Ten consecutive wins as North York's mayor, then a call to the army over snow

Mel Lastman

A furniture-store owner who governed North York for a quarter century became the first mayor of the newly amalgamated City of Toronto in 1998 — and became a national punchline the following January for calling in the military to clear snow.

Melvin Douglas Lastman built his public profile first as a businessman, founding the Bad Boy Furniture and Appliances chain in 1955. He entered politics as mayor of the suburban city of North York starting in 1972, winning ten consecutive elections and governing until 1997 — a run credited with promoting the dense development around Yonge and Sheppard now home to Mel Lastman Square, named in his honour.

First mayor of the megacity

In 1997, the Ontario government passed legislation amalgamating Metropolitan Toronto's six constituent municipalities into a single new City of Toronto, effective January 1, 1998, abolishing Lastman's North York office along with the other five. Lastman won the first election for mayor of the amalgamated city, serving until 2003 and overseeing the difficult early merger of six separate civic bureaucracies into one.

The army and the snow

In January 1999, a major winter storm dumped roughly a metre of snow on Toronto over several weeks. Lastman called in the Canadian Armed Forces to help clear roads, catch basins and sidewalks — a decision that drew national mockery and became a long-running Canadian joke, though city officials at the time defended it as a legitimate emergency response given the scale of accumulation and safety hazards.

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