, and from a casual distance, it's not hard to see why.

She's 85 and looks it, so she must be a bit doddery by now, right?

She has been mayor of Mississauga for 28 years, so the new term she won on Monday -- her 11th straight since 1978 -- will surely be her last.

And the 700,000 people of her sprawling suburban city, a Toronto urbanist's worst nightmare, can't possibly be content with all those strip malls and protruding garages. Can they?

As absorbing as these notions might be for pundits, Ms. McCallion can't make room for them in her 14-hour days, packed with reports and public appearances.

"I'm so busy, I don't have time to think of it; I mean, I've got so much to do," she said this week, during an afternoon stopover at her home -- a 19-year-old two-storey -- between engagements. "Every day is just a challenge of, 'Can I work it all in?' "

A closer look at Ms. McCallion suggests the real reason the assumptions pile up around her is that they simply don't stick.

She gives answers faster than they can be written down, retrieves dates and details at will from the deepest recesses of memory, and seems as bemused as anyone at the improbability of it all.

"I just can't believe that I'm 85," she said. "I've never had an operation except a cataract removed from one eye. I never had any of the childhood diseases, none of them, and I have everything I was born with -- my tonsils, adenoids, appendix, you name it."

Ms. McCallion drew 91 per cent of the vote in Monday's election, besting two unfortunate challengers without planting signs, collecting donations or actively campaigning -- a virtual repeat of her 2003 result.

"I think if you're prepared to change with the times, and people see that you're changing, there's nothing remaining that's static," she said, rising from her chair to answer a call from the office.

Ms. McCallion knows what it means to change with the times, even if others didn't always catch on as quickly. The youngest of five children, Hazel Journeaux was born in 1921, a descendant of Huguenots who had settled in Quebec's Gaspé region. The family lived on a small farm near Port-Daniel, a fishing village on the Bay of Chaleur.

Just hours after attending an event to promote toy donations for needy children this week, she recalled how, as a girl, "I had two -- one was a doll, and a plush bunny that somebody gave me -- and I wouldn't play with them because I was afraid to harm them."

It was the Great Depression, a time that gave countless rural Canadians of Ms. McCallion's vintage an early introduction to hard work, frugality and responsibility. It explains her toughness and continues to inform her day-to-day life, both as pennywise politician and hands-on homeowner who does all her own cleaning and gardening.

The fact she was a girl made no difference when her father, a fish canner, put her in charge of the family's general store at age 10, or when her older brother taught her to play hockey on a frozen field.

"My brother used to take me out for an ice cream cone before he took his girlfriend out at night," Ms. McCallion said, "and he brought me, from Montreal, my first pair of skates when I was 5."

A decade later, while attending business school in Montreal, she parlayed these skills into a semi-pro hockey stint, earning $5 a game. And even now, while some of her contemporaries are wheeling themselves around the retirement home, she's itching to strap on the blades as winter approaches.

After Grades 10 and 11 in Quebec City, where she lived in a boarding house, Ms. McCallion moved to Montreal for secretarial studies. She finished, landed a job with a distributor of California redwood products, and "did everything in the office, because I was the only one."

Ms. McCallion parlayed her experience into a position as secretary to the general manager of Canadian Kellogg, which, in the early 1940s, was building the world's first synthetic rubber plant in Sarnia, Ont. It needed to set up a Toronto office, which she administered despite the fact that corporate Canada was still very much a man's world.

When her boss suggested that she join the Personnel Association and the Office Management Association, both in Toronto, she applied, only to learn women were not welcome. Her boss was angry, but she took it in stride.

"As a woman in the business world, you have to show your confidence in yourself for others to have confidence in you," she said. "I had to work hard all my life; nothing came easily, so I think you just say, 'Well, I'm determined to make a success of this,' and you just bulldoze ahead."

The bulldozers had yet to turn much soil in what is now Mississauga when she married a print shop owner named Sam McCallion in 1951. They bought a house on five acres on Britannia Road -- a dirt road in those days -- near Streetsville, which was still a municipality in its own right. They paid $15,000, half of it down, and paid off the debt in five years. Ms. McCallion, now widowed, has been mortgage-free ever since.

She left her corporate job for politics in 1967, starting on the Streetsville planning board and serving as the town's mayor from 1970 to 1973. Presaging the practice for which she has since become known, her council enacted development controls to ensure growth paid for itself.

Ms. McCallion was not happy when the Ontario government under then-premier Bill Davis imposed regional government, which led to the creation of the city of Mississauga, swallowing Streetsville and other communities, in 1974. As a member of the new city's council, "I did not want to sit there being negative all the time," she said, "so I decided I will either try to go up and make the changes that I felt were essential, or go out."

In 1978, she stepped up to the Mississauga mayoral race with $12,000 to the incumbent's $60,000, and support from several women whose influential husbands were working for her opponent. Still, she won on a platform of "planning for people, financial controls, good management and [that] development must pay its way."

In every election since then, it has been all Hazel, all the time.

Meanwhile, the city has exploded threefold in population, becoming the third largest in Ontario and sixth largest in Canada.

For all the shuddering it has induced in opponents of suburban sprawl, that growth underscores a truth that Ms. McCallion -- who admits Mississauga has fallen short on transit planning -- has come to know as well as anyone. "The people that moved out here wanted their single-family home and they wanted their car -- and they still do, by the way," she said.

Ms. McCallion, who grew up knowing what it meant to go without, is determined to keep giving her people what they want as long as they keep electing her.

Her only condition is the one she has held fast to since 1978, but learned much earlier -- don't spend what you don't have. "You don't change when you've gone through that," she said of the Depression. "I value what I've been able to accomplish and acquire, but I'm not extravagant.

"My family keeps after me -- 'Mom, spend more of your money' -- and I say, 'Well, I can't do it. I wasn't brought up that way.' "

Signed,
The Mississauga Muse