Call Me True: A Biography of True Davidson by Eleanor Darke

Author:Eleanor Darke [Darke, Eleanor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Women, Biography & Autobiography, Political Science, Political, General
ISBN: 9781554881154
Google: -OdBkzvdKaoC
Goodreads: 17367107
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 1997-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Fire Department photograph of True and Beth Nealson riding in the open car at the front of the Dominion Day Parade.

One of the major issues to face the Metropolitan Toronto Council during her terms was that of the proposed Spadina Expressway. City politicians, including William Kilbourn, Colin Vaughan, Anne Johnston and John Sewell, fought feverishly to stop its construction. True changed her vote on the issue repeatedly, sympathizing with the desire of the residents to save their neighbourhoods from demolition and with their arguments against the “car culture” which its construction supported, but desiring the jobs and business growth which the plan promised to produce. She was also a strong believer in maintaining the authority of municipalities, so, once the plan had been approved by Metro Council and had passed the Ontario Municipal Board, she felt it wrong for the provincial government to interfere. She raged against the cabinet decision that cancelled its construction as “stupidity, pig-headedness and arrogance,” said that it had thrown Metro politics into confusion and warned that its rejection “endangered” Metro’s authority.22 However, despite her ever-changing opinions, and general opposition to his cause, William Kilbourn remembered that “True was one of the few borough politicans we could turn to. She’d take crazy stands, but she’d raise stuff in Metro transportation meetings that was vital to us.”23

The greatest battle in which she engaged during her first two terms as Reeve was waged against the Goldenberg Commission’s plans for amalgamation. Their preliminary recommendation that East York be eliminated as a separate township within Metro caused her to fight back “with tigerish tenacity.24

Willis Blair remembered that “Goldenberg had a lot of respect for True,” and Doris Tucker said that “True really fought because she really thought East York was going to be swallowed up.” Doris remembered when True had all the senior township staff go over to talk to Carl Goldenberg one Saturday morning. “She bullied him into meeting us. And we all had to talk about what we did in East York and give him a good picture of East York so he would know that we were a good viable municipality and as she said, “100,000 population isn’t to be sneezed at. That’s a better type of population than a great big one and if they put us in with some of the others it wouldn’t be nearly as well run.” And maybe it did influence him because he recommended that we remain East York.”

East York’s brief to the Commission used every possible argument against the absorption of East York and included a fascinating series of quotations supplied, without doubt, by True from her varied readings and experiences. Urging that changes only occur after careful thought and planning, she mocked “the absurd system of representation on the Metropolitan Toronto Council” and quoted a “distinguished politician” as having told her that it had been devised out of “Expediency, my dear girl, just expediency.” She urged the Commission to decide the sort of municipal government they really wanted before

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