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The 1997 Toronto municipal election was the first election held for offices in the amalgamated "megacity" of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The elections were administered by the old City of Toronto and its five suburbs within Metropolitan Toronto. The vote was held November 10, 1997, electing the mayor and 56 councillors in 28 wards who took office on January 1, 1998, the day of the amalgamation.
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the most populous city in Canada, with a population of 2,731,571 in 2016. Current to 2016, the Toronto census metropolitan area (CMA), of which the majority is within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), held a population of 5,928,040, making it Canada's most populous CMA. Toronto is the anchor of an urban agglomeration, known as the Golden Horseshoe in Southern Ontario, located on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A global city, Toronto is a centre of business, finance, arts, and culture, and is recognized as one of the most multicultural and cosmopolitan cities in the world.
The Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto was an upper tier level of municipal government in Ontario, Canada from 1954 to 1998. It was made up of the old city of Toronto and numerous townships, towns and villages that surrounded Toronto, which were starting to urbanise rapidly after World War II. It was commonly referred to as "Metro Toronto" or "Metro".
The election resulted in a showdown between Barbara Hall, the one-term mayor of the old city of Toronto, and Mel Lastman, who had been mayor of the former Toronto suburb of North York for 25 years.
Barbara Hall is a Canadian lawyer, public servant and former politician. She was the 61st mayor of Toronto, the last to run before amalgamation. She was elected mayor of the pre-amalgamation City of Toronto in 1994, and held office until December 31, 1997. On November 28, 2005, Hall was appointed chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. After having her term extended four times, she retired February 27, 2015, after almost a decade in the position.
The Mayor of Toronto is the leader of the municipal government of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The mayor is directly-elected in municipal elections every four years alongside Toronto City Council. The mayor is responsible for the administration of government services, the composition of councils and committees overseeing Toronto government departments and serves as the chairperson for meeting of Toronto City Council.
Melvin Douglas "Mel" Lastman, nicknamed "Mayor Mel" or "Mega City Mel", is a Canadian businessman and politician. He is the founder of the Bad Boy Furniture chain. He served as the mayor of the former city of North York, Ontario, Canada from 1973 until 1997. At the end of 1997, North York, along with five other municipalities, was amalgamated with the city of Toronto. Lastman ran for and won the mayoral race for the new "megacity", defeating incumbent Toronto mayor Barbara Hall. Re-elected in November 2000, he served until his retirement after the 2003 municipal election.
The mayoral race saw incumbents from the two largest former cities run to be mayor, the left-leaning Barbara Hall and the right-leaning Mel Lastman. Lastman won the election by narrow margin.
Candidate | Total votes | % of total votes |
---|---|---|
Mel Lastman | 387,848 | 51.92% |
Barbara Hall | 346,452 | 46.38% |
Don Andrews | 1,985 | 0.26% |
Ben Kerr | 1,670 | 0.22% |
William Burrill | 1,421 | 0.19% |
Steven Markel | 1,244 | 0.16% |
C. Edwards | 1,214 | 0.12% |
Munyonzwe Hamalengwa | 1,124 | 0.15% |
Hazel Jackson | 1,062 | 0.14% |
Alan Heisey, Sr. | 994 | 0.13% |
Hans Bathija | 869 | 0.11% |
Karl Hille | 695 | 0.09% |
Santa Cuda | 647 | 0.08% |
Laurence M. Honickman | 610 | 0.08% |
Joanne Pritchard | 552 | 0.07% |
George Dowar | 462 | 0.06% |
Jeffery Sharpe | 379 | 0.05% |
Ernest Michaud | 281 | 0.03% |
Michael Houlton-Charette | 211 | 0.02% |
Duri Naimji | 177 | 0.02% |
Totals | 746,897 | 100% |
The election followed a plurality-at-large voting system where electors could vote for two candidates. Each of the 28 wards elected two councillors. [1]
Plurality-at-large voting, also known as block vote or multiple non-transferable vote (MNTV), is a non-proportional voting system for electing several representatives from a single multimember electoral district using a series of check boxes and tallying votes similar to a plurality election. Multiple winners are elected simultaneously to serve the district. Block voting is not a system for obtaining proportional representation; instead the usual result is that where the candidates divide into definitive parties the most popular party in the district sees its full slate of candidates elected, resulting in a landslide.
1997 Toronto election, Ward 7 | ||
Candidate | Votes | % |
---|---|---|
Maria Augimeri | 11,243 | 28.01 |
Peter Li Preti | 9,747 | 24.28 |
Maria Rizzo | 8,850 | 22.05 |
Anthony Perruzza | 6,347 | 15.81 |
Anna Stella | 2,961 | 7.38 |
Jeanelle Julien | 523 | 1.30 |
Abdulhaq Omar | 467 | 1.16 |
Total valid votes | 40,138 | 100.00 |
The Legislative Assembly of Ontario is one of two components of the Legislature of Ontario, the other being the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario. The Legislative Assembly is the second largest Canadian provincial deliberative assembly by number of members after the National Assembly of Quebec. The Assembly meets at the Ontario Legislative Building at Queen's Park in the provincial capital of Toronto.
Claudio Polsinelli is a former politician in Ontario, Canada. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as a Liberal from 1985 to 1990.
Candidate | Total votes | % of total votes | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
(x)Howard Moscoe | 16,187 | 35.74 | |
(x)Mike Feldman | 14,737 | 32.54 | |
Frank Di Giorgio | 11,487 | 25.36 | |
Henry Braverman | 1,572 | 3.47 | |
Nickeisha Hudson | 923 | 2.04 | |
Roy Dzeko | 383 | 0.85 | |
Total valid votes | 45,289 | 100.00 |
Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. An industrialized city in the Golden Horseshoe at the west end of Lake Ontario, Hamilton has a population of 536,917, and a metropolitan population of 747,545. The city is located about 60 km southwest of Toronto, with which the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) is formed.
Candidate | Total votes | % of total votes | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
(x)David Miller | 13,665 | 27.64 | |
(x)Chris Korwin-Kuczynski | 13,115 | 26.53 | |
Connie Dejak | 8,267 | 16.72 | |
(x)David Hutcheon | 7,437 | 15.04 | |
Alex Chumak | 3,931 | 7.95 | |
Ed Hooven | 1,336 | 2.70 | |
Walter Melnyk | 1,085 | 2.19 | |
Jorge Van Schouwen | 599 | 1.21 | |
Total valid votes | 49,435 | 100.00 |
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