Cormorant Books

Share |

Witness to a City (Preview)

Introduction

The moment is etched on my mind. The new Bamboo restaurant at the waterfront was packed with what seemed like thousands of Torontonians — environmentalists, advocates for social justice and integrity in government, transit supporters, small business people, and, of course, opponents of the island airport. New Democrats, Liberals, Red Tories, and unaffiliated voters wildly celebrating the fact that I had just won the mayoralty of Canada’s largest city with forty-three per cent of the vote — me, the longshot candidate from High Park who started at below eight per cent in the polls.

But it is not the victory itself that I remember so clearly: it is the moment I first saw my children in that room. I was on stage with my wife, Jill, holding hands, as we had been most of the day as we travelled the entire city thanking supporters and urging them to get out to vote. I looked up, over the cheering crowd, to the balcony and just happened to see Julia and Simon (then aged eight and six) looking down, drinking in the wild celebrations. I was so excited that I grabbed Jill and we both waved. The photograph of Jill and me smiling widely and waving to our children was the cover of The Globe and Mail the next day, with the headline “Impeccable Victory, Impeccable Mandate.”

Perhaps this moment is so clear to me because of my own family history. I had no brother, no sister, no father — but a remarkably strong and resilient mother. As a result, the role of being a father, and a husband, is both unfamiliar and incredibly important to me.

EARLY YEARS

My mum, joan, was born in East Anglia in England in 1919, the youngest of three, with two older brothers — Raymond and George. Both of my uncles have played influential roles in my life, as did my grandfather, George Albert Green, whom I lived with in England as a young boy. George was English and his wife, Anne, Irish, likely a bit unusual at the time.

Probably the biggest thing that happened in my mum’s early life was that her mother, Anne, died far too young, when Joan was fourteen. Joan always referred to her as “my sweet darling mother” and felt strongly that she had been worked to death by the traditional household responsibilities of an English woman at that time. As would be expected, Mum assumed many of those responsibilities as a young woman — she told me more than once that she resolved then never to be a man’s servant again.

In the Great Depression, in a working-class family, everyone who could had a job — and everyone was frugal. Granddad worked for the London and Northeastern Railway; Uncle George married young and became a meter reader with the electric company in Ipswich; Uncle Ray enlisted in the Royal Navy (where he promptly became nicknamed “Jim”), and Mum attended teachers’ college at Avery Hill College in London.

Her first job was teaching at the public school in Dagenham, London. She started in the 1939–40 school year, a tragic year to be in London. Mum began working in this very working-class neighbourhood at the height of the Blitz, in a place that was heavily bombed by Germany because of the local car factory. Combined with Uncle Jim’s experiences in the war, teaching the youngest children in a neighbourhood destroyed by bombs made her a lifelong advocate for peace. I think it is hard to understand that anti-war passion unless you have experienced the complete futility and horror of war — as my family did.

Postwar, both Mum and Uncle Jim emigrated to Canada — Mum to teach in Halifax, Jim to enlist in the Royal Canadian Navy, after a few other jobs, where he served with distinction until the 1960s.

The next part of my mum’s story is one she didn’t share because she was so private; suffice to say that Joan Green emigrated to the United States, met Joe Miller, became Mrs. Joan Miller, and that Joe Miller died of leukemia very shortly after I was born. Mum then took me back to England, where she had obtained employment as a headmistress of a local school in a tiny farming village, Thriplow, in Cambridgeshire. My first memories are of living in Thriplow with Mum and Granddad.

I loved Thriplow. We lived in the school; across the street was Parker’s Eggs where “Auntie” May and “Auntie” Nell took care of the free-range chickens and a few sheep. They also had an egg-vending machine — still the only one I have ever seen.

What else was in the village? The church, of course — all was run by the Church of England and we went every week. Also in the village were the landed gentry and their magnificent property, the workers’ cottages, council houses (where my friends John, Colin, and Gary Betts lived), a small middle-class subdivision of ten houses or so, a shop, a pub, and a working blacksmith. That was about it.

But we had fun. The Betts and I, and older boys who were farmers’ or workers’ sons, played soccer and cricket, played in the streams and the fields, and were generally free to do as we wished. With one exception: every night my mother corrected my English — I spoke like a local farmers’ son and she insisted, every night, that I speak the Queen’s English. When I protested that I wanted to speak like my friends she would say, “If you sound like a farmer, that is all you will be.” For a working-class woman, the idea of her only child’s future being limited by his accent was unacceptable. She was so determined that, in 1966, with the aid of a scholarship I had won, Mum sent me to a private school in Cambridge (the Perse) instead of her own school so I could have the education she thought was essential. This would prove to be a pattern in her life — making significant sacrifices so I could have the education she thought was necessary to give me opportunity.

