In the coming weeks, THE EQUITY will be publishing interviews with candidates in all 13 competitive mayoral races as well as the warden candidates.

Shawville

Bill McCleary was born and raised in Shawville. He was elected mayor in 2021, and served his first term as councillor from 2013-2017. He lost his bid for mayor in 2017, but was re-elected to council in a 2018 by-election.

Before entering the world of politics, he operated Bean’s Service Station in Shawville for over a decade, worked at the Smurfit-Stone pulp mill in Litchfield for almost three decades until it closed in 2008, and worked as mailman for Canada Post until he retired in 2018.

“I feel I can accomplish some files that aren’t completed yet and I would like another four years to do that,” McCleary said, explaining why he decided to run for a second term. 

“I’m a land owner. I have skin in the game. I know the needs, I know the wants. I’m not coming in having to learn everything about the municipality.”

When asked what he believes to be the town’s greatest challenges in this moment, McCleary said finding a sustainable path forward for the Shawville arena and determining a repair strategy for the town’s water pipes are both significant needs. 

“Every small town is struggling with infrastructure, lack of finances, etc., the arena being a prime example. Shawville has obviously paid the deficit on that for many years, and it’s getting to the point now where it’s no longer affordable,” he said.  

“It’s very complicated. The first thing we have to do is bring together a group that will manage it and share in the deficit. Each municipality would have a representative on this committee that decides how money is spent, and deficits are funded. [ . . . ] You hit a brick wall when you try to build an arena because there’s just not enough money. But we have to attempt it again because what we have is 60 years old and it’s not dependable and very expensive, so something has to be done.” 

He also said the town’s underground infrastructure – its water pipes – will also soon be due for replacement.

“It’s piping that was put in the ‘60s, and it’s metal, and metal rusts over time. Now and again you have a pipe that blows, you have to dig it up and put a patch on it, but at some point in time we’ll have to pick a section where we’ll have to change the main line [ . . . ] We just have to pick which one is more urgent,” he said. 

Of his accomplishments during his tenure at the municipality to date, he said he wouldn’t take credit for anything, except perhaps for moving the office to using direct deposit for paying bills while he was councillor.

“I can come up with ideas, and they can say yes they agree with that, or they don’t,” he said. 

When asked what initiatives he believes the MRC’s council of mayors should be focusing on to improve life for residents across the county, he said he does not believe the provincial government’s current model of funding economic development through FRR grants is effective in bringing jobs to the region.  

“The system doesn’t really work. I think the provincial government is happy that they throw a few million dollars at us, and you give out $100,000 here and there, but it’s not creating employment like it should,” he said. “I’d like to see [the MRC] work in collaboration with the provincial government to bring bigger projects here, but it doesn’t seem to be the way the system is working.”

Linda Davis is from Ottawa but spent a lot of time visiting her grandparents in the Pontiac throughout her life. She bought an old farmhouse in Clarendon in 2010, and moved to an apartment in Shawville five years ago.  

Davis got her first taste of municipal politics in 1994, when she was elected as the councillor for Kitchissippi ward of the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton. She held this seat for two terms until 2001. 

She was also a federal public servant for 16 years, gaining experience as a federal contract negotiator and as a union leader with the Public Service Alliance of Canada. 

“I learned my way to organize communities area by area, like floor by floor of the building, or here, street by street. So that really helped in the incinerator fight, because I knew the education component was really important.”

Davis was heavily involved in organizing opposition to the energy-from-waste incinerator proposed by MRC Pontiac Warden Jane Toller, this after she ran in the county’s first race for warden in 2017. She decided to run just after her husband passed away.

“I thought, jeepers, I’ve got so much time on my hands. I went in and put my name in. It probably wasn’t a very solid decision at the time, but I just knew I had a lot of energy,” she said. 

“Now people are swarming me to say, ‘run,’ but the fact of it is that I’m committed to Shawville. It’s my home. [ . . . ] It’s been my observation that we could benefit from more experienced leadership,” she said. 

