Milton mayor Gord Krantz takes longevity record from Hazel McCallion
After 36 years, he’s the longest-serving mayor of a major municipality in Ontario.

thestar.com
By Noor Javed
Jan. 8, 2017

It was a lesson Gord Krantz learned early in his political life: put your money where your mouth is.

It was 1965, and the young businessman and current mayor of Milton found himself at the barbershop in Milton, where locals were sitting around discussing the state of local politics. Frustrated, Krantz began to vent about some recent council decisions.

One of the men listening piped up. “If you think you can do any better, why don’t you run?”

“Until then, I hadn’t really thought about politics,” said Krantz, 79, telling the story, with so much detail that it’s obvious he has told it before. “It was my big mouth that got me into politics.”

Some 50 years later, that dare has turned into a record-setting tenure in the world of provincial municipal politics. Last month, after 36 years as mayor, Krantz surpassed former Mississauga mayor Hazel McCallion’s record as the longest, continuously serving mayor of a major municipality in Ontario. McCallion who stepped down in October 2014, at the age of 93, served as mayor of Mississauga for 36 years. She had also been mayor of Streetsville for three years before that, the former mayor is quick to add.

“I have been mayor of 39 years in total,” said McCallion. “But to be accurate, he is the longest-serving mayor in one municipality,” she said.

Krantz said beating his former colleague’s record, whose bobble head “watches over his shoulder at all times” at his office, was never on his “bucket list.”

“I often say that politics is like an addiction,” he said. “Once it gets into your system, it’s hard to get rid of.”

Krantz first joined the town as a part-time firefighter in 1960, and in 1965 was elected as a town councillor. In 1980, he made the jump to the mayor’s seat, and has never had to leave it since. In the mean time, Milton has changed from a sleepy town of 5,000, to becoming the fastest-growing municipality in Canada according to the last census, with a population of 130,000.

And while the town may have changed, the mayor hasn’t: his home phone number is listed on his website.

“We probably have more staff now in the town office, then the total people who elected him the first time around,” said Milton regional councilor Colin Best, who has known Krantz since he was eight.

“He’s been around a while, but one of his re-elections, he won by six votes,” said Best, whose father was mayor of Milton, when Krantz was first voted into office.

But Milton’s growth pains are difficult to ignore. The Toronto Star has written previously about how the town’s schools are overflowing, the local courthouse is cramped, its public transit hasn’t kept up with demand, and the local hospital has long outgrown its capacity.

“For the most part, anything that the city has control over has kept up with pace,” said Krantz. “But there are a lot of things outside our control: the hospital, transit, education system, which haven’t.

“I will hear from the odd person who says they are moving out of Milton because it’s getting too big,” said Krantz. “But there are residents who say they are moving in because it’s nice and small.”

Krantz, who says he is still open to another mayoral run in 2018, said that’s one of the lessons he’s learned in his half-century in public office - you can’t please everyone.

McCallion says she holds no ill will towards Krantz for beating her record, and plans to attend a gala dinner honouring the mayor next week for his achievement as “longest-serving mayor in Canada” the flyer for the event states. But McCallion warns that the honour may be a provincial one only.

“People always introduced me as the longest serving mayor in Canada, and I kept saying, I’m not,” she said. “I know there is someone out east that was always a longer serving mayor than me.”

According to media reports, John Hamlyn, the 82-year-old mayor of Crow Head, Nfld., a community of just 250 residents, has held the title since 1963. In 2013, he had been mayor for over 50 years.

The Star was unable to reach anyone at the local town office to confirm his record.