Hazel McCallion

Personal life

McCallion was born in the community of Port Daniel on the Gaspé Coast of Quebec. Her father, Herbert Armand Journeaux (1879–1944), owned a fishing and canning company. Her mother, Amanda Maude Travers (1876–1955), was a homemaker and ran the family farm. The family also comprised two older sisters and two older brothers. After graduating from Quebec High School, she attended business secretarial school in Quebec City and Montreal. She has stated, especially while receiving university honours, that she would have wanted to attend university, but her family could not afford it. After beginning her career in Montreal with the Canadian Kellogg company, she was transferred to Toronto in 1942, where she helped set up the local office. McCallion left the business world in 1967 to devote her life to a career in politics.

She met her future husband, Sam McCallion (1923–97), at an Anglican Church congregation in Toronto in 1951; they married on September 29 of that year. As a marriage present from McCallion’s in-laws, a piece of land was given to the newlyweds near the village of Streetsville, Ontario, to which they moved in December 1951. McCallion has three children. In 1997, her husband died of Alzheimer's disease. Before entering politics, she and her husband founded The Streetsville Booster in 1964.

Early years

McCallion began her political career in Streetsville. Her first campaign was in 1964 for the position of deputy reeve. It was unsuccessful, and she later considered herself to be a victim of dirty tricks. Having later been appointed as the chairman of the Streetsville Planning Board, she was elected as deputy reeve in the 1967 election and was appointed reeve in 1968. She was elected as Streetsville's mayor in 1970, serving until 1973. The Town of Streetsville was amalgamated with the Town of Mississauga and the Town of Port Credit to form the City of Mississauga at the beginning of 1974. McCallion advocated unsuccessfully to preserve Streetsville as a separate municipality. In the 1976 municipal election, McCallion won her seat on Mississauga council by acclamation. By the time she was elected mayor of Mississauga, she had sat on virtually every committee in Peel Region and the City of Mississauga. She has also served on the executive of many federal and provincial committees and associations.

Mayor of Mississauga

McCallion was first elected mayor in 1978, defeating popular incumbent Ron Searle by about 3,000 votes. She had been in office only a few months when the 1979 Mississauga train derailment occurred, where a Canadian Pacific train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in a heavily populated area near Mavis Road. A large explosion and fire ensued as hazardous chemicals spilled. McCallion, along with the Peel Regional Police and other governmental authorities, oversaw the evacuation of the city. Despite having sprained her ankle, she continued to hold press conferences and update briefings. There were no deaths or serious injuries during the week-long emergency, and Mississauga gained renown for the peaceful evacuation of its then 200,000 residents.

During McCallion's terms in office, Mississauga grew from a small collection of towns and villages to one of Canada’s largest cities, much of which occurred after the 1976 election of René Lévesque's Parti Québécois government sparked an exodus of Anglophones and corporations from Montreal to the Greater Toronto Area.

McCallion was easily elected throughout her career as mayor, with no serious challengers coming close to unseating her. She never campaigned during elections and refused to accept political donations, instead asking her supporters to donate the money to charity. Her final term as mayor, won in the election of October 2010, was her twelfth consecutive term. She announced during her final term that she would not be running for re-election in the 2014 municipal elections and endorsed councilor and former federal MP Bonnie Crombie to replace her as Mayor. Crombie defeated former city councilor, Member of Provincial Parliament and federal cabinet minister Steve Mahoney to win the 2014 municipal election.

In 2012, McCallion was the third highest paid mayor in Canada, with a salary of $187,057.

In a first-person account for Canadian magazine Confidence Bound, McCallion credited her faith with giving her energy, and said she still does her own household chores. "Housework and gardening are great forms of exercise and keep one humble."

On her 90th birthday in 2011 McCallion was assessed by Dr. Barbara Clive, a geriatrician, who stated that "at 90 her gait is perfect, her speech is totally sharp and she has the drive to still run this city. She’s the poster child for seniors".

Conflict of interest allegations

In 1982, McCallion was found guilty of a conflict of interest on a planning decision by the Ontario High Court of Justice due to not absenting herself from a council meeting on a matter in which she had an interest. In 1983 The Municipal Conflict of Interest Act would have required her to vacate her seat and prohibited her from running for the following term .

In 2009 McCallion was the focus of public opinion when it was alleged that she failed to disclose a conflict of interest when attending meetings that concerned her son's company, World Class Developments Ltd. On October 3, 2011, Judge Douglas Cunningham found McCallion "acted in a 'real and apparent conflict of interest' while pushing hard for a real estate deal that could have put millions of dollars in her son’s pocket." On June 14, 2013, charges under the Municipal Conflict of Interest Act were dismissed as World Class Developments did not have a financial interest as defined under the Act, and the application was also statute-barred. In a later ruling concerning costs, Judge J. Sproat said, "Out of seven major issues, Mayor McCallion was successful on only three. On two of the three issues Mayor McCallion was successful, not because of any prudence or diligence, but only because World Class Developments’s project had not progressed at a faster pace."

Political views

While party preferences are not usually expressed in Canadian municipal politics, McCallion supports the Liberal Party at the federal and provincial levels, and was asked in 1982 to consider running for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Ontario. She endorsed Kathleen Wynne on the convention floor of the 2013 Ontario Liberal Party leadership election, and later endorsed her and her party in the 2014 Ontario general election. Otherwise, McCallion has been described as a "small-c" conservative. McCallion endorsed Liberal leader Justin Trudeau for the 2015 election. She also appeared in a notable television advertisement for the federal Liberals during the final days of the 2015 election.

In 2007 McCallion responded to the federal government's refusal to give any of the GST to cities, a funding source long requested by many municipalities across Canada, by planning a 5 per cent surcharge on property taxes in the city. She was able to have the levy introduced and approved on the same day by Mississauga council. Most media coverage, as well as Toronto mayor David Miller, noted that McCallion was arguably one of the few mayors in the country with the political capital to implement such a strategy.

After politics

In February 2015, McCallion became a special advisor to the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM), the Mississauga campus of the University of Toronto, providing advice on matters related to strategic development of the school. In addition to her role at UTM, McCallion was appointed the first Chancellor of Sheridan College in 2016. In 2016, February 14 was renamed Hazel McCallion Day across the province of Ontario in honour of McCallion's birthday.

Honours

The following have been conferred on McCallion:

Eponyms

The following have been named in her honour:

Achievements

Hockey

McCallion played for a professional women's hockey team while attending school in Montreal. McCallion began playing hockey in the late 1920s in the town of Port Daniel, Quebec. She played with her two sisters and was a forward on their team. McCallion later played hockey for $5 a game in the city of Montreal. The team was sponsored by Kik Cola and was part of a three-team women’s league.

At the 1987 World Women's Hockey Tournament (not recognized by the IIHF), the championship trophy was named the Hazel McCallion World Cup. At one time, McCallion was a board member of the Ontario Women's Hockey League, and was instrumental in the construction of the Hershey Centre in Mississauga. McCallion provided assistance for Don Cherry’s group to bring an Ontario Hockey League franchise to the city in 1998, and she was instrumental in bringing the IIHF Women’s World Hockey Championships to the city in 2000.

International politics

McCallion was one of the first Canadian politicians to openly support the creation of a Palestinian state. Addressing the annual convention of the Canadian Arab Federation in 1983, she argued that Palestinian issues had been distorted by the national media and was quoted as saying, "The Palestinians need and require and deserve a country of their own. Why shouldn't they get it?"

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