Memories of Martel
For the small group of faithful who regularly attend Richmond’s fortnightly town council meetings, The end of 2017 saw a significant change in the lineup.
After 31 years in office as Richmond’s mayor, Marc-andré Martel’s name was not on the ballot in the November municipal election, marking the end of an era for the town.
No mayor has served the Town longer than Marc-andré Martel who held the post for thirty-one years, almost a quarter of the Town’s existence. In a threeway mayoral race in 1986, Martel took roughly two thirds of the vote, leaving the two other candidates, Marcel Gariépy and Nelson Murphy, to share the remaining third. With the exception of that first election, he has never campaigned for office, being returned to the mayor’s chair by acclamation in all subsequent municipal elections.
To spend thirty-one uninterrupted years at the helm of a municipality is, of itself, a rarity. Even more unusual is that Martel began and ended his career in the mayor’s chair. He didn’t follow the usual path that normally sees a longterm municipal politician spend at least a short stint as a councillor.
Martel’s road to Richmond and the mayor’s chair was relatively short if not entirely direct. He was born and raised in Asbestos and he chose to study law at the University of Sherbrooke. It was a work placement session during his Law studies that brought him to Richmond. Even at the time, he considered it a lucky break.
“I was placed with Georges Savoie, who had a law practice in Richmond at the time, and who went on to become a judge” Martel recalls. “Despite the fact that he was practicing in a small town, he had an exceptional legal library, largely because he had inherited or acquired the library of Gaston Desmarais, a son of Stanislas-edmond Desmarais and a Richmond lawyer who had also gone on to become a judge. For me, as a student, it was an exceptional opportunity. This, of course, was long before the days of the Internet and instant access to almost everything.”
“I got a summer job with Georges Savoie when I was in my third year of Law,” he recalls, “and my salary was fifty dollars a week.”
Still, in 1971, not long after passing his bar exam—at the time, an arduous, two-day affair at Mcgill University that roughly three out of ten applicants failed to pass—he was approached by Savoie. The older lawyer was moving to Sherbrooke and was selling his practice in Richmond. Was Marc-andré interested?
“It was an extensive practice,” Martel recalls. “For the first three or four years, I was working seven days a week. I took my first vacation in 1974, when I got married.
“At the time,” he continues, “there was no specialization. A lawyer’s practice included a wide variety of cases as well as a wide variety of clients. The Town of Richmond happened to be one of George Savoie’s clients and, when I took over the practice, became one of mine. I pled quite a number of cases for the Town; a typical case could involve a sewage back-up problem, or a fracture suffered on an icy sidewalk. I was also asked quite frequently for my advice on a number of issues and problems facing the Town.”
Because insurance costs were so high, the Town was under-insured. Hiring a lawyer to reach reasonable settlements for damages caused by broken water mains or potholes didn’t strain the Town’s budget as much as insurance premiums. It was an expedient way of saving money. For the most part, the plan seemed to work. Then, in 1984, a fire broke out at the Town’s water pumping station and the cost of being underinsured skyrocketed.
The fire also turned out to be the spark that ignited Martel’s political career. “I’d been advising the Town on legal matters for over a decade, ever since I’d been practicing law. I lived in Richmond. I was involved in the community; for example, I’d been president of the Richmond Chamber of Commerce. But in particular, I was concerned by the Town’s disinterest in promoting industry. I thought that was a mistake. André Lupien, who’d been mayor for over a decade, was retiring. I decided to throw my hat in the ring.”
The fact that Martel was returned as mayor by acclamation in more than half a dozen elections speaks volumes. There have been issues over that time that brought his popularity into question, but certainly never his competence. For example, what is now the site of an architecturally challenged grocery store and its large parking lot was once a spacious park with a small fountain and children's playground. The mayor was widely criticized, both for sacrificing the green space and for permitting such a warehouse-style structure to be erected in the middle of town. Still, even those unhappy with one or another of his decisions continued to trust his competence as mayor.
