Mayor Miller Looks Back

The mayor’s office was nothing but bare walls and empty shelves on Thursday as David Miller got ready to turn over the space to Rob Ford next week.

Seven years after he swept into city hall with a broom and a mandate to clean up the city, Miller said he has no regrets.

“To me it was about running for office based on a set of beliefs and doing what I said I would and being the kind of mayor I believed in and I told people I’d be,” he said.

“I’ve kept true to Torontonians and I’ve got to say Torontonians have never let me down. They’ve been terrific.”

Part of Miller’s legacy is the hard-fought, cross-town public transportation plan, Transit City.

“It is very important for me because I care about transit,” he said.

“It was one of the reasons I was interested in municipal politics. My grandfather worked for the railway and I lived with him as a boy. So I’ve always been interested in that. But it’s even more important for Toronto than me. We have not built rapid transit in this city on any meaningful scale for 40 years.”

Miller leaves some unfinished business at the ferry crossing to the island airport.  He kept his key promise to kill a planned bridge from the mainland. But the federal Toronto Port Authority is now close to final approval for a $45-million pedestrian tunnel.  

“To me, it’s an issue of principle and there are two principles at stake,” he said.

“The island is the place where people go for recreation in the summer who are people who can’t afford a cottage. The second issue is our waterfront’s changing. It’s becoming a place for people. And the longer the airport remains there as a commercial airport, the harder it is to develop and create the jobs in other industries like the film industry. You can’t build outdoor film studios under an airport.”

As for his successor, he has these words of wisdom:

“People get elected, they’ve got a mandate. I have no disagreement with that. [But] I think Councillor Ford is going to have a very difficult time cutting $350 million out of the city budget without cutting services. We’ve seen governments say that before. And in the end what happens is people who have the least get hurt.”

Miller is married with a son and daughter. His mother was a single parent who held down three jobs while she raised her only child. But she still managed to go back to school in her mid-50s. She died of cancer before her son became mayor.

Proceeds from Miller’s memoir, Witness to a City, go to support the Mrs. Joan Miller Scholarships, for people overcoming obstacles to going back to school.