At 101 years old, Hazel McCallion did not think about her age
Hazel McCallion #HazelMcCallion
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At 101 years old, Hazel McCallion did not think about her age
Former Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion attends an announcement at Mississauga Hospital in Mississauga, Ont., on Wednesday, December 1, 2021. She died on Jan. 29, 2023 at 101. Photo by THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young Article content
The Canadian political icon and onetime long-time mayor of Mississauga continued to work hard, and had recently signed up for roles with the University of Toronto Mississauga and the Greater Toronto Airports Authority. She had no plans to retire.
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“I want to live life to the fullest, until my very last day on earth,” she told a journalist last summer, for a story about her unprecedented longevity in public life.
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McCallion died early Sunday, Premier Doug Ford announced shortly after 8 a.m. He called her his “dear friend and mentor.”
“There isn’t a single person who met Hazel who didn’t leave in awe of her personality,” he said in a statement.
Hazel McCallion is 101, working, and has no plans of slowing down: ‘I want to live life to the fullest’ 
Rex Murphy: Harry Steele’s drive was immense. His Newfoundlander’s heart was larger Born on the Gaspé coast in Port-Daniel, Que. in 1921, McCallion grew up the youngest of five children during the Depression. She said in that interview last summer she learned to appreciate everything she had early in life and quickly realized that nothing comes free of charge.
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Amanda Maude Travers, McCallion’s mother, was a strong influence on her life. Travers was a wonderful pianist and had a beautiful voice, said McCallion, who remembered that she used to sing on the local radio.
Early in life, Travers encouraged her daughter to work hard to be successful at whatever she chose to do.
“She would ask me, what do you want to accomplish in life?” said McCallion. “Do you want to be a follower or do you want to take advantage of opportunities to be a leader?”
After graduating from high school, McCallion moved to Montreal to take a business secretarial course. While in school, she played hockey in the female league of the Montreal Hockey League for $5 a game. Growing up on skates and playing hockey with her two sisters on the Gaspé coast, McCallion was a skilled centre-forward with a hard shot.
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“I was fast on my skates,” said McCallion, with a smile. “It was a wonderful experience.”
McCallion took a job with Canadian Kellogg, an engineering and contracting firm in the petrochemical field, after finishing business school. They transferred her to Toronto in 1942 to help the general manager set up an office to build the Polymer synthetic rubber plant in Sarnia, Ont.
In 1951, she married Sam McCallion and the pair moved to Streetsville, Ont. where she quickly made a name for herself in the community. She joined Trinity Anglican Church and become the first female president of the Anglican Young People’s Association of Canada.
When she retired from her job as office manager after 20 years with the company, she entered municipal politics and became president of the Streetsville Chamber of Commerce. She was encouraged by the mayor at the time to join the planning board, where she became chairman and was then appointed town reeve in 1968.
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McCallion was elected as mayor of Streetsville in 1970 and served until 1973, when the town was amalgamated into the City of Mississauga. She served as councillor until 1978, when she became the first elected mayor of the city.
“It was an exception for a woman to be involved in politics then,” said McCallion. When she became mayor of Streetsville, she was one of the very few female mayors across Canada, but she said she was well supported by other members of the council.
McCallion presented herself as a non-traditional politician, said Tom Urbaniak, professor of political science at Cape Breton University and author of Her Worship, a book about McCallion’s time as mayor of Mississauga. He said she knew what her constituents wanted.
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“She was able to solidify her bond with the public by saying: I’m not the old boy you would expect to have speaking in front of you here, I bring something different,” Urbaniak said in an interview last summer.
“I ran as a people’s mayor and with the intention to build a great city to raise a family,” said McCallion.
A few months after being elected mayor, McCallion was faced with a major crisis when a Canadian Pacific Rail freight train derailed in the city, causing several propane-filled train cars to explode.
Along with police services and other government officials, McCallion led the evacuation of over 200,000 people, some having to be out of their homes for a week.
McCallion held press conferences and briefings, keeping the media and residents up to date, even after spraining her ankle during the first days of the crisis.
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She knew how to use the media to her advantage, said Urbaniak, and she knew how to get other government officials to rally behind her. While Roy McMurtry, the attorney general of Ontario at the time, was in charge of managing the crisis, Urbaniak said you would have never known.
“Her line was: I must appeal to my people as their leader,” said Urbaniak, who studied the transcripts kept by officials during the crisis.
In the council chamber, McCallion ran a tight ship.
“She created the idiom: do your homework,” Bonnie Crombie, the current mayor of Mississauga and city councillor from 2011 to 2014, said last summer.
“I quivered at the thought of not coming to counsel very prepared and having read thoroughly every document because I know that she had, so we better be prepared for a good debate and discussion.”
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Crombie remembered waiting patiently, and nervously, for her turn to speak in meetings as McCallion called on each councillor to say their part on whatever matter they were discussing that day. After they each spoke, they would wait for her to make the “ultimate pronouncement,” said Crombie.
“Well, let me tell you what I think, she would say,” said Crombie. “And then she’d fire away.”
With McCallion as mayor, Mississauga grew exponentially. The city once made up of small towns and villages became the sixth most populous municipality in Canada.
She encouraged development, with development fees used to build important city infrastructure, like the Central Library. When others were raising taxes, McCallion was able to lower them.
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Over her 36 years as mayor of Mississauga, McCallion was never seriously challenged for her position. She won her last election in 2010 and announced afterward that she would not be running again.
“I felt I had contributed to building a great city,” said McCallion about her retirement. She was 94 when she stepped down and was ready to hand over the reins. But that did not mean she was slowing down.
In what turned out to be her final year, McCallion held several advisory titles, including chief elder officer of Revera Inc., honourary guardian of the Trillium Hospitals, and chancellor of Sheridan College. She had renewed her role with the University of Toronto Mississauga for another year as well as with the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA), which operates Toronto Pearson International Airport, for another three.
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Doug Allingham, chairman of the GTAA board, said last summer McCallion was as energetic as ever at 101, with a credibility not matched by anybody else on the board. She was always prepared and organized, coming to meetings having read every document.
“At the end of a discussion or deliberation, she jumps in with her thoughts or a piece of information that basically turns the conversation.”
Despite her pace, her final years did look a bit different then when she was mayor.
When she could, she spent her days in her garden with her dog, tending to her wildflowers and trees. She said she had to stay active, physically and mentally, to be up to date on what each of her roles is trying to accomplish.
“I want to stay active in all the things I am involved in,” she said.
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