Mum, Granddad, and I had holidays — generally we went to the sea — by train to Folkestone, or in the summer to Butlin’s Holiday Camp where loudspeakers would play “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” and we would eat at long group tables with other holidaying families. At home Granddad loved to make his toast over the coal fireplace using a long fork, and would roll his own cigarettess from tinned tobacco. He took great joy from his vegetable garden in the back, and was none too pleased when he would catch me playing with my toy soldiers in the potato plants.

In February 1967 my grandfather died, and Mum decided to move to Canada, to Ottawa, to be near Uncle Jim. Canada was searching for teachers at the time, and Mum was able to find a position with the Ottawa public school board. By this point, Uncle Jim had retired from the navy and had become a kind of Labour Arbitrator in the federal public service. Like many newcomers, we lived with our relatives at first, in the basement of Uncle Jim and Aunt Jane’s house in the Alta Vista neighbourhood of Ottawa.

Also like many newcomers, my mother struggled to get accepted into her new job. Despite having taught for nearly thirty years, and having a job, the Ottawa School Board at first insisted that she wasn’t qualified to teach in Canada because she did not have a qualification that was impossible for non-Canadians to have: grade thirteen, which did not exist outside Ontario, let alone Canada. I can still remember her outrage at being told that a two-year program at teachers’ college at the University of London was not good enough to teach in Canada. Ultimately, she was able to obtain a certificate of equivalency, but the experience has left me with a strong understanding of how frustrating it still is for many newcomers to our country who cannot get their qualifications recognized.

My mother taught at elementary schools in Ottawa, always taking night and summer university courses in order to get her degree (which she ultimately received in 1975 at the age of fifty-six) and the equivalency of a master’s in library science, allowing her to become a teacher-librarian. She had taught me to read before I attended school — leading to a lifelong love of reading. I had another lifelong love, though: sports.

I attended my local public schools in Ottawa — Arch Street Public and Hawthorne Elementary — and, after a difficult first year, was generally happy, except for one big gap: sports. I could play hockey — and played endless games of ball hockey with the local boys — but having started at the age of ten meant I struggled, unlike the English sports of soccer and cricket that I had left behind. I really missed the competition and the skill that I’d enjoyed. At the same time, my mum was concerned (although I did not know this until years later) that I did not have the presence of men in my life; she was used to a British tradition of boys attending all-boys’ schools. This came to a head in 1971 due to the delivery of a copy of the Canadian Magazine with the Saturday Ottawa Citizen. The magazine had a cover photograph of a group of very happy Upper Canada College boys playing cricket. Cricket! Now there was a sport. I immediately said, “Mum, I want to go there.” Of course, going to a school like Upper Canada College on a teacher’s salary (especially low because she did not yet have a degree) was absolutely impossible. But Mum thought it was very important for an adolescent boy to have male role models, and made sufficient enquiries to determine that ucc and other schools had some scholarship spaces. She also found out about two lesser-known independent schools — Lakefield College School and Stanstead, both of which seemed very welcoming.

In the spring of 1972 I sat for the scholarship exams. Although I was accepted into all three schools, only Lakefield and Stanstead offered scholarships. We visited Lakefield in the spring of 1972 and were impressed — Mum with the small class sizes, its accessibility by bus from Ottawa, and the sense of rugged Canadian outdoors. Me? They had cricket. I was happy. Mum? Delighted — so delighted, in fact, that she took on two additional part-time jobs to help pay the remaining fees.

I started LCS (the Grove, as it is known to its alumni and friends) in September 1972. While I was very nervous at first, I quickly fit in, doing well academically and playing soccer, hockey, and cricket, and being known as “Miller,” as was the school habit.

At Thanksgiving of grade nine, Lewis, Greenwood, Morrison, and I went on the school canoe trip to Algonquin Park. Our group included the headmaster, Terry Guest, and the Biology teacher, Ken Burns, likely because Lewis, Morrison, and I were all new boys. It was an incredibly beautiful fall day when we started from Smoke Lake, doing the several day circuit through Lake Louisa and back to Smoke. That night the temperature dropped and we woke up to snow, wind, and, when the snow let up, a bitterly cold and driving rain. Unfortunately, perhaps because we were new boys, or simply because no one had advised our parents that we needed rain gear (readily available from the school shop “Chiefs” located deep in the basement of the Grove and run by a former chief petty officer who terrified grade nine students), the four of us had to endure being soaked to the skin and frozen. I still remember how cold it felt — but I can also remember something else: the incredible sense of pride and accomplishment we all felt overcoming those challenges.

On one very long portage, carrying a canvas and leather pack that, soaking wet, probably weighed as much as I did, I simply kept going — mostly to stay warm — despite needing a break hundreds of yards before the end. I was the first one over, and found a dry place to wait. Mr. Guest came a few minutes later, carrying a canoe — he said “Miller, that was quick. Did you stop?” When I said no, he said, “That takes guts.” What an incredible thing for a headmaster to say to a skinny, awkward new boy, the scholarship kid at a school with students from families like Eaton and Labatt, Demerais and Irving. Ever since, I have always believed in my own capacity to endure and overcome challenges.

