Thread by @kim_crawley

Hazel McCallion is dead. I grew up in Mississauga, roughly between 1986-2000. My late father was on the library board and he was the first recipient of the Mississauga Arts Award in writing.

I met her once.

I have thoughts... 🧵

https://twitter.com/Jessa_McLean/status/1619697299009208320

I don't have to look this up. No one in North America has been mayor of a city for longer than Hazel McCallion. Her stint as mayor of Mississauga was at least 25-30 years long.

But she wasn't a great mayor, just a mayor in a very lucky situation...

Her mayoralty started in the late 1970s, she was previously the mayor of Streetsville until all those west of Toronto towns were amalgamated as Mississauga.

During her first term as mayor of Mississauga, the legendary train disaster of 1979 occurred...

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_Miss…

It was the largest peacetime mass evacuation in modern North American history.

She really didn't do much, the brave train workers and firefighters were the true heroes. But like Rudy Guilianni and 9/11, she got to bask in the glory...

She was reelected in the early 1980s because she was perceived to be responsible for how well the train disaster was managed.

When my parents moved me to Mississauga in 1986, I was two years old. McCallion was probably on her 2nd or 3rd term...

All throughout my Mississauga childhood, the city was booming economically and in population size.

I never ever saw an abandoned building until I moved away from Mississauga. I didn't know abandoned buildings were a thing...

If a retail store had to close in Square One, it was always replaced with a new store within days.

Don't laugh... Square One was the centerpiece of my childhood. Until I was a teenager, I lived in Cooksville. As a teen, I lived in Meadowvale...

McCallion was credited for Mississauga's economic success. But it was the 1990s and tax laws made it cheaper for corporate HQs to be very close to Toronto in Mississauga than actually in Toronto.

To this day, corporate HQs is probably Mississauga's number one industry...

I only realize all this now as a nearly 40 year old adult that McCallion was no great politician, she was just mayor in the luckiest circumstances a mayor could possibly be in.

My parents were middle class white people in 1990s Mississauga. Things seemed absolutely wonderful...

Few people know Mississauga as intimately as I do.

Fun fact: I was the very first child to be inside the Central Library. That's because during the summer of 1991, dad was on the library board and he took me into the under construction library to help transfer books...

from the old Central Library at 5 and 10.

If you don't know what "5 and 10" means, you ain't from Mississauga!

If you visit the 3rd floor archives of the Central Library, ask to see their Michael Crawley collection...

Is the children's department of the Central Library still on the basement floor? Is the Port Credit style lighthouse replica still there?

Are used books still sold in the lobby? That was my dad's decision.

Noel Ryan of auditorium fame was a close friend of daddy's...

Anyway, dad has been dead since 2013. I haven't lived in Mississauga since 2000, and I haven't been to Square One (the heart and soul of Mississauga) since 2017.

In adulthood, I've lived in Hamilton, Burlington, Brantford, and Toronto. I returned to Toronto for good in 2018...

I live on the Etobicoke lakeshore, and I can see the shores of Mississauga from the other side of Humber Bay.

I have mixed feelings about Hazel's death. But basically, she wasn't a great mayor, just in a really great situation she got Credit for. Port it elsewhere.

P. S. I was groped by Martin Dobkin in 1994 when I was 10.

He was Mississauga's brief first mayor and my family doctor at the time. 🤐