A version of this article was originally published on HaltonHillsToday on Oct. 26.
Not many people can say they've been at the same job for four decades. Even fewer can say that in politics. Mayor Rick Bonnette is a rare breed who can truthfully make that claim. But it appears 40 years was enough.
Last December, he announced he would be retiring after the current term is over. With Ann Lawlor being elected as his replacement on Monday night, the time is drawing near to pass the chain of office.
In his time as a resident of Acton and later public servant in the amalgamated Halton Hills, Bonnette has observed monumental changes in the culture and makeup of the town. But he has also noticed certain things have remained the same.
Born in 1955, he moved to Acton as a toddler. It was here that he developed a love for hockey, finding a home in front of the net as a goalie. This is perhaps where he got the most potent images of the culture of Halton Hills at the time.
“I wouldn’t call it a split [between Acton and Georgetown.] I’d call it a rivalry,” Bonnette recalled.
After a particularly rough match in Georgetown when he was 14, his team was ordered to get changed and get out in 10 minutes by the OPP. The cops told them, according to Bonnette, “You’re going to get a police escort out to the cars because the parents from Georgetown wanted to fight the parents from Acton.”
“There used to be guys from Acton driving down to Georgetown and the McGibbon [Hotel] to get in a fight the following week,” he said, adding that “carloads from Georgetown” did the same with Acton.
The rivalry would often influence voting habits to the point of spilling over into election discourse. Prejudices towards their neighbours just refused to die. Bonnette first ran for council in 1982. He remembered an instance during one of his many campaigns where a Georgetown voter told him, “‘You’re from Acton. I’m not voting for you.’” Some were bold enough to question his impartiality, openly asking him, “‘If you get elected, are you only going to be an Acton mayor?”’
But this way of doing things became old-fashioned as the decades marched along. Bonnette attributes this falling out of favour to the cultural change brought in by new residents.
“They don't understand that there was a rivalry. They might have heard about it,” he added.
“Some of the older people who had to move still feel that way. But there's not much around the council chamber, at least since I've been mayor. I've never felt that.”
Bonnette rose to the mayor’s seat in 2003, unseating incumbent Kathy Gastle. The then-goateed future mayor campaigned on a platform of preserving the character of Halton Hills, dealing with traffic and encouraging industrial growth.
Traffic, in his mind, is still one of the unrelenting plagues of the town. He has spent his career fighting against congestion and speeding - often an uphill battle with outside forces. He has firmly come out against the Province’s proposed GTA West Highway, also known as the 413.
He has repeatedly implored the Government of Ontario to deal with the trucking issue, calling for a bypass on Hwy. 7. He and his council colleagues renewed that call during a recent council meeting with a resolution urging Ontario Minister of Transportation Caroline Mulroney to reconsider her stance on a trucking strategy. She wrote in a 2019 letter that it was not a priority.
“Name one bare spot along the QE[W], the 401, 407 in the GTA that isn’t built up,” Bonnette recalled he said during a guest appearance he made about the 413 on CFRB radio. “That will lead to a lot more quarries, which is going to change the lifestyles of municipalities like us, where we can't control our own routes.”
The spectrum of quarries, especially the Hidden Quarry near Rockwood, weighs heavy on his mind. Those quarries, he believes, are why “traffic is not going away.”
“That was the issue I ran on and in other elections in the '80s and the '90s,” he said about the issue not being new.
Further cultural changes came as well. Just this past weekend, the mayor visited Georgetown’s Hindu community at the town’s first Diwali celebration at the Gellert Community Centre. The Hindu community was vanishingly small in Canada, let alone Georgetown, when Bonnette was young. But now, he told those in attendance that “I can see this (celebration) happening every year in Halton Hills.”
Some of the larger victories during Bonnette's tenure had to do with protecting Halton Hills from south of the border. Former U.S. president Barack Obama passed a Buy American economic stimulus in 2009. This created trade tensions between his country and Canada.
When a local company wasn’t getting any contracts because of the new law, Bonnette and his council passed a resolution of only buying from countries that do not discriminate against Canada. Countless other mayors adopted similar policies, leading the Toronto Star to say Bonnette “stands on guard for thee.”
This garnered international headlines, including an interview with a Japanese newspaper, he said.
As Bonnette bids Halton Hills Council adieu, he's not sure if he will fully leave politics. He sees himself lending his voice to issues he deems to be too important to ignore. The 413 is one such example.
“'Till the day I die, I’m strongly against that 413.”
But he's certain about what kind of ex-mayor he doesn't want to be. He abhors the type of politician who just can’t let go of the office, a sort of backseat politicker.
“I’m not going to be one to sit at a local coffee place, bitching about what the town has done,” he said.
“I don’t want to be in people’s faces. I’ve had my time.”