“For example, across from the United Church, [the developer] tore up the sidewalks. Did [the municipality] not know that if a developer tears up your sidewalk, it’s at their cost for them to restore it to the condition that they found it? Well, they didn’t know. And I mean, this is just a lack of training.” 

She said if elected mayor, she would push for more transparent government and open plenaries at both the municipal and MRC level. She pointed to what she believed to be Shawville’s delayed release of the arena engineering study it received this summer as an example of the lack of transparency she sees. 

“All the stakeholders have to be immediately informed of what’s going on. It’s got to be open and transparent.”

She said she’s frequently gotten the criticism that she is trying to bring a big city approach to Shawville. 

“But Shawville has big city problems now,” she said, pointing to the town’s sudden boom in housing development over the past year as an example. 

She said her priorities in her first year would be helping the municipality tighten up its budget, and ensuring the municipality has proper guardrails in place to ensure housing development happens in a way that doesn’t put a strain on other resources that may not yet be able to support more residents. 

She is also passionate about helping newcomers feel welcome here, and said part of this project involves restoring respect to council which she feels she has not been granted.

“If you’re chairing a meeting, you should be very respectful. Even if it’s a divergent opinion. You allow people to speak.”

She said that at MRC level, she would push for a community policing model that looks at preventative rather than punitive policing, and would encourage a focus on growing a full range of housing options across the county. 

“There are people in our community that are really hurting, and we need to make sure . . . are we really meeting the needs?”

Bristol

Valerie Twolan-Graham has been a councillor for the Municipality of Bristol for four years, representing the Norway Bay ward. 

She grew up in Bristol Mines, attended school in Bristol and Shawville, and then moved to the city to pursue higher education. She completed her undergraduate degree in English literature and theatre, and her master’s in education before becoming a teacher with the Ottawa Carleton District School Board for 30 years, all while keeping a foot in Bristol. 

In 1982 she and her husband built a four-season home in the municipality, that they used on weekends and holidays over the years, and she moved back to the municipality permanently almost six years ago. 

Since moving back to the area, she has become involved in numerous community initiatives, including the formation of Bristol’s Healthy Living Committee, and as vice-president of the Pontiac Community Players theatre group. She has continued teaching part-time at the Pontiac Continuing Education Centre in Shawville. 

Twolan-Graham said she is running for mayor after four years as councillor because she believes she’s served her community well and has the time and energy to give to some of Bristol’s most pressing needs right now. 

“I have been a council liaison with the 14-person pier committee since its formation and am extremely proud of the work we have done on this initiative, including the submission and receipt of two FRR grants,” she said.

“This committee work has allowed me to fully understand the power of a community led initiative and the tireless work of volunteers. It has been a remarkable experience and has allowed me to demonstrate my leadership at a municipal level.”

Twolan-Graham said she believes she would make a good mayor because she is committed to frequent and transparent communication with Bristol residents.

“I communicate decisions that Bristol has made well to the community. I try to engage my residents so that they have input. I believe that I have a very firm understanding of the residents’ concerns.” 

And she wants to do more of this. 

“I do believe that things should be communicated in a better way and also be more transparent [ . . . ] so that people are looped into the decision making, and that they know that their ideas are welcomed at that table. And more transparency, because we certainly have to justify the rising cost of services.” 

Twolan-Graham said aside from improving communication and working to keep taxes low, she is also concerned about how to support Bristol’s residents in aging well in their community. 

She said in her role at the MRC Pontiac council of mayors table, she would welcome more discussion, open debate and collaboration between municipalities.

“We need to foster more opportunities for municipalities to work together. For example, in the areas of tourism where we can showcase our region. I did not want to suggest in any way amalgamation of municipalities,” she said.

“We are one of the poorest MRCs. And when our council of mayors speaks about economic development and industry, how do we foster those opportunities so that we have a population that doesn’t age out here? [ . . . ] I think that [having a] vision of where the Pontiac should be in 10 years, and how we get there, would be important to have on the table. So that’s what drives a smaller vision within a municipality. Sometimes it just feels to me that we just really work in isolation.” 

