“I couldn’t have done it any other way,” says Buck after election defeat

November 5, 2014 · 0 Comments

By Brock Weir

Politics is a harsh taskmaster.

That is not an idle statement, but the typically straightforward view of Councillor Evelyn Buck, reflecting on the results of the 2014 Municipal Election.

Eleven years after mounting her political comeback in 2003, Councillor Buck fell just 42 votes shy of retaining her place at the table for the incoming Council term, in a last minute shift in numbers from fellow incumbent Paul Pirri.

Looking back on the campaign, and a nearly 50-year career in Aurora’s political sphere, Councillor Buck says she has no regrets and was more than prepared for last week’s result.

“I have been elected more times than I have been defeated, but it is always for the same reason – and that is the inability to say anything except for what I believe to be true,” she says. “I can’t make myself say things I don’t believe. I can’t suck up to ideas I don’t respect. I have been successful for being the person that I am and I have been defeated for the same reason.”

Over the last five decades, Councillor Buck has successfully sought and served in a number of capacities, serving as a Councillor and Reeve in the 1960s, two terms as Aurora’s mayor in the 1970s, and dipping her toes into other levels of government in subsequent decades. It was in 2003, however, when she was tempted to get back to where it all began.

“I was concerned with how our politics had been reduced,” she says of her dismay at the then-discourse around the Council table. “We were never angels, no politician is an angel, and Aurora has always had vigorous politics, but we didn’t do the personal vendetta stuff. Most people don’t realise it, but there is a line below which most politicians don’t go and that line had been crossed.”

She was galvanized to become more involved again in the political arena at the encouragement of a neighbour, coming back to Council as a delegate to speak out about the future of a local park, and throw her support behind the future of Theatre Aurora, the future of which was being questioned around the table.

“I thought we could have our integrity restored,” says Councillor Buck on why she ultimately decided to throw her hat back into the ring. “We could lift it. I thought being there I could help lift it back out from where it was at, that it was only a matter of someone being there who knew the difference between how they were functioning and how they should function. My main objective was to bring back some civility to our Council chamber by being the kind of person that I am.”

The kind of person she is, however, is something she says is best left to others to define. After some reluctance, however, she ventures: “I am straight, I am honest, and I don’t back away from things that have to be said.”

How successful she was in restoring that civility to the Council chamber nevertheless depends on who you ask. Councillor Buck’s politics have been polarizing for many years, often the subject of considerable debate both inside and outside the Council chamber, and, most recently, she has been fighting a lawsuit for defamation against former mayor Phyllis Morris, former councillors Stephen Granger, Evelina MacEachern, and Al Wilson, outgoing Councillor John Gallo, and re-elected Councillor Wendy Gaertner – a lawsuit which remains in the hands of a judge to decide.

Councillor Buck says she was prepared for whichever way the chips fell on October 27, but after erroneous reports in a national newspaper that she had retained her seat, she and her family fielded a few congratulatory calls in the days following the vote.

“Yesterday I was in Walmart, and a man came up to me, stretched his hand out, and congratulated me on having been elected and I had to tell him I hadn’t been elected,” she says. “There is a feeling that I have let people down by not being elected.”

That being said, she is looking forward to exploring her options for the future. She vows to continue writing her blog, sure in the knowledge that once her term ends at the end of November she will have more “freedom” in what she can say – this time as a “knowledgeable private citizen.”

She is also going to branch out from just Aurora politics, keeping her eye on Regional meetings and other municipalities.

“Politics is a harsh taskmaster,” she says. “It doesn’t matter how popular you are. It is a hard, hard thing to be involved in. I have exalted in it. It is less a matter of being privileged or honoured, or any of that. I have enjoyed it because I have taken all kinds of risks. I have no regrets about it because I couldn’t have done it any other way. I couldn’t be anybody else except who I am – and I have survived.

“What I would advise to the new Council is you can be courageous and you can be successful in politics if you have the courage. People will recognize it and they will give you credit for it. They may not agree with you, but they will give you credit for being absolutely honest. People don’t ask for much, so it is not hard to give them something they can trust.

“[The newly elected Council] is a significant change and we can all look forward to the difference.”