Lakefield formed me in other ways. The school also trained us to be leaders — teaching older boys to set an example, and requiring grade thirteen students to assume leadership positions. I was selected to be the Head Boy, and also captained the rugby and soccer teams. One of the special things about Lakefield was that the school encouraged you to participate in many extracurricular activities — so I had a chance to debate, act, and sing in the choir. I was also an altar boy — as an Anglican school, we attended chapel six days a week. The values of social justice taught by the church were an important part of our life, as was the lusty singing of hymns like “The Lord of the Dance” and “Jerusalem.” I still find great peace in an Anglican church when wonderful choral and organ music flows over me.

I loved choir — even though singing is not a great strength of mine. In grade thirteen I somehow landed a solo. I will never forget how frustrated the choirmaster used to get with me in rehearsals — or what happened when my mum came to watch. She told the choirmaster afterwards, “A solo! I never would have believed it. My David, a solo.” To which Mr. Thompson replied, dead seriously, “A pure act of charity on my part, Mrs. Miller.”

I developed other loves at Lakefield; I read voraciously, particularly offbeat books like those by Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller. I learned to love Shakespeare, Monty Python, and Bruce Springsteen, who I saw play in Maple Leaf Gardens in 1975 on the Born to Run tour. In grade thirteen, Dr. Rosalind Barker, our English teacher, was responsible for helping us with our university applications. She had done graduate work in the United States, and I knew from Mum that my dad had studied at Brown University, an Ivy League school in Rhode Island. When I mentioned it to Mrs. Barker, she encouraged me to apply. She also said something that would ultimately shape my life: “Miller, if you are going to apply to an Ivy League school, you should apply to Harvard.” The application required a lot of work — essays, references, an interview — but I worked hard and sent in the complete application to both Harvard and Brown, as well as Queen’s, University of Toronto, and Waterloo — with no expectation at all that I would get in to any U.S. university.

In May, a large brown envelope came from Harvard — on a day I had no class in the third period when mail was usually delivered. As a result, I happened to be in the mail room and saw the envelope — we all knew rejection letters were small white envelopes. I ripped it open and it was an acceptance letter — a significant scholarship offer and the promise of a job. I phoned Mum at work and called her out of class — the only time ever — and told her the news. “Mum, I got into Harvard.” “Harvard. Harvard! Harvard!” “Mum, it’s very expensive, I don’t have to go.” I will never forget her reply: “It’s only money, David, it is only money.”

The decision was made, and in the fall of 1977 I arrived at Harvard, scholarship in hand. My first job at Harvard: dorm crew (cleaning the toilets). I didn’t mind; I had had previous jobs at Lakefield in the summer, and ultimately worked at various parttime positions all through university. In most of the summers I went to Alberta and paved roads; it was hard but well-paid work.

Despite being at a private all-boys’ school, I had developed a keen sense of social justice, and was very curious about why there were such extremes of wealth and opportunity in our society. I was good at math, and after freshman year decided to make economics my major. I joined the rugby club, and in sophomore year became the co-captain. I also met, and fell in love with, my first girlfriend, and began to experience how free one could be in university. The results weren’t good — I did well in my economics studies, but socializing and rugby caught up with me in my other courses and my grades were terrible. I learned a bitter lesson that if I was going to do well I had to work hard — I wasn’t nearly smart enough to coast through Harvard.

As a junior and senior, I learned to apply myself and study hard and well, and my grades benefited as a result. I ultimately graduated in 1981 with second-class honours — in Harvard terms, Magna cum laude. At the same time, we had tremendous success on the rugby field, being undefeated for three seasons, and going all the way to the 1981 U.S. national championship, which we narrowly lost to Berkeley in sudden death overtime. Rugby taught me camaraderie, how to be a leader when needed, and how to simply be a teammate when that was more important. It taught me how to win and how to accept defeat. Those lessons were to prove invaluable in my careers as a lawyer and as an elected official.

POLITICS

I am often asked, “How did you get into politics?” The answer is both simple and complicated, and probably goes back to 1967, the year we came to Canada. Before we came, I did not know much, if anything, about Canada. In fact, when my mother told me we were emigrating, I said, “Why are we going to America, Mummy?”

I had been to London a few times, but otherwise knew only my village, Thriplow; Cambridge, where I went to school; and Ipswich, where my Uncle George and Aunt Donza lived.

We landed in Canada in August. My Uncle Jim met us at the boat in Montreal, and the next day took us to Expo ’67. It was incredible — the monorail going through the U.S. dome, the exhibits from all the countries, people speaking every language in the world, Moshe Safdie's Habitat, the rides — I had never seen anything like it. I still didn’t really know what Canada was, but I liked the sense of excitement, the apparent belief that anything was possible.