She said her campaign will ramp up Oct. 6, and she plans to be as active and as visible as she can. 

Brent Orr has been mayor of Bristol since 2009. In the 2021 election he secured a fourth consecutive term, winning the position by acclamation. 

Orr was born and raised in Bristol. He spent 20 years commuting to the city where he worked as a mechanic, spending evenings and weekends working on his family farm in the Pontiac, before coming back to work as a foreman and building inspector for Bristol when Jack Graham was mayor. He then took a job as a mechanic at Bristol Marine, and to this day still works as a mechanic and runs his own beef farm. 

He said he’s running for a fourth term to finish some projects the municipality has on the go. 

“We’ve started the repairs on the pier, we’re just finishing the expansion to the firehall, we have some roads we want to rebuild, so we want to see them through to their end so that’s more or less why I want to continue being mayor,” Orr said. 

“My pitch is just a common sense approach and to be fiscally responsible with [voters’] money, to spend wisely.”

He said pressing challenges for the municipality right now are deciding how to proceed with repairing the Norway Bay pier, and figuring out a system to ensure all the municipality’s septic systems are pumped according to provincial standards, particularly those along the Ottawa River.

In terms of the pier, he said the latest engineering report received by the municipality this spring indicated the pier’s condition was not quite as dire as was previously believed, allowing it to be reopened for the summer after some basic repairs, while the municipality works to find a long-term solution. 

“We have four to five years to make major repairs, so right now we’re trying to decide on options. We’re looking for pros and cons and pricing, so that’s where we’re at right now before we make the final decision,” Orr said. “Myself, I want to do it through our regular budgeting and grants. I don’t want to borrow money to do this through a borrowing bylaw.” 

He said if elected, his priority for the first year would be to pick a solution for the pier rehabilitation, and to continue to work on improving road infrastructure.  

“The price of road construction, asphalt, anything like that has increased drastically, and costs a lot. We have a lot of aging paved roads. To rehabilitate those with culverts and such is a major undertaking.”

When asked what initiatives he believes the MRC’s council of mayors should prioritize to improve life for residents across the county, he said he would like to see a focus on what he believes are the necessities. 

“Cell coverage, and retaining the hospital and healthcare workers is a big one. Hydro is another one too, with all the outages. It’s slated for upgrades but it’s a long piece out, so that’s another thing we’re pushing for, to make it happen sooner than later,” he said. “The power is to send resolutions to different levels of government.”

Orr said he will be making an effort to be at more public functions over the coming month, to meet with Bristol’s residents.

“[Campaigning] gets us out of our comfort zone and puts us out there so we can hear more, rather than just [the concerns] at the council meetings,” he said.

Clarendon

Edward Walsh has been Clarendon mayor for four years, prior to which he served as councillor for one term. 

He was born and raised in Clarendon and has lived there for 60 years. While he is the fourth generation of his family to live in the Pontiac, he is the first to have not continued with farming, instead working a 37-year career in the city with Canadian Security Intelligence Service. 

He said he ran for council in 2017 because after several decades working for the federal government, he came to realize Pontiac was underrepresented. 

“The Pontiac is a beautiful region but we’re underfunded and undersupported from different provincial and federal levels. I thought I’d try to improve what we had in our municipality and the MRC Pontiac as a whole.”

Walsh said he thinks he makes a good mayor because he is a “very locally oriented person.” 

“I’ve always been heavily involved with volunteering, and helping out the people. I’ve been on the local Lions Club for the last 18 years, helping with the seniors and the less fortunate,” he said. 

“Being able to talk to the public and stuff like that, it does matter. In my four year term, I’ve never not replied to a phone call or email. I’ve always had an open-door policy if people have concerns.”

Walsh said he is running for a second term as mayor because there are projects he’s started with council that he would like to see through.

One such project, he said, is the grant he helped Clarendon secure which was then forwarded to the Shawville RA to build a second ball field. 

