Three amigos take their leave.

• Author: Atkins, Michael
• Position: Mayors resign

This fall, Northern Ontario is going to lose 75 years of municipal memory. The mayors of Thunder Bay, Sudbury and North Bay are retiring from active duty and I do not use the term lightly. As one put it, this has truly been a combat zone.

I have known these boys Jim Gordon (Sudbury), Ken Boshcoff (Thunder Bay) and Jack Burrows (North Bay), more or less from the time they were elected mayor of their respective cities. They have eaten a lot of rubber chicken in their time, not to mention the tons of perogies, mangled cheeseburgers, and mayonnaise-lathered potato salads.

Actually, it is a miracle they live to tell the tale.

Jack says he never had a burning desire to be mayor. One thing just led to another. Jim and Ken, it can be recorded, have been professional politicians for almost all of their working lives.

They are, given their calling, a remarkably optimistic group.

Oh, Jim Gordon sometimes wonders if he should not have stayed in provincial politics to maximize his talents and energy, and Ken regrets a couple of lost years at the beginning of his second administration when there was more bickering man planning around the council table. But they all point with satisfaction to specific accomplishments along they way.

At the top of the list in North Bay for Jack is the downtown railway redevelopment program, which is now underway, the resuscitation of the airport assets after the downsizing of the Canadian Armed Forces presence and the new hospital.

In Thunder Bay Ken says when he became mayor in the mid-90s the unemployment rate was 12 per cent, construction was dead and most importantly the spirit of the community was disconsolate. Ken feels his leadership has improved the spirit of the community, and says they have made peace with their neighbours in northwestern Ontario, engaged the First Nations communities in the Thunder Bay area and notwithstanding recent challenges in the forestry sector, things are on the rebound.

For Jim it has been many years and waves of activities. One of the most satisfying accomplishments in the early 80s, when Jim was still a parliamentary assistant and MP...