HURRICANE HAZEL DOWNGRADED
And there I was thinking Canadian mayors needed to love nose candy to make a cracking obit…
Longtime Canuck political force “Hurricane” Hazel McCallion has died aged 101. Her first go for political office was in 1964, unsuccessfully running as a deputy reeve in Mississagua. It would be the only time she lost an election. A retry three years later for the same position succeeded, and she had a decade of Mississaguan council experience under her belt when she narrowly unseated popular incumbent mayor Ron Searle.
Crisis faced the growing city months into McCallion’s tenure. Minutes before midnight on 10 November, 1979, a train carrying tonnes of flammable chemicals derailed and crashed, resulting an ensuing explosion that sent a fireball to the sky and woke up tens of thousands of Mississaguan denizens. North of 200,000 of the city’s residents had to be evacuated in the largest peacetime evacuation in North American until Katrina. McCallion put herself at the forefront of the crisis, steadily reassuring the city with constant press updates. She helped some residents evacuate, only to sprain her ankles in the process. What would be a good excuse for Trump to stop doing anything instead further established McCallion’s indomitability, as she continued to helm the crisis while in crutches. Her injury was the worst suffered during the crisis – no one died, no one else was injured, and a week later Mississaguans resumed life as normal.
McCallion’s popularity was set from there, and she was never seriously challenged as mayor for the decades to come. The scrappy independent fought with targets of all parties, typically over funding battles, and she remained a routine presence at local council meetings even as Mississagua’s population ballooned. Conflict of interest scandals threatened to derail her tenure, but she ultimately served until retiring on her own terms aged 93 (while far sharper than Dianne Feinstein to boot). She served on various councils heading into her century, and in a classic politician move, signed another three-year contract months before her death from pancreatic cancer.
She was picked by two teams, Ah, the ol’ team and Cobbled on the Eve, which both belong to the same teamrunner. Whoops!
Hazel McCallion
14 February 1921 – 29 January 2023, aged 101
2 TEAMS (💀💀💀💀 4 POINTS)