That sense of excitement continued in Ottawa. The Canadian government had had a huge building program for the Centennial, and living in Ottawa you quickly became aware of the importance of the government to these initiatives — and equally rapidly aware of its members. I remember very clearly Pierre Trudeau becoming prime minister and the incredible sense of optimism in this country — that by coming together through our government, we could accomplish anything. My mum simply loved him — although she was a Labour supporter in England, and would often vote ndp in other elections, she was a confirmed Trudeau supporter.

I also saw another side of Canada in my grade seven and eight school, Hawthorne Elementary. My family was rare at that time — I was an only child of a single mum, living in an apartment building. Most of the kids at Hawthorne were living in single-family homes in a resolutely middle-class neighbourhood. There were a few, however, who were not very well off at all — and lived in Ontario Housing. I saw at Hawthorne that the kids from middleclass families who got into serious trouble had their parents called to the school — whereas the poor kids had the police.

I do not know whether it was this experience, the education system in England (which, at the time, still had the “11 plus” test that tended to send working-class kids to trade schools, while upperclass kids would go to private schools, even if they failed), or my upbringing, but by grade eight I had a clear sense that the world was not just. In Ottawa, justice came through politics. I was impressed by the passion and arguments of David Lewis, the ndp leader, and in the model parliament of grade eight, became the ndp leader.

My views were reinforced at Lakefield and Harvard, and I continued to be interested in politics — but as a way of understanding the world, and seeking justice. I remember one incident very clearly at Harvard. My residence, Quincy House, had a house committee (sort of a student government except that everyone in the residence was a member) that met on Sunday nights. Harvard also had a tradition of “tables,” at which students with a common interest had lunch or dinner, usually with a large sign to announce it: French table, for example, where people would speak in French. One day the guest table was the gay table, and had a large sign that said “gay table.” It caused some controversy, as homophobia was far more prevalent in 1979 than today, and became a topic of discussion at the next house committee meeting. Two students I knew well raised the issue of “signs” and asked the house committee to ban signs from the dining room. It was clear what they meant, but there was embarrassed shuffling and a discussion about the merits, or not, of signs.

I was infuriated by the hypocrisy of it all, and, when it was my turn to speak, said, with considerable passion, “I am the captain of the rugby club. We speak directly. You don’t mean to ban signs, or you would have said something about all the other signs that have been in the dining room. What you mean is to ban gays. Why don’t we debate that instead — Quincy House banning gays? I won’t support that but at least it would be an honest debate.” The proposal was quickly abandoned — and I learned the effectiveness of standing up and naming it when something was wrong.

By junior year at Harvard this sense of justice, together with much better grades, allowed me to think about a way to seek justice — by attending law school.

In senior year I began the process of applying to law school. Having been born in the United States, and having very good grades from Harvard, and an excellent lsat, I knew that I would have a chance to get into a good U.S. law school. But I did not want to live in the United States. Ronald Reagan had just been elected president; as an economics student, I knew that his economic policies were ludicrous. Anyone remotely progressive found his social policies to be frightening. I wanted to live in a country with socially progressive policies, like national health care, and progressive environmental policies (Reagan had famously said that acid rain came from trees), and chose to return to Canada and attend law school at an excellent university, the University of Toronto.

Although I did not earn one of the rare scholarships to the U of T Faculty of Law, the low tuition fees, osap, and summer work allowed me to afford law school. Having seen the movie Paper Chase right before attending U of T, I was a little intimidated by law school at first, but soon grew impatient wanting to practise law. In law school, in pursuit of justice, I worked for Downtown Legal Services and for the Union of Injured Workers, helping people who could not afford a lawyer. In the summers I was fortunate to obtain a position at the prominent Bay Street firm Aird & Berlis, where the lieutenant governor of Ontario, John Black Aird, was the name partner. I subsequently articled at Aird & Berlis, was hired as a lawyer, and in 1989 became a partner at the age of thirty.

By then I was living my dream job. I was a litigation lawyer working in the areas of immigration, employment, and corporate litigation. I had, of course, remained interested in politics — my opinions were as loud as anyone’s in the pub after a game with the Saracens rugby club, and I had joined the ndp and volunteered on a few election campaigns knocking on doors, but that was about it. However, Aird & Berlis had me work on one client that made me think about politics in a much more practical and immediate way: the Toronto Islands Residents Association.

When I articled in 1984/85, the Progressive Conservative provincial government had just ended the long dispute between the residents of Toronto Islands and the regional government of the time (Metro) by passing legislation promoted by Conservative cabinet minister Larry Grossman, Bill 119, that allowed the residents to stay. The legislation required the residents to pay market rent for their homes, which resulted in an arbitration between the city, Metro, and the residents association to determine the rent. I worked on the arbitration, and in doing so, became deeply immersed in the history and reality of the Islands and the extraordinary way its residents had been mistreated, and the extremely effective way they worked to keep a small residential community on the Islands.

