Last week, I went to City Hall and heard the last thing I expected to hear from Councillor Jon Burnside.
It was the last days of City Council and Gord Perks’ last day in council. The left-wing crusader isn’t running again. Seated directly beside him was Jon Burnside, a right-wing, ex-cop politician. “That looks uncomfortable,” I thought.
Perks gave the standard goodbye speech and then ended with “Capitalism is trash.” Then, his seatmate to the right announced he wanted to say a few words.
“Oh, no,” Perks said.
Before getting elected, Burnside was a self-confessed Toronto Sun subscriber and Sue- Ann Levy reader who couldn’t stand watching Perks on TV. As Levy saw it, Perks was the kind of progressive politician who never met a safe injection site or encampment he didn’t like. Burnside couldn’t stand him.
“So, when I got elected,” Burnside said, “Where did they put my office? Right beside Perks.” Bum luck, I thought.
Yet, according to Burnside, Perks showed the rookie the ropes during his first days at council. To everyone’s surprise, they bonded.
Burnside admitted he would regularly ask Perks how to vote on major issues – just so he knew to do the opposite.
Burnside turned a corner when it came to Perks. “What I learned about Gord,” he said, “is that what’s most important to him above everything else, is helping people.”
The two political opposites hugged at the end of the speech.
Cheesy, I thought. But heartwarming, like Burnside’s story.
Sitting there in the chambers, you could feel genuine camaraderie.
City Council seems less like a battleground to me and more like a community whose members have learned to cooperate, communicate, and respect one another.
Well, almost all of them.
One guy still stood out like a Pitbull in a dog park.
But that’s another story you’ll see soon, and it has to do with the City election.