During his time in office, he acted on his goal of promoting industrial development. Five or six years before he was elected, the Town had created the Comité de promotion industrielle de Richmond (CPIR) that had the mandate to attract businesses and industries to the area. Similar organizations had been created before, going back at least to the 1930s. In 2001, the Americanowned Brown Shoe Company closed its Richmond factory, putting several hundred people out of work.
“It was a hard blow for the Town,” Marc-andré says, “and we responded by investing heavily in the CPIR. The position of commissar in charge had been a part-time position and we made it a fulltime post, hiring Martin Lafleur to fill it. He’s been both industrious and imaginative in drawing small and mediumsized businesses to our industrial park that has been enlarged twice to accommodate new shops and factories. We continue to invest in the CPIR; in recent years, the Town has committed some sixty-five thousand dollars annually to industry. ”
Arguably, the crown jewels of the industrial park are two immense warehouses known as the gare inter-modale where merchandise can quickly and efficiently be moved from tractor trailers to rail cars and vice versa. The St. Lawrence & Atlantic Railway runs through Richmond but so too do Highways 55, 116, 143 and 243 so that, despite its small size, Richmond continues to be something of a major hub with goods coming and going east, south, and west, according to need.
After MRCS (Regional County
Municipalities) started being created in 1981 to replace the county system, Martel succeeded in having the MRC office established in Richmond.
He was instrumental in the revitalization of Gouin Park, a one hundredacre tract of land left to the Town by Blanche Gouin after her death in 1952 and now a very inviting and well-tended urban forest with several kilometres of meandering trails. He similarly contributed to the creation of Richmond’s Parc nautique that offers kayak rides on the St. Francis, thereby making the river accessible to citizens and tourists alike.
Martel’s legacy will also include the continued preservation of four notable buildings that have been given patrimonial status under his auspices: the former St. Paul’s Church on Belmont St. that now houses the Centre de l’interprétation de l’ardoise, St. Bibiane’s Church, its rectory, and the adjoining Couvent Mont St-patrice, all of which date to the late nineteenth century.
Not all successes and accomplishments are easily visible. It could be argued that Martel’s single biggest contribution to Richmond was what he managed to accomplish in the way of reducing the Town’s debt.
“When I was elected, in 1986,” he says, “more than a third of the Town’s budget went towards paying interest and capital on loans that had been taken out over the years. Richmond received a lot of help from the provincial government towards paying off those loans; today, less than two percent of the budget is spent on financing our debt.”
As Martel steps away from the post he has held for three decades, he can look back and see how Richmond has changed, and point to changes in which he had a hand. But what does he see when he looks ahead?
“Something has to happen,” he says after a moment’s reflection, “otherwise Richmond is going to continue its long decline. Richmond needs more people to develop the downtown area. Unfortunately, in my opinion, we lost an opportunity when we failed to convince the population to fuse with Cleveland.”
An attempt in 1999 to fuse Richmond with the Village of Melbourne, the Township of Melbourne and the Township of Cleveland was only partially successful. The Village of Melbourne accepted to amalgamate with Richmond, but the rural townships of Melbourne and Cleveland voted against the idea.
Ironically, in 2000, when the provincial government began its program of forced amalgamations right across Quebec, the Richmond area seemed to go totally ignored.
“Richmond would have benefited from a merger,” he continues. “We need more territory. We already have installations—our new well of potable water and our sewage treatment ponds in particular—that are situated in Cleveland.”
“As well, towns and municipalities are controlled by the MRC and by the provincial government, and that makes our situation that much more complex. Our decision-making powers are often curtailed and restricted by the dictates of the MRC or of Quebec City.”
“Still,” he finishes, “there is room to be optimistic about Richmond’s future. As long as we can continue to offer the quality of life, and in particular access to culture and recreation, that we enjoy today, we should continue to have people moving here to live and raise their families. When all is said and done, Richmond is a great place to live.”