As a lawyer, the firm assigned me literally hundreds of cases of Island residents being prosecuted by either the city or Metro. The situation was bizarre. The residents had either built their homes or bought them from someone who had built them — simple structures that generally started out as tents. Many had deteriorated during the long fight to preserve the residential neighbourhoods because the Metro government, the landlord of the land leases (the residents owned the buildings and had land leases with Metro) had refused to consent to building permits. After the province passed legislation allowing the neighbourhoods to stay, Metro still refused to give its consent to permits necessary for repairs to the buildings.

At the same time, the city supported the neighbourhoods, believing, correctly, that small residential communities kept the Islands safer and more alive. The city also had an obligation to enforce property standards and the building code. The result of two governments supporting the residents and one opposing was an outrage — Kafka could have used it as the background for a book.

Under provincial legislation, the residences were legal. Their local government, the City of Toronto, wanted them to stay, and wanted the houses to be brought up to code. Metro refused to accept this, and by a legal manoeuvre — refusing consent (which then and now I believe to have been not legally required) — was thwarting the will of the province and city. Why? It appeared to be sour grapes because the Island residents had fought Metro and won — there was no compelling public-policy reason.

The consequences, though, were serious. The residents were required to repair their houses and were subject to prosecution, fines, and quite serious sanctions if they failed to comply with a city order — but because they could not get building permits, they were subject to prosecution if they did repair their houses — including the possibility of being ordered to remove the offending construction. It was an outrageous abuse of governmental authority. The residents were literally prosecuted if they did, and prosecuted if they didn’t.

To make matters worse, media, particularly the Toronto Star, were not on the Islanders’ side, printing the most outrageous lies about them — that they were illegal squatters (they weren’t), they didn’t pay taxes or rent (they did — rents offered in the arbitration were far higher than those paid by other Island tenants like the Royal Canadian Yacht Club), that the costs of city services like fire and police service on the Island were only incurred by the city because of the residents (both fire and police were necessary regardless), and many others, always done in colourful language. One article, written by a Star reporter who was, coincidentally, also named David Miller, was so offensive that two residents retained me to sue for defamation.

The Star brought a preliminary motion to dismiss the case, arguing that the residents had no claim because the comments were made about the group, not individuals. In court, I argued that my clients were identifiable members of the group that was libelled, and therefore could sue. I was successful in my precedent-setting argument: my clients were able to maintain their suit, and an outof- court settlement was reached shortly afterward.

I was happy for them and defended the rest of the residents well. But the situation was outrageous. At one point, I appeared before a committee with some Island residents — at either City or Metro Hall, I cannot remember which — and was shocked by what I saw happen. Just before us, a wealthy resident of Forest Hill appeared, seeking significant permissions from the city, and was treated extremely well, with councillors bending backwards to ingratiate themselves with her. When my clients appeared, asking simply for the right to apply for a building permit in order to comply with a city order directing them to obtain a permit, they were insulted and ignored by committee members. I couldn’t believe that these people were elected, and was determined to do something about it.

At the time, in the late 1980s, politics was very exciting in Ontario. In 1985, the Liberals and ndp had signed a historic accord, and the Liberals became the government after Lieutenant Governor Aird accepted that the Progressive Conservative minority did not have the confidence of the house, ending forty-three years of Conservative rule in Ontario. It was a time of great activism in government, with groundbreaking laws — like pay equity and the elimination of user fees for medicare — being adopted by the coalition, and such projects as great expansions to public transit were being proposed. By this time I was a member of the ndp, gradually becoming more and more active, handing out leaflets in my Parkdale neighbourhood, knocking on doors during elections, fundraising, eventually becoming an executive member of our riding association. Something else significant was happening in my life too.

I met Jill Arthur on January 2, 1987, at a conference teaching young lawyers how to argue appeals. Jill was speaking with a woman, Christine Medland, whom I had met a few times, and I was certain Jill and I had also met. I said hello to Chris, and turned to Jill and said, “Hi, I am David Miller. Haven’t we met somewhere before?” Jill looked me right in the eyes, said “No,” said goodbye to Chris, and walked off. I knew at that very moment that we would get married and have children, and although it took a while for me to get up the nerve to ask her out, I did. We dated for several years and ultimately, on June 15, 1991, we were married.

But I am getting a little ahead of myself. In the late 1980s I was getting more and more active in the ndp, and was paying more and more attention to City Hall. Other clients — like the business owners at the St. Lawrence Market — had retained me, and I had other dealings with Metro and City Hall that continually convinced me that there was a deep need for modernization and change.

