http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/707864--hands-off-queen-of-mississauga
Hands off Queen of Mississauga
By Christopher Hume Urban Issues, Architecture
Published On Fri Oct 09 2009
In some cities, people can't wait for their mayor to go; in Mississauga, they hope she will never leave.
This was made clear yet again by the outpouring of outrage occasioned by recent Star stories and photographs of Hazel McCallion. They don't call the Mayor of Mississauga Her Worship for nothing.
As one irate Mississaugan put it, without a hint of irony, "God bless Hazel, she is the Queen of Mississauga." As tempting as it may be to laugh off such feelings, there's something about them that won't be so easily dismissed.
Obviously, McCallion's popularity has little to do with politics; after all, the city she has led since 1978 remains a showcase of urban sprawl, in this case organized around a shopping centre that dates from a more innocent age.
Mississauga's "city centre," built well after the mall, represents a well-intentioned attempt to add a layer of urbanity to this discontinuous and disconnected landscape.
Despite the architectural excellence of some of the civic buildings, especially Mississauga City Hall (which most Mississaugans apparently dislike), they do not add up to a city. And for all the talk about sustainable growth, public transit and 21st-century densities, Mississauga remains a textbook example of what Metro Toronto's first chair, Frederick Gardiner, once called "multiplication by subdivision."
Given this, it may be that the secret of McCallion's enduring electoral success bears no relationship to what Mississauga is or isn't. Instead, she has become the personification of a community that otherwise would not exist except on paper, that wouldn't know itself except as a series of postal codes.
She is the thread that holds it together, that provides Mississauga with its history and its meaning, that makes it more than the sum of its parts. She has become quite literally the face of Mississauga. That could be why so many Mississaugans were so upset when the Star ran a wrinkles-and-all portrait of the 88-year-old McCallion on a section's front page last weekend.
Ultimately, the question of McCallion's significance should be left to psychologists rather than political scientists. Perhaps Mississauga can best be understood as a community that has become overly identified with its mayor, a classic parental figure.
With so much invested in one individual, it's not surprising that Mississaugans have come to consider McCallion the Queen of Mississauga. That might explain why only one in four Mississaugans vote in municipal elections: a queen doesn't need to be elected, a queen holds her position and power by virtue of who she is. And a queen holds that position for life.
When McCallion announced recently that she would seek a 13th term next year, she was in effect reassuring Mississaugans that her reign would continue; they need not worry about issues of abdication or succession just yet.
When it comes to pass, as it must, that McCallion can no longer wear that crown, residents will finally have to take back the responsibilities they long ago ceded to her. It won't be a happy day in Mississauga. Après Hazel, le déluge.
