One year out from the next municipal election, scheduled for Nov. 2, 2025, THE EQUITY checked in with the 20 people who have been voted in to lead the communities from Luskville to Rapides des Joachims, including the MRC Pontiac warden.
We will be publishing these interviews to offer readers a sense of what these local leaders feel they’ve accomplished since their term began, and what they hope to do with the last year before their seat is once again up for grabs. We will publish three interviews each week, working our way through the Pontiac from east to west.
As the Municipality of Otter Lake is holding a by-election for its mayoral seat in January, THE EQUITY will then publish an interview with the newly-elected mayor.
Edward Walsh — Clarendon
Interview by Sophie Kuijper Dickson
When you ran for mayor three years ago, what were your main priorities?
I knew within our municipality, a lot of our infrastructure had become very aged, so one of our goals was to build up some infrastructure for some of the roads that had gotten outdated, and they needed some TLC. And with regard to our equipment for doing that work, a lot of our fleets were from back in the 90s. I also didn’t find there was a lot of communication between that level and the ratepayers, and I wanted to change that.
How much of this have you achieved?
Over the last three years we’ve been able to rebuild our fleets. We used to always contract out for a lot of our work, so we got a backhoe so we can do a lot of our own work without having to wait to rent somebody’s backhoe. We’ve hired staff that were able to do multiple functions as opposed to just driving a snow plow truck or grader, they have a broader knowledge as opposed to one just being able to do one function.
For our road infrastructure, a lot of it was too small to actually accommodate big farming equipment. We’ve been trying to build those roads up so it makes it easier for the farming community to go from point A to point B.
[Regarding accessibility] I’ve never refused anybody. Anybody could call me at home, or send me an email. I’ve replied to every email and answered every phone call. We might not have the proper solution for it but my door is always open. That was one change that I made and I just found it wasn’t like that before.
What do you think has been your greatest accomplishment this term so far?
I mean we can’t do nothing about the evaluation of people’s properties and stuff like that but I’d said when I first ran I wasn’t going to increase our taxes, and we haven’t done that. And last year we actually decreased our mill rate to help accommodate for the increase of evaluations of people’s individual properties. Other municipalities have had big increases.
What do you believe are your municipality’s greatest needs?
We’ve been talking about that as councillors. One of our biggest problems is that as a municipality it’s either residential or farming, like we don’t have a lot of commercial stuff. But even though we don’t have a lot of that stuff, we’ve brought in new families, and we don’t have the infrastructure in place like with parks and rinks, so we always piggyback off of Shawville.
We’ve been looking at the different ways of giving something to our residents and are trying to find a place to put a new ballfield.
What are the challenges in meeting these needs?
It’s location. You’ve got to find an area where people are willing to have it. And it’s to purchase the property. Like Clarendon has a couple of lots in different places but they just weren’t in good locations to do what we actually wanted to do.
What do you hope to accomplish in this last year before the next municipal election?
With regards to some of our own infrastructure, we’re looking into grants right now. So I’m hoping that’s something we can bring to the table over the next year.
And with the taxes, we’re just getting into the budget now, but we’re hoping to keep our mill rate what it was for last year, maybe even a bit lower.
You try to just keep an even keel and keep moving forward. I think we’ve done a lot of improvements within the municipality and I think people realize that and hopefully in the future they’ll reelect me.
After three years as a member of the MRC Pontiac’s Council of Mayors, what do you believe Pontiac leaders should be prioritizing to improve the quality of life for the people who live here?
Overall I think for the whole Pontiac, whatever is good for one municipality should be good for the other.
One thing that should be done, or that would help, is to spread some of that stuff around, so it doesn’t look like [one area] is being favoured.
There’s some [projects] that are still on the back burner like the pool. But since the three years I’ve been in, people keep telling me that if they would have had that pool somewhere more central they would have had support from the whole Pontiac as opposed to just that one area.
Karen Daly Kelly — Thorne
Interview by Sophie Kuijper Dickson
When you ran for mayor three years ago, what were your main priorities?
To try and help a transition from city people to country people, that’s basically what my idea was. Because of new situations, and more people coming in from the city, and expecting our bylaws to be the same as the city’s. And they’re not. We’re in the country, and some people don’t seem to understand that, and expect a lot more than what we have sometimes.
We didn’t have a fire department too well at that time either. The fire services have been on the wonky aspect for about four years. We lost our fire chief and we haven’t had one since. And there were a few internal problems. [ . . . ] So we amalgamated with Otter Lake, because they’re a much larger population than we are, with a lot of well talented firemen and first responders. We’re not prepared right now to be our own fire department anymore.
How much of this have you achieved?
[Laughs] I think I’ve educated a few people. I can’t say a specific amount but a lot of people understand now that I’m not totally blind, I see what’s going on. But because of this new evaluation, I tell you my popularity dropped 20 per cent. They take it out on people.
I was hoping to recruit more firemen but it didn’t work, because [the Otter Lake fire department] had already hired a few of the guys from Thorne. There was personality conflicts as well. I think there’s still growing pains, because we’re dealing with two separate entities. If we could have a strong base again without their loyalties being strictly to Otter Lake we would be better off, but we don’t.
What do you think has been your greatest accomplishment this term so far?
