Collaboration goal of new Bay councillor
Kavanagh’s a longtime New Democrat but prides herself on ability to collaborate
Theresa Kavanagh was working at home raising two young boys when she dove into politics, running for the NDP in the federal riding of Ottawa West in 1988.
There was a buzz around the party, she recalls. Leader Ed Broadbent was popular.
“It was an exciting time.” Kavanagh lost that race to veteran city councillor Marlene Catterall, a Liberal. No hard feelings, though. Thirty years later, Catterall endorsed Kavanagh in her successful bid for a city council seat representing Bay ward.
“I was running against another woman candidate who now has become my friend,” says Kavanagh with a little laugh. “Isn’t it ironic?”
It’s not so surprising. Kavanagh is a longtime NDPer but she’s not fiercely partisan. She takes pride in her ability to work with others.
Asked about her goals as city councillor, Kavanagh’s answers are littered with words such as collaboration and consultation.
She mentions the OC Transpo bus stop at Lincoln Fields, which will be transformed into a hub for the light-rail transit line that will cut through the ward.
Bus riders have made their own “goat path” to get from the stop to nearby homes, she says. It’s slippery in winter and hard for seniors.
When the LRT station is built, Kavanagh wants to ensure there is good pedestrian and bike access.
Transforming the goat path won’t be that simple because it’s partly on NCC land.
“We need some co-operation, working with (the NCC),” she explains. “These are the kinds of things where you need partnerships, you need to work together.”
Jonathan McLeod, a columnist for the Ottawa Sun who also writes a blog on city politics, says he endorsed Kavanagh because she has the temperament city hall needs.
“Where other politicians (or just jerks like me on Twitter) might get testy or might try to jump on some perceived error by an opponent, she’s gracious and she’s thoughtful,” he wrote on his Steps from the Canal blog.
“Now, don’t get me wrong. This isn’t her playing into a stereotypical female role that some chauvinist would have her adopt. She’s not a pushover, and she’s not timid. She’s an activist and she seems willing to fight for her community and her city … she’s just not going to lose sight of her or an opponent’s humanity.”
In conversation, Kavanagh is friendly, but cautious. She is disciplined. She took a learn-to-run course at the Running Room when her boys were in high school. Now she’s a triathlete. Kavanagh, 61, also mentions that she has run the Boston Marathon three times.
When campaigning this summer, Kavanagh eased off running — she was already walking four or five hours a day, knocking on doors — and only did “one wee short” triathlon.
She did swimming races instead. A couple of mornings a week she’d leave her home on a quiet street bordering the Ottawa River and head to Britannia Beach to “do a few long laps.”
Did Kavanagh ever worry about the nasty pollution that sometimes closes the beach?
She looks mildly surprised. “Well, I was training for 3K and 4K races, so I would have had to swim those days regardless of what the (pollution) posting was.”
Missing her laps was not an option.
Kavanagh is the daughter of an Irish father and British mother who immigrated here with three children and had another three in Canada. She grew up in Hamilton, where her father was a steelworker at Stelco.
“I grew up in a union household,” Kavanagh says, explaining her attraction to the NDP, a party she associates with equality.
Kavanagh did a fine arts degree at the University of Guelph. She enjoyed painting, sculpture and drawing, but realized it wasn’t her lifelong passion.
“I moved on.”
She worked on Parliament Hill for a couple of NDP MPs, then spent 21 years in the NDP whip’s office as logistics officer. That involves scheduling and international travel and administration of rules for finances and codes of conduct. Kavanagh says she became friends with staffers who did the same job for other political parties.
“It’s fairly collaborative, actually. We all have MPs, we all have to run offices, we want it to be consistent and have the same rules.”
Bay ward was an open race after two-term councillor Mark Taylor decided not to run. It was expected to be close but Kavanagh beat her main opponent, Don Dransfield, handily.
Dransfield is a Liberal married to the Liberal MP for Ottawa WestNepean, Anita Vandenbeld.
There was a kerfuffle during the campaign when Vandenbeld sent robocalls to Bay ward constituents, identifying herself as an MP and urging them to vote for her husband. Vandenbeld says she did nothing wrong and didn’t pay for the calls with parliamentary funds. The federal ethics commissioner is investigating complaints about it.
Kavanagh has her own political connections. Her partner is Alex Cullen, who was the city councillor for Bay ward for a decade. Cullen was also briefly a Liberal MPP then switched to the NDP.
He is a critic of Mayor Jim Watson and needles him on Twitter.
Kavanagh does not expect her husband’s antagonism toward Watson to sour her relationship with the mayor. Nor should it, necessarily — after all, she is the councillor, not her husband.
“I hope (the mayor) has an open mind,” Kavanagh says. “A number of people have told him that I am collaborative, I am somebody who wants to work together.”
Kavanagh served two terms as a trustee at the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board. She is hardworking and open-minded, said fellow trustee Lynn Scott.
“She was pretty well respected around the table. She wasn’t a grand speech maker, but when she did speak, usually she asked good questions and made sense when she had something to tell us.”
I hope (the mayor) has an open mind. A number of people have told him that I am ... somebody who wants to work together.