“A lot of our kids can’t even play ball there because they’re over-scheduled and are leaving to go somewhere else. Hopefully within the next year they’ll have the ribbon cutting.” 

He’s also proud to have kept the municipality’s mill rate low, this year at 54 cents, and to have upgraded some of the municipality’s machinery, making it possible for it to do more of its own maintenance work, rather than contracting it out. 

In terms of challenges he sees at the municipal level, he pointed to property evaluations.

“Like everything else, everybody is hurting nowadays. We never want to see evaluations increase again and next year will be our third year in the roll, so I’ll definitely go to bat to try to maintain what we currently have. Some of that is outside our hands, but we can help people out with the mill rate.”

He also said because a large part of the municipality is zoned as agricultural, it is limited in how it can develop more housing on its territory. 

He said in his role at the MRC, he was a big advocate for the solar energy project it was working on.

“We have the land, and apparently if you listen to them, we have the best amount of sun per capita, per territory within the whole province of Quebec. I think moving forward, if that ever came to fruition it would be of value to the whole MRC Pontiac.”

Walsh said both of the sites renewable energy developer Innergex proposed to Hydro-Québec for solar farms were in the Municipality of Clarendon – one a private site, and one owned by the municipality.

He also noted the revitalization of the forestry sector and the development of housing as other issues top of mind for him when he’s sitting at the council of mayors table.   

“It’s a beautiful region, it’s just underdeveloped. At the end of the day how do you get those people here?”

Michael Hodgins has lived in the same house on Highway 148 near the flashing light his entire life, with the exception of 12 years during which he moved to the farmhouse on the same property. He’s worked as a mechanic for most of his life, both through his business in Shawville, which he ran for 18 years, and through his current job in the city.

Hodgins said he used to be very involved with various community groups, including a local Cubs club, the Kinsmen Club, as founding member of the Pontiac Chamber of Commerce, and as ball coach and eventually president of the Shawville RA. 

“It’s not always about my kids. It’s about other kids, or about grandkids, or about the kids of the future in the Pontiac,” he said. “And that’s one thing I find a lot of people don’t do.” 

He said since taking a job in the city when his own business closed, he has lost touch with the Pontiac.

“My involvement with community groups and services has dissipated to nothing, and I really feel disconnected to the people of the Pontiac,” he said.

“I want to come back to the Pontiac and be part of the Pontiac in the development of it, or the well being of its citizens, and that is something I’ve been passionate about for all my life.” 

Hodgins said originally he was thinking about running as a councillor for Clarendon. 

“But I think representation at the MRC level, as a mayor, I can represent better for the whole of the people of the Pontiac, not just the constituents of Clarendon. But I want to look after my constituents. Don’t get me wrong. That has to be first and foremost.”

Hodgins said one pressing concern for him at the municipal level is increasing safety at the intersection of Hwy. 148 and Rte. 303, at the flashing lights. He said even though the government put in a flashing light years ago, he doesn’t feel the intersection has become any safer. He would like to see a full stop light installed there. He said if elected he would also work to build more connectivity between residents. 

“I know we’re a rural community, but I think networking and events, maybe more meet and greets, social events that involve our citizens.”

He said at the county level, he would like to see greater networking and collaboration between municipalities. 

“We need to look at the broader region of the MRC and the Pontiac to work as a team, to be able to make sure that we’re heard at the provincial and federal levels, and I think we’re it’s always been the case in the Pontiac. I feel left out on the provincial side. I feel left out on the federal side [ . . . ] We’ve lost industry, we’ve lost jobs, we still have our sense of community, but with the wind’s been taken out of our sails. We’re on life support. Yes, there’s great ideas and there’s great things that we could do, but how do we get there?”

Hodgins said while has never held a seat at a council table, his volunteer work in the community has allowed him to work closely with councils, and he’s sat on many boards of community organizations. 

“I’m a people person. Number one and foremost. I’m not criticizing the present mayor. I think he’s done a decent job up to this point. I just think that I could add some light to thinking outside the box. [ . . . ] My heart’s in it, and I think I can do a really good job.”