First elected in 1985, Collard calls it a day in NOTL
After 34 years of campaigning and serving on Niagara-on-theLake town council, Jim Collard is calling it a day and will not run in the fall election.
After he made the surprise announcement at Monday night’s council meeting, Collard presented Lord Mayor Pat Darte with a gavel block he made from wood on his Chautauqua property.
First elected to council in 1985, he has been at the council table continuously since then except for one four-year term when he was defeated.
“I’m not going to knock on any more doors,” he said. “Jim Collard will become a footnote in history.”
Collard said it was time for him and wife to do more things together including travelling without having to rush home for Monday night meetings.
The reason he said he ran for office the first time was to try to help get 110 hectares of land on Lakeshore Road, the former Department of National Defence site, turned into a public park. The waterfront land, owned by Parks Canada, is closed to the public and houses Niagara Region’s sewage treatment plant.
“It is such a beautiful piece of our heritage and it needs to be a public park,” said Collard, referring to the beach, the ponds, the flowers and the wildlife.
He remembers erecting 18 silk screen signs during his first election campaign “and they worked, I guess.” During the last election, Collard said he and his wife knocked on more than 3,500 doors.
He said there are many accomplishments during his time on council that he is proud of including raising money to house the Niagara Pumphouse Arts Centre, improving the environment for the villages of St. Davids and Queenston by building sewer lines, and the establishment of the heritage district in the Old Town.
For the incoming council, Collard had a couple of suggestions in addition to it continuing to lobby for a public park on the Parks Canada site.
“We cannot stop talking to the Region … until we get a better deal on policing,” he said.
Collard has raised the issue of the high cost of policing for Niagaraon-the-Lake taxpayers many times at the council table and at meetings as the town’s representative with other municipalities. The budget for Niagara Regional Police is based on property assessments, which are typically higher in the town than for many other municipalities in the Region.
Continuing to try to link the town’s villages through off-road trails, such as the Bob Howse Trail, is another priority for Collard.
Before presenting Darte with the gavel block, Collard told council about how he broke the previous one 20 years ago while chairing a planning committee meeting.
He said it happened at “a raucous, cantankerous meeting ” after he had declared a member of the public out of order and asked the person to sit down twice.
“On the third time, I took the gavel and I banged the gavel block which was a half-inch thick piece of mahogany and I broke it,” he recalled.
The large, heavy block he recently made with the help of a neighbour comes from cherry and black walnut trees that had died on his property.
“Just remember, if you run a good meeting, you will never have to use it,” Collard quipped to the lord mayor.
Darte thanked Collard for his “service, time, heart and passion” at council after councillors gave him a standing ovation.
Coun. Mazza said he found Collard’s announcement “quite shocking” and told him that he would be missed.
“Coun. Collard and I have usually been at odds, but I think we have grown tremendously in the last year,” he said, adding “I respected you and your opinions.”
The second longest-serving member on Niagara-on-the-Lake council is Terry Flynn. He has been at the table for 21 years and said after the meeting that he hopes to retain his seat after the fall election.