I was also throwing myself more and more into the progressive side of my practice. In addition to our many corporate clients, I was acting on a legal-aid basis for refugee claimants from places like Iran and eastern Europe, hearing stories — confirmed by outside impartial evidence — of great hardship and persecution suffered by people such as Tamil families from Sri Lanka. I enjoyed this work and was so impressed by the strength and resilience of the families who came from around the world to live in Canada, in Toronto, in relative prosperity, seeking opportunity in this most liveable of cities. In addition, Jill, although Canadian, was a migrant too, having been born in Trinidad to a Venezuelan mother and Canadian father, and having grown up in countries like Venezuela, Jamaica, and Colombia; this gave me an additional perspective on those communities.

My interest in social justice and city politics came together as a result of the election of Bob Rae’s ndp government on September 6, 1990. There was incredible euphoria at their election; people have forgotten, but in the next summer, despite the beginnings of the recession brought about by the first free trade agreement, in which Ontario lost hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs as companies that had been here for decades pulled up shop overnight and moved to the U.S., the Rae government was still at sixty per cent in the polls.

As an active member of the High Park ndp executive, and as someone who knew that our local governments badly needed progressive change, I got involved in the preparation for the 1991 municipal election. I hoped we could find candidates who could change the local political culture and fight for policies that could make our city succeed for all of its residents — not just the ones with easy access to power. I became a member of the candidate search committee, with Jane Karwat (now my chief of staff) and Jill Marzetti (my first campaign manager in the 2003 mayoral election). We interviewed possible candidates, for recommendation to the executive for its endorsement, and two were clear choices: Rosemary Martiniuk — a local social worker of Ukranian heritage, born and raised in Bloor West Village — for city councillor, and Karen Ridley — a local teacher — for public school trustee. But we could not find a candidate who was prepared to stand for Metro Council. Finally, one night after a meeting, I drove Jane home and as I dropped her off she said, “What about you? You’d make a good candidate.”

The question caught me totally off-guard. Although I had avidly followed politics, and friends had joked with me at Lakefield about becoming prime minister, I had not seriously considered being a candidate. I was a partner at a prominent Bay Street law firm with an excellent practice, was well-paid (in 1994 my compensation was higher than I will ever be paid as mayor), and was about to get married. I spoke with Jill, talked to some trusted advisors, and Mum, and spoke with Jane and Jill Marzetti again. When they both assured me that I was unlikely to win, my mind was made up: I would seek the party’s endorsement and carry the flag into the 1991 municipal election, a few months after being married.

Getting the endorsement turned out to be a fight; some members of the riding association said that I couldn’t possibly be a real New Democrat because I worked on Bay Street. Ultimately, the riding association endorsed me, and I set out to campaign that fall. My opponent was a wily Conservative incumbent, Derwyn Shea. It was unheard of to unseat an incumbent, but the campaign started on a note that angered me, and I forgot all about being unlikely to win.

The unofficial kickoff date for a municipal election is Labour Day. That weekend, Derwyn’s household newsletter, paid for by the Metro government, arrived, yellow, like his election signs, folded cleverly so that it read, below a photo of him: “It’s time to vote Derwyn Shea.” Of course, when opened it said “Derywn Shea fall newsletter,” but it still offended my sense of fair play that he would use public funds for blatant electoral purposes. I threw myself into the campaign, seeking a leave of absence from my firm and knocking on door after door. It also caused me to make a mistake I have not made since: I attacked Derwyn personally (rather than attacking his policies). I believe you should fight for what you believe in — colourful attacks on policies are fine, but not personal attacks. Personal attacks taint everyone involved.

Jane Karwat, my campaign manager, did something very smart; she made me canvass all of the rooming houses in Parkdale, and although I had lived at King and Jameson among and with the same people, I never realized the dire circumstances many Parkdalians lived in until I actually knocked on their doors. After one long day I said to Jane, “What is the point? None of them are going to vote.” Her reply: “You are going to be representing them if you win. You’d better know who they are and what they need their government to do for them.” It’s a lesson I have never forgotten.

I was not successful in that election, but received nearly eight thousand votes, far more than expected. This prompted serious calls for me to run again, and I did in the 1993 federal election. It was not a good time to run as a New Democrat, and, although I did relatively well compared to other New Democrats, the incumbent Liberal, Jesse Flis, won in a landslide.

The 1994 municipal election was fast approaching and I had a decision to make: did I want to truly try to change the culture at the Metro government, or should I give up on electoral politics and stick to campaigning for others? After long discussions with Jill and Jane, I decided to run. Aird & Berlis had been generous to me, but representing legal aid clients was becoming more and more difficult at a Bay Street law firm — the billing pressures were so intense that you were almost forced to act only for the firm’s business clients. Consequently, I decided that I should resign my partnership and run for office. People were stunned that I would resign to run, but I felt I had to make a total commitment, and I did. I campaigned vigorously, and under Jane’s guidance, effectively, and, on November 14, 1994, was elected the new Metro councillor for High Park, defeating Tory Tony Clement and former MP Andrew Witer.

