A
dark Mercedes rolls into
the parking lot of the low-
rise office building, one of
many that dot the land-
scape in this bleak stretch
of Mississauga, Ont.
Unfazed by the frigid February wind,
a tiny old lady nimbly emerges from the
car, navigates the icy patches and walks
briskly toward the office. As she enters,
the receptionist greets her and hands off
a coffee, liberally whitened with cream.
Ninety-eight-year-old Hazel McCallion,
or Madam Mayor, as she still prefers to
be addressed—despite retiring from
politics in 2014—is ready to face the
day’s challenges.
Her first point of order this morning
is dealing with a stylist trying to glam
her up for the photo shoot for this
very story. McCallion demurs at the
primping, making it clear to everyone
in the room that she’s the boss: “I want
the camera to capture who I am.”
Capturing McCallion’s public per-
sona has never been difficult. In more
than 36 years as mayor, she oversaw
Mississauga’s transformation from a
comatose commuter town west of
Toronto into the sixth-largest city in
Canada. McCallion became famous for
showing up at every event, kissing every
baby and cutting every ribbon. She ran
a debt-free government and always
delivered value for taxes, which she sel-
dom raised. Her outspoken manner,
flamboyant photo ops, ridiculously long
work hours and uncanny ability to getprojects through city hall on time and
under budget earned her the moniker
Hurricane Hazel.
How is it that, after 98 years on earth,
this Hurricane is still blowing strong?THE CITY THAT HAZEL BUILT encom-
passes all the imperfections of North
American suburbia: it’s a sprawling
acreage of residential housing, strip
malls and stumpy office buildings inter-
sected by four-lane throughways. But it
does have its virtues: affordable homes,
the Mississauga Living Arts Centre,
soccer fields, baseball diamonds and
libraries, all with ample parking. Every
one of those buildings and amenities
has McCallion’s fingerprints all over it.
Her go-to mantras while building
Mississauga were “Run the city like a
business” and “Do your homework.”
Mississauga’s former city manager,
and a long-time friend, David O’Brien,
recalls the time, in the early 2000s, when
a reporter showed up at McCallion’s
office looking like he’d just rolled out of
bed. “Are you here to do an interview?”
McCallion asked him. “Go home and
get dressed properly.”
Her approach to managing the
building boom that exploded during
her time in office was as no-nonsense.
McCallion insisted that companies
pay a levy to city hall in order to
build. O’Brien admits that charging
development fees was controversial
and received a great deal of pushback.
But it helped the city pay down itsreader’s digest
70 october 2019