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Wednesday, January 27, 2010

BILL TIERNEY: Ex-mayor confesses: 'I didn't mean to retire'

posted by BOFarrell at 20h14

by Bill Tierney

I didn’t mean to retire. Really. It was the last thing on my mind. But on Nov. 1, a majority of the voting folk in Ste. Anne de Bellevue laid me off.

One minute, my opinion on the sewage pipe finally being installed by Senneville’s George McLeish was newsworthy, the next minute, I was retired and my opinion on West Island sewage was no longer being solicited.

Even the Kirkland sewage seeping along Meadowbrook onto Beaconsfield’s Centennial Park beach was not considered controversial enough to merit a comment by the only living ex-mayor of Ste. Anne who, by the way, knows a lot about sewage.

Who will now defend the interests of Ste. Anne de Bellevue?

Who will stand up and ask embarrassing questions about Montreal’s barmy  “agglo” structure?

Why, Bill McMurchie of course. Another Bill, mayor of Pointe Claire, stepped into the breech. He recently asked why “the people of Ste. Anne pay for things like Mount Royal Park and, right across the bridge in Île Perrot, they don’t.”

Thank you, Bill, for remembering to remind our readers of the failure of the Liberal government to create a functional and just regional municipal structure. Not that anyone understands a word you’re saying, but it’s still worth saying. I understood.

So now I am retired and in early January I found myself contemplating leaving the West Island and moving to Mexico to become a performance artist. It’s probably not much different from being mayor and I have always wanted to be an artist. I also enjoy tequila and sunshine.

In this new year state of mind, I was approached by our West Island Gazette and asked if, liberated from the responsibilities of public office, I would be interested in sharing my experience and wit with my neighbours.

“But a majority of my neighbours voted against me on Nov. 1,” I complained.

“Do you hold that against them?” asked The Gazette. “They probably did it for the best. Maybe they, too, think you should go to Mexico and do performance art.”

“Why do you want me to write a column anyway?”

“You have lived on the West Island for nearly 40 years. You can almost remember horse-drawn traffic. You are not far behind Daoust’s store as a monument.”

I did not deny these facts. From 1971 to 2010, 39 years of West Island life, or 60 per cent of my whole life. Too much!

“You taught our children and our grandchildren for 36 years on the beautiful campus of John Abbott College.”

I said nothing.

“You survived 22 years of municipal life in the West Island, 15 years as mayor and seven years as a councillor. You went through Louise Harel’s monster merger and Jean Charest’s feeble attempts at demerger. Bill 172, Bill 22, Bill Bill Bill...”

I could not deny this. I may be losing my memory but I had recently been reminded of these events by Ryan Young’s movie (the title escapes me.) His movie goes over the whole sorry municipal mess from 2001-8.

“And you and your wife have delivered and educated three active productive children to help pay for your retirement. One lives in Toronto, one in Ottawa, and one in Montreal who is, of course, unemployed. Now is your opportunity: you can put your ear to the ground, your eye to the keyhole, your hand on the trigger, your foot on the pedal...”

She was running out of appendages.

“Now, we can finally have a column full of substance and (mainly) opinion delivered with the irony that only Boomers who lived through The Goons and Monty Python can scrape up. Think about it. Ask yourself: don’t expect the West Island to do anything for you. What can you do for the West Island?”

You can see how persuasive these arguments are and you can now understand why I came out of full-blown retirement into early-pre-retirement. Of course, I feel a bit sad, even guilty in front of all you under-60s who have time to read our paper and who are going to have to work into your 70s to support me and my fellow Boomers.

But I didn’t lose my election on purpose, I swear. I just got laid off. Remember, 2009 was a huge recession. And I just receded.

Bill Tierney’s column will appear weekly.