Amalgamation - 25 years later - From the Cluttered Desk with Keith Roulston

Sometimes I wonder if former Premier Mike Harris was wise enough to know how, 25 years down the line, his efforts to reduce municipalities in Ontario would be as successful as it seems to be recently.

 

If you were in the municipal world, or in the news media as I was in the late 1980s and early 1990s, municipal amalgamation was top of the list of local topics. Harris, the Premier of the day, was determined to make it happen. Previous Progressive Conservative provincial governments had dangled the idea in front of municipalities, but most had always rejected it. The Harris government made it a firm decision: either municipalities came up with their own partners, or the government would pick the amalgamations.

 

Given those alternatives, municipalities took action. I remember that Blyth’s reeve at the time, Mason Bailey, proposed a municipality that would include all the municipalities in the northern half of Huron County. But some rural areas quickly shot down that idea.

 

In the long run, municipalities worked out agreements to join with unions they felt they could work with. Howick Township chose not to be involved and the provincial government went along.

 

Huron East became an agreement among Grey, Brussels, McKillop, Seaforth and Tuckersmith. Morris didn’t like that group, so it joined together with Turnberry, separating from Brussels on one side and Wingham and Blyth on the other, and splitting the unincorporated Belgrave down the middle.

 

Another rural amalgamation was formed when West Wawanosh joined with Colborne and Ashfield.

 

Blyth, Wingham and East Wawanosh were left to form their own municipality. The Harris government accepted the reduction of municipalities and the new political groups began.

 

People like Nancy Michie, former clerk-treasurer of Morris, took the same job in Morris-Turnberry. John Stewart, former clerk of Blyth, served North Huron, and Brad Knight, former clerk in Grey, became the treasurer of Huron East. Those public servants were aware of the delicacy of bringing municipalities together. Blyth, for instance, provided fire service to part of Morris and part of Hullett, in Central Huron, and West Wawanosh, while arenas served across borders.

 

But in the 25 years since, people like Michie, Knight and Stewart have all retired and have been replaced by staff, often with no ties to the founding municipalities, who think totally differently than those who preceded them. Often they’re career-oriented and are only in the local municipality until a job opens up in a larger municipality, The difference in government has taken amalgamation to a new level.

 

Staff isn’t aware of the delicacies of local community pride and treats the municipality as if it were part of the dominant centre that must somehow deal with subordinate hangers-on. Recently, North Huron staff suggested the downtown Blyth Library, which they rent, could be moved to the upstairs of the Blyth and District Community Centre.

 

Last week, I attended the Rural Talks to Rural conference at Blyth Memorial Community Hall. The key word there is “Community”. Back at the end of World War I, when the building was planned, Blyth was a tiny village with big plans. Small though it was, it was part of a community and each of the surrounding municipalities provided funding. People in the community raised the money to build the structure. At its opening, people filled not just the theatre upstairs but the downstairs meeting hall and the lawn outside - far more than the population of Blyth.

 

When I was helping kick off the Blyth Festival back in 1975, I had to get the permission of a community board that ran the hall. During the recent renovation, North Huron generously supported the project, along with the provincial and federal governments, but then it turned the building over to the Festival to run, not the community, resulting in the building feeling separated from the community that built it.

 

Events that used to be held in Blyth are now held in the theatre at the Wingham Town Hall, but rehearsing bands upstairs bother staff working downstairs, causing tension between the performers in the community-run  theatre upstairs and the municipal employees.

 

Meanwhile, Harris’s plan for amalgamation was designed to reduce the number of councillors, but this has also helped separate local residents from their government. Blyth, East Wawanosh, Brussels, Morris and Grey and even Wingham, Seaforth and Clinton once had councils dealing with local issues and people felt free to attend local council meetings. Staff worked for councillors. Now it often feels as if that has been reversed.

 

Is this what Mike Harris had in mind ­- to not have local control anymore?