The role of city councillor is not fully appreciated, but a good one is invaluable. A good councillor is available seven days a week, understands his or her community, and knows how to work with people to build a consensus about how to move the community forward. I had the privilege my first two terms of representing Parkdale as well as High Park. I threw myself into the work and, like any good councillor, knew people on a first-name basis on every block of my ward. I also knew their issues, challenges, and hopes for their neighbourhood.

My 1994 and 1997 campaigns focused on similar issues: public transit, community policing, investment in public services and people, jobs, the environment, and fair taxes, as well as local issues like traffic calming, bike lanes, new bus service, and certain development issues.

At the first council meeting, I was appointed to the Board of Governors of Exhibition Place, thanks to timely intervention of Councillor Howard Moscoe. As part of its renewal, Exhibition Place was about to launch a competition for a new trade centre — now named the Direct Energy Centre. I was able to see first-hand how to manage an important city building project (delivered ahead of schedule, on budget), and create jobs and opportunity — all under the able leadership of Councillor Joe Pantalone. The Direct Energy Centre has met all of its projections about job creation and economic growth, and is a state of the art, beautifully designed public building.

At the same time, there was another job-creation program that had the full support of the provincial government: a proposal to extend two subway lines and build two new ones. The extensions were to be north to York University from Downsview, and west to Sherway from Kipling, and the two new lines were to be west on Eglinton from the University line to the airport, and east on Sheppard from Yonge Street. The lines became a political battle over cost, and, underlying that, the Conservatives and Liberals on council did not want to give Bob Rae a political victory. I supported all four projects: it had been far too long since we had expanded our transit system, and thousands of local, well-paid union construction jobs would be created — a needed boost for an economy still struggling to recover from the thousands of manufacturing jobs lost due to free trade. The politics dictated otherwise: North York mayor Mel Lastman put his political weight behind Sheppard (because he wanted more development at Yonge and Sheppard) and Alan Tonks, the chair of Metro Council, supported the Eglinton line, and these were the expansions that received the support of council.

Construction started quickly on Eglinton, but when the Harris government was elected later in 1995 one of their early acts was to cancel the Eglinton line (which went through the riding that Bob Rae represented provincially and Alan Tonks municipally), forcing the ttc to to spend one hundred million dollars of provincial and Metro money to dig a hole and then fill it in again. An unbelieveable waste of public money, and an incredibly shortsighted approach to city building. Needed rapid transit expansion deferred, yet again.

The province cut in other ways too. The Rae government had embarked on a program of building new schools — schools that included purpose-built childcare centres. The Harris government did not believe in childcare and refused to provide the normal subsidy to these centres. One was in Parkdale, another in North Toronto. Anne Johnston, John Godfrey (the MP for North Toronto), and I worked hard, and with the support of chair Alan Tonks and Olivia Chow, we eventually persuaded Metro to assume the provincial share of these daycares; any other result would have been unacceptable. Other city-wide issues also occupied my time, like stopping cuts to accessibility programs at the ttc, and stopping an appeal by Metro against a court order that gave two brave employees same-sex benefits.

Of course, I worked strongly on local issues, including turning an abandoned police station at 1313 Queen Street in Parkdale into a hub for artists and the local community; cleaning up the western beaches; installing bike lanes on Colborne Lodge Drive and a new bus route on Parkside Drive; working with superintendent Keith Forde of 11 Division and the local community on leading police strategies like neighbourhood patrols; and numerous community meetings on every conceivable issue, from development to traffic calming to liquor licences, and more.

I also helped to achieve something that ended a simmering controversy in Parkdale between middle-class homeowners, angry about the proliferation of illegal rooming houses, and anti-poverty activists, who saw them as the last hope for those who were the least well-off. From both canvassing and living in Parkdale, I knew the conditions that people were forced to live in, and they were unacceptable, to say the least. After numerous community meetings with city staff and my colleague, Councillor Korwin-Kuczynski, we implemented the Parkdale Pilot Project — a project that would legalize rooming houses if they met certain standards of safety, living conditions, and so forth. In essence, it meant that in some rooming houses there would be fewer, but better and safer, units. That project helped hundreds of the least well-off residents of Toronto to live in dignity.

The result of all of this was that I learned important lessons about myself, working with people, and how to succeed on an issue in local government. After being re-elected in 1997, I served as chair of the committee to oversee amalgamation, as the caucus whip for the Greater Toronto Services Board, and as a member of the ttc. I fought strongly, and effectively, for the environment, public service, and public transit. Post-amalgamation was chaotic, and I looked heavily to the example and wisdom of experienced councillors like Anne Johnston in helping to chart a course through the politics of the Mel Lastman era, and fight the results of the massive downloading of provincial services to the city — a move that has crippled city finances to this day.

