Interview with Ms. Joan Eby on April 11, 2023
Ms. Eby was first elected mayor of the municipality of Bolton-Est in 1982 and served as mayor, with some interruptions, for 27 years. She decided to retire from politics in 2021. Needless to say, she played an important role in this municipality, but also in the region and the Memphrémagog MRC. This interview is an essential testimony to the recent history of our community, which she shares with us.
I have the great pleasure of meeting Ms. Joan Eby, the great lady of Bolton-Est. If you agree, I would like you to share your perspective on the history of Bolton-Est.
Ms. Eby
I can't really talk about the history of East Bolton because I'm not an expert in municipal history, but I can talk about my experience as mayor. I'll start in 1981. I was approached by the mayor to take a seat on the council because a councilor had just moved, leaving a seat empty.
At that time, terms were two years, and municipalities had the choice of holding an election for everyone or using a rotation system for half. Our municipality has always chosen rotation. Two years isn't long enough, but rotation is something to consider because it ensured two things:
it ensured at least continuity with half the council
and it prevented the creation of groups that would antagonize another group.
In my opinion, it created a balance by preventing one group from forming and dominating the council. There were, as today, six councilors and the mayor. Because of the two-year term, we had an election every year. Voters were more likely to vote when the election included the mayor than when only councilors were up for election. The only negative aspect was that there were elections every year. I agreed to take the councilor's seat, not because I had a passion for being involved in the city council; it was more out of curiosity. I never thought I'd get involved in all the years I'd been there!
My husband and I had just bought our house in 1977. We hadn't been here very long in 1981. In the early 1980s, my friend Lise Barrette and I started organizing a day center for the elderly, which was held once a week. Because of that, I was a little better known in the municipality.
It was the mayor, Mr. Kathan (Kean) Peasley, who asked me to run. He was mayor for a good 25 years, I think. The Peasley family was an important founding family in the region, always involved in municipal councils. These were the prominent families involved on the Council: Peasley, Gaylor, Galvin, etc. He decided not to run for mayor in 1982 because more and more of what was happening at City Hall was in French, and he wasn't bilingual.
The Council at that time was truly unilingual. My impression was that in those years, permanent residents were probably 75% Anglophone and 25% Francophone, except for the people who came on weekends, who were mostly Francophone. But these people weren't involved in municipal affairs. Francophones were scattered all over the place, but they were mainly in the Lake Nick area and the 10th and 11th Ranges area. 10th Range became Bellevue Road.
In South Bolton, there were the Saint-Pierre and Labranche families. These were prominent families who intermarried with prominent Anglophone families. So, there was a part of our municipality that was truly bilingual, people from outside who were unilingual French speakers, and a good portion of our permanent residents who were unilingual Anglophones.
So I was elected councillor in 1981 and I ran for mayor in 1982 without knowing what it would entail, without thinking I would be there for long. It was more like an experiment, because I had my own career just beginning. After the two-year term, I said no to municipal affairs because I couldn't take care of my family and focus on my career at the same time. In fact, I had already started traveling between here and Montreal, Ottawa, and occasionally to other provinces. I was an employment and equity advisor, human rights, with a specialty in accessibility for people with disabilities. It was the beginning of the International Decade of Disabled Persons, and there weren't many of us working in that field to promote the rights of people with disabilities. There were maybe a group of six of us at the federal level. It was new; there weren't many people there to promote it.
I lost the 2009 election.
Turnover was only 35%, the lowest we've ever had. I lost by barely 50 votes. The majority of people who voted were those who came on weekends. My opposition focused on this group, which wasn't generally registered to vote. Promises were made that the Nick Lake Road would be paved and that truck traffic would be banned from Highway 245. I also heard that people felt I'd been mayor for too long and it was time for a change. It was interesting that this specific point was later used in my favor. When people approached me to run in the 2013 election, their main argument was that I had a lot of experience!
Back to City Hall
During the 2009-2013 term, I received many calls and mailed requests from groups expressing their dissatisfaction with the council and administration. People complained that they no longer felt welcome and that their volunteer involvement was not appreciated, so they lost volunteers. Many employees left, and it was difficult to find new ones. Many city committees were less active. An executive committee was formed, consisting of the mayor and two councilors. This committee seemed to run everything.
With all the pressure I received, I finally put my name forward for the position of mayor in the next election. The mayor decided not to run. I was elected by acclamation and remained in office until 2021.
In general, there has always been a good turnout in the elections. When I knocked on the door in 2009, people were asking me - are you going to pave Lac Nick Road? I said no, even if it's because of these things that you can lose. I don't make promises when I know it's ridiculous, that it can't be done. For Route 245, I said, it's not our jurisdiction because it's a provincial road, we're not the ones who can reduce traffic. We're always working to slow it down. Our project in this regard began in 1998 to reduce the speed. Imagine, the speed was 90 km/h for the entire length of Route 245. Terrio Road used to be the road, but it was quite a while before I was born that that changed. Until the late 1960s, Route 245 ran along Cameron Road. The section in front of City Hall was lined with trees on both sides of the street. But the government wanted to widen the road. It's now very wide. We can do things quietly, but stopping a truck coming from the border to join Highway 10 is impossible.
