Patti Moffat has called Shawville home for the last 14 years and has decided to make a run for mayor after eight years on the Shawville municipal council.

Moffat, the daughter of a military serviceman, spent the early part of her life travelling the world as an army brat. The experience informed her understanding of how different communities work, which she believes has been integral to her work on council.

Early in her career she studied hotel and restaurant management and graduated with a diploma. “But my [real] love has always been numbers,” she said. Within a few years, she would switch career paths and take a job at the Royal Bank in Guelph. After nine years, she found her dream job working for a bookkeeping firm in Pembroke, where she settled to be closer to her parents.

In Pembroke, she met her future husband, Barry Moffat, a dairy farmer from Shawville. “We couldn’t convince the cows to come to Ontario,” she said jokingly. So they moved to Shawville.

In turn, the couple had a baby girl, which Moffatt called a miracle in her interview with The Equity. “We were told we couldn’t have children, so [I am] very blessed to have my daughter,” she said.

After her daughter was born, she felt very fortunate to have a job that allowed her to work from home, which she has done while raising her daughter for the last 11 years.

Raising a young girl in the community is what ultimately lead her to politics. There wasn’t much going on in the community for children and young families outside of hockey and figure skating. So she started a mother-child playgroup and eventually formed the Parents’ Voice with other mothers in the community.

But still, the community needed more.” I wanted to be a voice on the council for families,” Moffat said. “My father always taught me: You’re either part of the problem or part of the solution and you better be part of the solution.” She won seat six and has been on the council ever since. Most of her time has been on the finance committee, but she has worked on the personnel, events, parks and recreation committees, among others. During the last four years, she has also been pro-mayor.

During her early days, she found a certain complacency in the municipal office, which she found frustrating. “One of the things I hated most on the council was constantly hearing, ‘but that isn’t how we do things around here.’” People learned quickly that she wouldn’t accept that, and she said that attitude led to some positive changes.

Though she is relatively new to the community, she is proud to call it home. “I just have a passion to see this town grow and remain positive because one of the first things I noticed about Shawville was that it had a unity and a heart. You can really count on your neighbours in this community,” she said.

Ageing Infrastructure

For Moffat, the number one issue in the community is ageing infrastructure. While the council has worked hard over the past few years to address problems such as the water tower, there is always more on the list.

Having been on the finance committee, she is keenly aware of financial limitations and the need for “fiscal restraint.” One way, she believes, to surmount budgetary constraints is in the form of grants. Grants are integral and the council needs to do whatever it can to obtain them in order to address shortfalls.

Economic challenges brought on by the pandemic

The pandemic has been par

Particularly challenging for small businesses, so if elected mayor Moffat intends that to be one of the first things she wishes to address. She would like to reach out to businesses directly and find out what they need and what the council can do. She would also like to have roundtable discussions with business owners, government officials, and members of the public to develop support mechanisms for existing businesses and find new ways to attract business and jobs to the community.

The deterioration of health services

Moffatt acknowledges that health care is a provincial mandate, “but I think that it is our responsibility to keep knocking on that door to keep pounding on them [and fighting for what we need],” she said.

The loss of the obstetrics ward is of particular concern for her. The ward is like an anchor tenant in a mall. “Once a hospital loses [the ward] it loses its power,” Moffat added, “it loses its vitality.”

“The majority of children born to Shawville residents are born in Pembroke. How is that beneficial to the government to be paying the Ontario health care system for services that they could be provided here?”

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