Check My Personal Blog

I received a comment this  morning referring  to a position  held about committee meetings when I was Mayor thirty-five years ago.

It appeared in a column published by the late Dick Illingworth in 2005 and was sent  under cover of Anonymous. I didn't print the comment but I did  print a response. It gave me the  opportunity to recollect how things were thirty five years ago and how they are today.

It's in my personal Blog and I don't know how to switch it. 

Dick Illingworth and I were Councillors together. We did not share the same political philosophy. He was loyal true Blue and Orange Conservative and proud of it. He learned it from his mother when he grew up  in the Danforth neighborhood in Toronto  during the depression.

He left school at fourteen and went to work in a woollen mill for a weekly pittance. It was the only family income  because Dad,like thousands of other Ontario heads of families was out of work.

His political beliefs were honed by hardship. They were strong.

My  experience at that age was twelve years after, throughout a war and in an older.different society.  . My political background was Labour. My political inclination was just as sharp and  strongly honed.

The rivalry  between us was real. I had different ideas about what a municipal Council could and should achieve.His were about what they shouldn't.

The  differences were clean and clear.  They created a healthy tension.

If the clock could be turned back and  debate  continued, I would not expect his views to change one whit. Nor would mine. He might mutter darkly about my "socialist"  backgound being the reason for my wrong thinking.  He would be correct about the background. As I would be if I said his  Conservative bias was the reason for his. 

But we would raise a glass to-gether  regularly, toast our differences  and come back  again together, to enjoin and enjoy the battle on another day hence.
 
Knowing him as well as I did,  I believe today we would be in complete  agreement.   He would share my  concern about the loss of principles and traditions  of basic decency which have governed Aurora's politics throughout her  history.

Councillor MacEachern   has circulated  Dick's comment to the candidates in the election. She is looking forward to my response

Her e-mail shows the comment came from aurora.facts @ gmail.com