Hazel McCallion

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Hazel McCallion 2010

Hazel McCallion , CM (born February 14, 1921 as Hazel Journeaux in Port-Daniel , Québec , Canada ) is the former mayor of Mississauga , Ontario , the sixth largest city in Canada with 704,000 inhabitants. McCallion held this office from 1978 to 2014, i.e. for 36 years. Both her supporters and the media have referred to her as Hurricane Hazel . When she was re-elected for the eleventh time in October 2010 at the age of 89, she received 76% of the vote. She retired on November 30, 2014 at the age of 93. Her successor is Bonnie Crombie .

Life

Hazel McCallion was born on February 14, 1921 in Port-Daniel on the Gaspésie in the province of Québec . Her father owned a fishing and fish processing business, her mother was a housewife and ran the family's farm. The family included the two sisters Linda and Gwen and the two brothers Lorne and Lockhart. After high school , she attended office and business schools in Québec and Montreal . Later she said on various occasions that she would have liked to go to university, but that her family could not afford it. She worked for the engineering and construction company Canadian Kellogg Company Ltd. first in Montreal and from 1942 in Toronto until she gave up her professional activity in 1967 in order to pursue political activities.

Shortly after moving to Toronto, she met her future husband Sam McCallion in an Anglican parish. As a wedding gift, her husband's parents gave them a piece of land near the village of Streetsville, which later became part of Mississauga. The marriage resulted in two sons and a daughter. McCallion has often said in interviews that her husband always encouraged her to pursue a political career. Before she became mayor of Missisauga, she founded the newspaper The Mississauga Booster with her husband , which is now published by her son. Sam McCallion died of Alzheimer's disease in 1997 . Hazel McCallion still lives in Streetsville.

Mississauga's Streetsville neighborhood

McCallion's personal preference is ice hockey . During her school days and later in Montreal she was an active player herself. One of her friends is ice hockey commentator Don Cherry , who joked on her 87th birthday that although she was only elected by 99.8 percent of citizens, they were still looking for the 0.2 percent who did not vote would have.

Political career

McCallion began her political career in Streetsville , which has since been incorporated into Mississauga, in 1967 as chair of the planning committee. She later became the deputy mayor and was appointed mayor shortly thereafter. In 1970 she was elected mayor of the town. She kept this post until 1973 the place was incorporated.

She was first elected Mississauga's mayor in 1978 when she narrowly defeated popular incumbent Ron A. Searle . McCallion was only in office for a few months when a public safety crisis struck. On November 10, 1979, a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed on the Canadian Pacific Railway in a densely populated area near Mavis Road. A large explosion and fire was followed by the release of dangerous chemicals. Under McCallion's supervision, police and other government agencies evacuated the entire population of the city, which then numbered around 200,000. During the emergency, which lasted around a week, McCallion sprained her ankle, but there were no major injuries or loss of life among the population.

During McCallion's tenure, Mississauga grew from a small cluster of towns and villages into one of Canada's largest cities. The dynamic growth in the greater Toronto area goes back to the 1976 election in the province of Québec , in which the Parti Québécois under René Lévesque was elected into government and initiated an emigration of the Anglosphere from Montreal to Toronto. During McCallion's tenure, the Civic Center including the new town hall, a library, the Mississauga Living Arts Center , Highway 403 in the 1980s and the Hershey Center in the 1990s were also built .

McCallion's other ventures were less successful. Under the laws of Ontario, Mississauga forms the Regional Municipality of Peel together with Brampton and Caledon . McCallion and the Mississauga City Council are committed to ensuring that Mississauga is given an autonomy as a municipality . So far, this request has been rejected by the provincial government. Although Mississauga has received two additional seats on the regional council, it is still insufficiently represented in proportion to the population and tax revenue. This has sparked controversy in the region, with Brampton and Caledon politicians arguing against McCallion that Mississauga's economic development has slowed and that the city benefited most from the infrastructure projects of the 1970s anyway.

McCallion was found guilty of a conflict of interest in 1982 for attending the city council meeting to discuss a decision by the Ontario High Court of Justice that affected her. However, she was not asked to give up her position. McCallion was re-elected ten times after her first term in office, for two decades without any significant opportunities for her challengers, so that she does not campaign or accept campaign donations, but instead asks her supporters to donate to charity. One of its principles is that the city must be run like a company. Mississauga is one of the few cities in Canada with no municipal debt.

She is a parishioner of Trinity Anglican Church in Streetsville and is the patron of Hazel's Hope to help children infected with HIV and AIDS in southern Africa.

McCallion was one of the first Canadian politicians to openly support a two-state solution and the establishment of a Palestinian state. As early as 1983 she declared before the annual meeting of the Canadian Arab Federation that "the Palestinians need and need and deserve their own land" .

Honors

Web links

Commons : Hazel McCallion  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rt. Hon. Dalton McGuinty , Premier of Ontario: Remarks In Tribute To Hazel McCallion ( English ) Government of Ontario. February 4, 2004. Archived from the original on March 6, 2009. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved June 23, 2009. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.premier.gov.on.ca
  2. ↑ cf. Patrick, Kelly: Hazel McCallion: She'll be the mayor of Mississauga until she's dead. Or possibly longer . In: National Post , April 8, 2006. p. T08
  3. ↑ cf. Warmington, Joe: Fishing for a reel angle . In: Toronto Sun , August 23, 2008, p. 6
  4. ^ William K Carroll: Westward ho? The shifting geography of corporate power in Canada ( English ) Journal of Canadian Studies. 2002. Retrieved June 23, 2009.
  5. ^ Linteau, Paul-Andre: Montreal ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved August 21, 2016.
  6. ↑ Patrick Couture: René Lévesque: La loi 101 ( English ) Republique Libre. Retrieved June 23, 2009.
  7. ↑ Kelly Patrick: Hazel McCallion ( English ) Canada: National Post. August 4, 2006. Archived from the original on January 29, 2013. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved June 23, 2009. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nationalpost.com
  8. ↑ Tann vom Hove (editor): Mayor of Mississauga Interview ( English ) City Mayors, of Canada. January 2, 2004. Retrieved June 23, 2009.
  9. ^ "Palestinians get support from Mississauga mayor," Globe and Mail , May 23, 1983, p. 5.
  10. ↑ Office of the Federal President
  11. ↑ Hazel McCallion: Mayor of Mississauga. City Mayors, of Canada, archived from the original on April 8, 2009 ; accessed on November 10, 2011 .
personal data
SURNAME McCallion, Hazel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hurricane Hazel (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian politician
DATE OF BIRTH February 14, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Port-Daniel , Quebec , Canada