I faced a tough battle in the 2000 elections against Bill Saundercook. The boundaries of our ridings had been changed, and I faced the challenge of defeating Bill, who was a popular incumbent with fifteen years on city council. Politically, there was a clear difference between me and Bill: he had voted to send Toronto’s garbage to a lake in Northern Ontario that was once an open-pit mine (the Adam’s Mine), and I had bitterly opposed it because it risked polluting the northern waters for generations. I felt confident that the differences were clear enough that I could win, but halfway through the campaign, it mattered much less.

My mother had been having tests for some time because she had lost energy, and just did not seem right. She was a woman who had received a full payout of her sick bank because she had never missed a day of work. On a Friday afternoon I took her to the hospital where we received the news: my mother had cancer. The rest of the campaign is a blank — I won, substantially, but was absorbed by her health. Tragically, her cancer was one that had a high survivability rate if the tumour could be removed, but it was so close to her aeorta that the surgery wasn’t an option. She received terrific palliative care in her apartment across the street, and Jill was magnificent, but we watched Mum wither away until she died, holding my hand — just her and me — on September 23, 2001.

She showed incredible bravery and never complained about her fate, preferring to spend time with Julia and Simon — particularly Julia, to whom she would give bright shinny pennies when her granddaughter visited. I often asked Mum if she would like me to bring friends from her teaching days in Ottawa to visit, and she said, “No, I want them to remember me as I was — happy and alive.” When she died we asked Julia if she wanted to come to the visitation, and she said, “No, I want to remember Nana as she was — happy and alive.”

While my mother was ill, lots of people spoke to me about running for mayor. Like them, although I personally liked Mel Lastman, I couldn’t abide the city government he was leading — it was run for the benefit of insiders, allowed corruption, like the mfp scandal, to flourish, and there was no plan to build a city for the twenty-first century — one that was prosperous, liveable, and had opportunity for all. These issues were all revealed by the decision to build the bridge to the Island airport — a decision that favoured the back- room interests of one well-connected businessman over the interests of thousands of jobs in waterfront revitalization, the interests of tens of thousands of Torontonians without cottages who used the Island as their park, the interests of the film industry, those of thousands of condominium residents at the waterfront, and of course, the Islanders.

It was a difficult decision, though in September 2001 Julia was six, Simon four. Already, the demands of elected office made it difficult for me to be the kind of husband or father I believed I should be, although I did have one treat as dad: walking my children to daycare and then to the local public school almost every day. Nobody needed their councillor at 8:30 a.m.

In the midst of my grief over the passing of my mother, I was approached by a constituent, prominent businessman Tom Kierans, a Conservative. Tom believed in me because he thought I could bring good government to a city that desperately needed it, supported my rumoured run for mayor, and wanted to help. At his suggestion, I met with John Laschinger, a prominent Conservative political strategist, and Patrick Gossage, a prominent Liberal media guru. I also met with the United Steelworkers and Brian Cochrane from cupe local 416, both of whom were supportive from the start, as were city councillors Joe Pantalone, Howard Moscoe, Anne Johnston, and Sandra Bussin.

I had an important conversation with David Crombie, whose first question of me was, “If you don’t run for mayor, will you run again as councillor?” As I thought about that, I realized the answer was “no.” I had done what I could as a councillor. I believed Toronto needed a progressive mayor who believed in public service, and who was prepared to build a city for all residents through great services like public transit. It was clear to me that there was no candidate with that agenda, and therefore no one I could support. With the help of this group, I began my run for mayor on January 2, 2003.

Although my campaign would be defined by the Island airport, to me, and to the Torontonians who supported me, that issue was symbolic of a city governement that was not acting in the interests of individual Torontonians. In my nine years as councillor, I had met people from every neighbourhood in this city. My opponents assumed that I only knew downtown: in fact, I knew the people, stories, and neighbourhoods across the city.

And I had another advantage — in the same way that when I met Jill I knew we would be married and have children, I knew that I was supposed to run for mayor. While victory was uncertain, I knew absolutely that I was put on earth to run. That knowledge allowed me the freedom to throw myself into the election with absolute commitment, and I worked literally sixteen hours a day every day at a grassroots level at events across Toronto.

People of course know the result: I was elected mayor of Toronto on November 10, 2003. Very few know the Toronto that I have witnessed as councillor and as mayor: a Toronto whose people are doing remarkable things, often out of the sight of the media; a Toronto where bank managers become homeless — then find their way off the street; a Toronto where selfless newcomers reach out to help others, only to be forced to overcome family tragedies; a Toronto where innovative young environmentalists are leading the world in strategies to fight climate change. That is the Toronto that is seen through my eyes.