I think just being a very rounded type of mayor insomuch as that I listen to all the people and try and solve certain problems. I’m not trying to put myself in a golden horseshoe or anything like that. But I stay calm most of the time.
What do you believe are your municipality’s greatest needs?
Right now it would be the evaluation I would fix, to come down to normal stuff, or at least give a knowledge of what is going to happen in the future to make sure all ratepayers are fairly treated. That’s about all we can hope for. Because right now, according to the evaluation, a lot of people are feeling it. Certain people figure they’re going to have to sell their homes and stuff like this. It is heartbreaking to see when people get put into that situation. I’d like somehow or other, if we could find a solution to that situation, it would be a lot better for everybody.
What are the challenges in meeting these needs?
[The evaluation process] comes down from the government through multiple levels, and we cannot change, we have to get another set of evaluators in, if the government will let us, to offset these assessors. We would like to be able to change the assessments so that they would reflect a little bit better for people. Because let’s face it, if a house is worth $1 million, that’s going to hurt everybody around them. I know the MRC is working hard on it. It’s very tricky. I’m hoping we don’t have to increase the mill rate but you can’t guarantee that until you see what all the moneys are about.
What do you hope to accomplish in this last year before the next municipal election?
Stay alive. Just to try and make sure that the office doesn’t implode with all of this evaluation stuff going on, because people are getting very uptight about the whole thing.
After three years as a member of the MRC Pontiac’s Council of Mayors, what do you believe Pontiac leaders should be prioritizing to improve the quality of life for the people who live here?
All of the municipalities are trying in our own way to make life easier for our ratepayers, and so that our ratepayers understand where we’re going, and how we’re trying to help them. It’s very tricky, because nine times out of 10, how many people actually like politicians? And they consider us politicians unfortunately. I went into mayorship for a totally different reason. Some mayors want to be politicians, and that’s the difference between us.
Carl Mayer — Alleyn and Cawood
Interview by K.C. Jordan
When you ran for mayor three years ago, what were your main priorities?
Here there’s a lot of seniors, so you’ve got to try and keep the taxes low. A lot of them are just old people, and a lot of them never worked in the government so a lot of them don’t even have any kind of a pension. Down here the biggest problem is, you have to have your own vehicle because there’s no taxis, bussing or anything. All these older people, they have to have a vehicle to get around, plus their taxes, plus insurance. When you’re living on a $1,400/month pension that doesn’t go far.
How much of this have you achieved?
We went for a couple years there with no interest. We wanted to give people a chance to pay their taxes without charging them interest, [and] we’ve done that for two or three years to try to help people. If you’re late on your payments it’s zero interest, and that’s it.
We’ve been doing lots of road work with the gas tax. Keeping the roads in shape is a big thing, we have a lot of roads to look after.
What do you think has been your greatest accomplishment this term so far?
We’re doing an addition on our building right now, it’s pretty near finished. We’re putting a gym downstairs for the public. The new library opens on the 22nd of November. We closed our library during covid, gutted it all and redid it all. They’re doing the work on it now, it’s looking good.
What do you believe are your municipality’s greatest needs?
We’re trying to fix part of Cawood Road here, but it’s going to cost a lot of money to do it. We’ve been putting lipstick on it every year. We’re looking to get grants for it, but it doesn’t seem to be working so we’ll have to start doing it on our own I guess.
What are the challenges in meeting these needs?
Money. It’s good that we get $20,000 a year from André Fortin, but $20,000 doesn’t do much road work. It was the same thing with the plowing when we had to take it over ourselves, and what we got from the Ministry of Transport to do the roads. We were only getting $166,000 and it was costing us 230-some thousand to get it snowplowed for the winter.
What do you hope to accomplish in this last year before the next municipal election?
Trying to keep our taxes down. We don’t know what’s going to happen. We can adjust our mill rate, but it’s going to help some people but not help others. But you can’t have a mill rate for every single person.
The property sales are still happening again. They’ve just opened a new subdivision here again. They’ve bought two more lots, and they’re subdividing it. I’m sure they’re going to have them for sale here soon.
We still have the Mount O’Brien project to do. It’s a grant through the government, and we ordered outhouses and we bought the road to Mount O’Brien from the owner so we can open it up to anybody. We opened it up last year, but we haven’t got time to do work on the road. This year we want to fix the road where people can go up in a vehicle right to the lake and have camping.
After three years as a member of the MRC Pontiac’s Council of Mayors, what do you believe Pontiac leaders should be prioritizing to improve the quality of life for the people who live here?
We’re at the tail end of everything down here. When we went to a meeting for fire protection up in that area, we sat two days and then they said “No, you’re too far away for anybody else to help you. You’ll have to go on your own or go with Kaz.”
With the shares, we pay toward the PPJ . . . I have nothing against the bike paths, but it doesn’t do anything for us down here. Same with TransporAction, the buses go up and down the 148 but they don’t come down this way. Any of our people, we have to drive to Kaz and get on the Gatineau buses to go anywhere. And that all comes out of our shares. And we don’t get to see any of it. We were paying for years up there for fire protection and we weren’t getting anything, and we still had to pay them so much a year. And then we had to pay Kaz on top of that.
