Latchford’s longtime mayor stepping aside

George Lefebvre had only been mayor of Latchford for about five years when the late Ed Havrot, then the MPP for Temiskaming Riding, stopped in to see him at the local restaurant.

Havrot had a large rolled up scroll under his arm and called Lefebvre — he’s known as Sonny to almost everyone in Latchford — over. Unrolling it, Havrot explained that then-premier Bill Davis had instructed that a bunch of unnamed townships in Northern Ontario be given names.

“I guess they cherry picked names,” Lefebvre says. “They looked for family names that hadn’t already been used and looked at the names of mayors” to fill in some of the blanks.

There it was, Lefebvre Township.

“I’d only been on the job for five years,” Lefebvre laughs. “I went and told my dad about it, and he said ‘So you own it?’ I said no. He said ‘Can you sell it?’ I said no. He said ‘Will you get any money from it?’ I said no.

“So he said ‘then it isn’t worth much, is it?’”

That incident took place in the mid 1970s, and Lefebvre still gets a chuckle out of telling it.

Now, the long-serving mayor of Latchford is looking back on his municipal career, stretching back to 1965, with a couple short interruptions. He’s served as mayor for 44 of those years, two-anda-half years as a councillor and three years as the municipality’s clerk-treasurer.

He announced late in 2021 that he won’t be running in the Oct. 24 municipal elections, the first time in almost half a century there won’t be a Lefebvre in the municipal office.

“I’m passing the torch,” he laughs.

Lefebvre was 25 when he first got involved in municipal politics. He had a young son, Lance, who was about three years old at the time, and the young father bought his son a rabbit and built a cage for the pet.

But when some neighbour’s dogs destroyed the cage, Lefebvre went to the municipal office to demand payment for the damage.

The staff said the municipality didn’t pay for damage caused by dogs.

“I said ‘well you charge me for a licence for my dog,’” he says. “They said ‘yes, but that doesn’t go toward things like that.’

“Well I got ticked off and decided to run for council,” he said.

“When I told my father I was running for council, he laughed at me.”

But Lefebvre, running against people much older than him, topped the polls in 1965. In fact, he has never placed anywhere but the top of the polls in all the intervening elections, although he resigned his seat to work as the municipality ’s clerk-treasurer for a three-year stint.

“That job taught me a lot” about how municipalities operate, Lefebvre says. “It instilled an understanding in me about how municipalities operate.”

And over the years there have been a lot of changes, both in the municipality and in the way municipal councils interact with members of the community.

“It was really a lot different back then, much more lively,” he says.

Nominations for council positions in the first few elections he fought were made at community meetings, with the nominations being made from the floor.

“The first time I ran for mayor, a couple of guys set me up,” he says. They said they were going to nominate him, but as the meeting went on they remained silent. A few others asked if they could nominate him but he kept telling them to wait.

Finally, about five minutes before the meeting was to end, he realized he had to make a move if he was going to get on the ballot, so he told the new group to go ahead. He topped the ballot. Municipal politicians were different then, Lefebvre says. The mayors of the large Northern Ontario municipalities “treated us mayors of small communities like equals. You don’t see that anymore.”

One of the best things, he said, was he got a chance to meet with and get to know municipal politicians from all across the region, all working together toward a common goal.

“That part hasn’t changed,” he says. “There are still good people out there.”

He also made a lot of friends among the media in Northeastern Ontario, chief among them the late John R. Hunt of Cobalt.

“If I hadn’t been on council, how would I have got to know someone like him?” Lefebvre asks.

Hunt, he said, was a true friend who was always there for him.

“He was a steadfast friend for many, many years.”

Lefebvre says the long years of service was worth it.

“I’ve seen a lot of improvements” to Latchford, he said.

There was no municipal water or sewer service in the municipality when he was first elected mayor. But by 1975 the system was in place.

He also made sure that when the water control dam at Latchford was rebuilt about 10 years ago, that Latchford received some of the value of the project.

“When you live in a small town, you make sure you protect the community,” he says. “Our objective was to get one per cent of the value of the project for the benefit of the community. We would provide the services, but we wanted to earn that one per cent.”

The municipality received about $285,000 of the $34-million project.

“It’s been a good career, well worth the effort,” he said.

When he told his oldest son — the one he bought the rabbit for — that he wasn’t going to seek re-election, his son was surprised.

“You trust someone else to run your little town?” he asked.

Lefebvre admits retiring is “going to take some adjustment.”

He’s working on a history of the community — he has already published one book about the town — and every Friday he does the shopping for a couple of the residents.

“I’m the second-oldest man in Latchford,” he says. “I think I’m going to enjoy that role.”

He and his wife, Sharon — she’s also a Latchford child — are planning to stay in the community after he retires.

But he admits he still hasn’t visited the township that bears his name.