How did I come to Bolton?
That summer, I was a director at a girls' summer camp in the Laurentians, and my husband, James, was working on boats for a Newfoundland company that delivered goods to northern Quebec. He sailed up the St. Lawrence River and then up to Hudson Bay. The election of Mr. Lévesque's party allowed us to buy our house at a good price because English-speakers were leaving the province. Houses were selling at very low, very reasonable prices. Plus, we saved money—me at the girls' camp and James on the boat. We looked in the Laurentians, but the house prices were way too high. We had friends in Knowlton, so we visited the Eastern Townships. We found this house, which was really small. The seller was asking 40,000 and accepted 20. It was because of the political situation; there was panic. That's why I've always liked Mr. Lévesque because it's thanks to him that we were able to buy our house. We had an apartment in Old Montreal at the time and moved here permanently in 1978. The house was like a "schack." I thought it would just be our little cottage for the weekends, but my husband decided it would become our permanent residence. There was a lot of work to be done on that house.
At the time, there were a lot of hotels in the area, and each hotel had a baseball team, one for women and one for men. So that's kind of how we integrated into our community. Everyone played or went there to watch the competitions. The Bolton Centre hotel had just burned down, so we played at the Owl's Nest, but there were many others: High Water, North Troy (The Legion), Glen Sutton, the Thirsty Boot near Knowlton. Everyone brought their kids, the kids played together, we played our baseball. No one was very good, except for the Saint-Pierre brothers, who were like professionals, but for the others, it was just to have something to do. In the winter, there were ice races on the small lake behind the Thirsty Boot.
In the 1980s and 1990s, everyone organized something to get involved and get to know the neighbors. As I mentioned, Lise Barrette and I started a day center for seniors. There was a day camp for youth. We had activities for children every Saturday at City Hall. We had a cadet corps. All of this, like today, was organized by the citizens; it was always volunteers. The activities we could offer were determined by the population. They were the ones who were involved; they were the volunteers. Also, at that time, there were heritage weeks that were always organized by a team. Someone came to us and told us that we should be more sensitive to the history of our municipality and our heritage buildings. A citizens' committee was then created to take care of this. I asked that someone from the Council be involved.
For several years, we had a beautification committee that took care of planting flowers and placing flower boxes on bridges in each region. That's community life. If there are changes in interests, demographic changes, or directions, for me as mayor and for the Council, it was about listening to our population, being sensitive to the fact that they are the ones who will tell us where they want to go. For me, the type of activities will change with demographic changes. The Council must always be attentive and aware of these changes and ensure that we work as a team with our population instead of deciding for ourselves what to do. There was an old school in South Bolton, next to the convenience store, the Little Red House, which is now yellow, which belonged to the Women's Institute, which was very active at the time. The municipality couldn't apply for a federal government grant, so I wrote a grant application for a day camp on behalf of the Women's Institute, but the municipality managed the project.
The importance of community spirit and the role of volunteers have been essential to the development and growth of our municipality. This has been true in years past, it's true today, and it's true for our future. One of the most extraordinary examples of the municipality's recent evolution is the establishment of the non-profit organization Le Rucher. It started as a project, "I Adopt a Hive," and has grown into a collection of programs and services that continues to amaze me! A municipality of our size could never afford to offer all the exceptional events and programs that Le Rucher offers. We have a remarkable partnership with the community, council, and administration, and I believe it's a model of how things can be done when we work together. We may not always agree on everything, but we do agree on the fundamental principles of mutual aid and sharing.
The name of the municipality?
I'd like to talk a little about what happened when I started on the Municipal Council. It was unilingually English-speaking; I was probably the only person who could communicate in French. There was little participation from our French-speaking citizens, unless the person was bilingual. Slowly, I managed to make a change to reflect the reality that we are a bilingual society.
We started using the name EAST BOLTON EST to send the message that the municipality belongs to everyone. There is no division. Between 1986 and 2009, before every Council meeting, I would say, "If you don't understand, raise your hand and we'll translate. If I don't see a hand, I'll have to assume everyone understands what's going on." We made sure that all documents were in both languages. In 2009, when we met the requirements to have a logo for the municipality, we held a competition and Marie-Andrée Lemieux won the prize. She created the municipality's logo. We installed signs at the municipality's boundaries with the new name. Someone filed a complaint with the Office de la langue française. I then received a call from a gentleman from the Office who told me that there was this complaint to the effect that it was illegal to use the name EAST BOLTON EST. We should have used East Bolton or Bolton Est. I told him that we had just installed these signs and that it represented a lot of money. What can we do? This gentleman told me to keep the signs and that he would tell the person that he had agreed with the municipality, that when the signs were replaced, the change would be made. The official name of the municipality has always been East Bolton and has never been changed, either by the municipality or with the province. We'll do that.
