Therrien youngest to be elected city’s mayor
Only the second woman ever to become city’s mayor
Diane Therrien is the youngest person elected mayor of Peterborough in at least 118 years — and possibly the city’s youngest mayor ever.
Therrien, 32, defeated incumbent Daryl Bennett in the municipal election on Monday. Council’s inauguration is on Dec. 3.
She wasn’t available for comment on Wednesday.
Therrien is also only the second woman to ever become mayor in the city, after
Sylvia Sutherland.
Ed Arnold, the retired editor of The
Examiner, wrote a book called Mayors of Peterborough 1900-2000.
His research shows that Therrien is the youngest mayor since 1900; the next youngest was R.F. McWilliams, who was 33 when elected in 1907.
Peterborough was incorporated as a city in 1905.
But the city’s first mayor was elected in 1849, according to local archivist Elwood Jones (that first mayor’s name was Thomas Benson), when Peterborough was incorporated as a town.
There were 15 more mayors between 1849 and 1900, but the youngest among them whose age that Jones could verify was 34 when elected (Henry Hall Smith, mayor from 1881 to 1884).
Therrien doesn’t appear to be Canada’s youngest mayor at the moment, however: there’s at least one who’s younger.
Chris Ewen, 29, is the mayor of the regional municipality of Richot, Man. (population 6,679).
He won the race for mayor in a byelection in 2017, reported the Winnipeg Free Press, after the previous mayor abruptly resigned.
Ewen operates two familyowned coffee shops, the Free Press reported, and had no political experience when elected.
Meanwhile the youngest female mayor ever in Canada appears to have been elected in a small town in Newfoundland, nine years ago.
Christine Nussey was 25 in 2009 when she was elected mayor of Rose Blanche Harbour-Le Cou, Newfoundland and Labrador (population 394). The Gulf News — based in the town of Port aux Basques — reported at the time that Nussey was likely the youngest female mayor in Canadian history. She stepped down in 2010, The Gulf News reported.