But six months later, the complaint came back. I thought, if we redo the signs, what are we going to do? If we only write East Bolton, what message will that send to our fellow citizens? We added the French name to show respect to our citizens. And now, if I had to respect the law and keep the official name of the municipality, would I be telling our French-speaking citizens that they are no longer welcome?
After the 2009 elections, the mayor was notified of the complaint. So they replaced all the signs and only used Bolton Est. When I returned in 2013, I contacted the Office de toponomie to tell them that the official name is East Bolton. But I'm not going to reopen this debate. I was told, if anyone ever asks the question, you'll say that it's been like this for four years, all correspondence, official announcements, and municipal advertising use the name Bolton Est. Is it really essential to go back? Anglophones have probably accepted the fact that they've lost some of their identity. That's just the way it is. The Commission de toponymie du Québec now only displays the name in French.
I don't want that to slowly start changing, which is why I've always opposed the Ministry of Transportation's occasional attempts to change the name from South Bolton to Bolton Sud. I resist that! Because it's history, it's the name of the place. North Hatley isn't Hatley-du-nord, Stanbridge-East isn't Stranbridge Est. I understand the argument for the French, but honestly, we have to respect tradition, the name of the place.
When I started on council as mayor, around the table, there were only men, men of a certain age at that, with little interest in what would happen in the municipality in 20 or 30 years. Clear-cutting, for example, was normal. These are things I introduced in my first term. Stopping clear-cutting, even though people came to me to say no, should be a regulation for people from outside only because we know how to do it. We started the recycling collection project with the cadets we trained to give presentations and explain why it was important for their future. The recycling project started with Cameron Road. They went door to door and gave blue bags to each house with a list of what should be put in them. The second year we added another route and after five years, there are citizens who came to city hall so they could participate in our recycling project. It takes time, even today we still need to inform to raise awareness among people who are not permanent residents. What is acceptable in Montreal is different from here, it depends on your sorting center because the Province does not have a standard.
When waste collection first began, it was done with an open truck with men throwing bags of waste. It wasn't very sanitary or efficient, but that's how it was. When I arrived, this collection was already in place. At one time, we had containers everywhere, but it was a nightmare. Over the years, the service has really changed!
Why did the municipality of Bolton Township split into several municipalities?
I haven't heard anything about the reasons why the various municipalities separated from East Bolton. During my entire time at the town hall, this wasn't discussed. We had 22 municipalities in the MRC during the 1980s, now there are 17 with the mergers. Our council at that time, which was still made up of the old families, wondered what we would do if we were forced to do this. I suggested we take the lead in seeing if we could merge with Saint-Étienne. The provincial government was quite surprised because we were the only municipality that contacted them. We were told to do our own analysis. We had a few meetings with Saint-Étienne and ultimately concluded that there was no benefit to either side of merging. The government then put our "no" vote on the list of municipalities never to merge. We had succeeded; that was exactly our goal.
Change in the workload at city hall?
In my opinion, there haven't been any major changes in the current management over the years. The amount of work really depends, to a large extent, on how involved you want to be as a councilor or mayor. The big change is the amount of documents you have to read. We now need to better monitor what's happening at the municipal, provincial, and federal levels. All provincial government documents, even if they don't directly concern the municipality, must be studied. It takes time to read all these documents to understand their impact, educate employees, educate the Council, and engage people in discussing their content.
It's not that the provincial government is giving more responsibilities to the municipalities. It's not more power, but more duties to fulfill. The municipality is no longer the manager for the province. We're stuck with the same things as the City of Magog or the City of Montreal, without the resources to do everything and without the power to say that it really doesn't affect us and that we don't want to be involved in it.
Worse still, the government is pushing harder and harder on the RCMs. The RCMs are the mayors; they're not another group of decision-makers, and everything the RCM should be managing for the province still falls on the shoulders of the municipalities, which pay for it.
I recently learned that a company could have the contract to collect all the recycling from all the municipalities in the MRC and that the contract would be negotiated by the MRC. This means that a company will collect the recycling for 17 municipalities and it will all go to Recyc-Québec. I can't imagine how it can be more efficient than what is happening now. How can we organize this when everyone wants the collection to be done on Mondays or Tuesdays with 17 municipalities including the city of Magog? What is the impact on small businesses with their specific equipment? How is it that a company can have enough power to lobby the provincial government to change the law. I heard that there are MRCs that are starting to show their disagreement with all this. I don't know about our MRC. I don't know when it will start, but I was told that the municipalities will have to adjust by 2025 and that they will have to start negotiating to modify the contracts. For me, it's more efficient for the six municipalities in the western sector to manage waste in the area. We already have the same contractor, but not the same prices...
I expect our MRC's council of mayors to face many challenges. Not least of which is that 14 of the 17 mayors are new! Learning how the system works, the policy and program development process, and the role and mandate of the various committees can be daunting. In the history of the MRC, there have never been so many new mayors elected. For the MRC to function effectively and develop regionally, it requires an understanding of the territory's history, knowledge of the background to decisions, and a willingness to work in partnership for the greater good of the entire region.
(We've gone over the hour; we said no more than an hour).