Frederick Gardiner

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Frederick Goldwin Gardiner (21 January 1895 – 22 August 1983) was the first chairman of Metropolitan Toronto council, the governing body for the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto, from 1953 to 1961.

As Metro Chairman, Gardiner, nicknamed "Big Daddy", was responsible for many capital works projects, including the Gardiner Expressway (named for him) and the Don Valley Parkway. He was a staunch advocate of growth and expansion, much of can be credited for Toronto's modern day success as one of North America's largest cities.

1 Early career
2 Metropolitan Toronto
3 Later life
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Early career

Gardiner was a graduate in political science from the University of Toronto where he won the Alexander McKenzie Scholarship. He served overseas during World War I with the famous Canadian Mounted Rifles and The Royal Flying Corps. Following the war, he graduated from Osgoode Hall with the Law Society's Gold Medal. He was later given the title of Queen's Counsel

He served as Reeve of the Village of Forest Hill for twelve years and was Warden of the County of York in 1946.

Mr. Gardiner's services to the community, in the field of politics and in other areas of civic welfare, were recognized by the University of Toronto when he was granted the degree of Doctor of Laws honoris causa.

[edit] Metropolitan Toronto

Mr. Gardiner was called from his law practice to become Chairman of a new development in municipal government designed to overcome the growing pains in the city of Toronto and the surrounding municipalities.

In 1953 led by the initiative of Gardiner, and after an almost interminable hearing, an application by the City of Toronto was made for amalgamation of the thirteen municipalities around Toronto into one region. The Ontario Municipal Board recommended and the provincial government enacted the necessary legislation to establish Metropolitan Toronto.

This meant that Gardiner would be Chairman of Metro Toronto, and charged with the responsibility of providing the thirteen municipalities with those services which were metropolitan in nature, while those services which were local in nature were to be left to the thirteen local municipalities. The metropolitan corporation was responsible for water supply, sewage disposal, policing, licensing, civil defence, arterial highways, the financing of education, the financing of the rapid transit system, air pollution control, metropolitan parks, certain welfare services, the overall planning of the metropolitan municipality, and many other collateral activities.

During his time as Chairman of Metro Toronto, he was responsible for the establishment of nearly all major public capital projects for the region including:

The Don Valley Parkway
The Gardiner Expressway
The Spadina Expressway
The Bloor-Danforth Subway
The construction of elementary and high schools at a cost of about $175 million, which built 146 new schools and 203 additions to existing schools.
The conversion of local water supply into larger stations. He invested $60 million, which doubled the supply of water to the entire region.
Additional sewage stations that could handle the growing need of the entire Metro Toronto area. A $60 million investment allowed for twice the amount of sewage to be removed.
The creation of a Metro Parks Department. Amongst the 3,500 acres (14 km²) of natural parkland developed by Metro was were the 600-acre (2.4 km²) Toronto Islands Park.

To accomplish this, Gardiner maintained control of taxation and financing of these large projects for the entire region.

Gardiner did not believe in nor did he run fiscal deficits. Each year he insisted upon a balanced budget, and prevented the local municipalities from running the region into debt through his control of the Metro Council. In order that the metropolitan levies against the thirteen municipalities would be on an equitable basis, the metropolitan corporation reassessed every individual industrial, commercial and residential property in the whole area, upon precisely the same basis. None of the local municipalities had any power to issue bonds. The reason for this is that it was considered to be in the best interest of every part of the entire area that the capital expenditures, which were necessary both for metropolitan projects, local municipal capital projects, education and rapid transit, should be co-ordinated and financed under one consolidated capital works programme, with the combined credit of all of the municipalities available for that purpose. This meant that the whole would be greater than the sum of its parts if the region acted as one region: it could access greater levels of capital and make capital project investments on a wider scale, with a positive affect on a larger number of citizens.

Gardiner's capital works programme, which was projected in detail over ten years, amounted to about $1 billion, at the rate of about $100 million a year, which was an amount well within the financial capacity and the bounds of reasonable taxation for Metro Toronto at that time.

In modern day dollars (2007), a $1 billion dollar commitment in 1953 (using the long term capital inflation growth rate of 10% that has been experienced in Toronto from 1953 to 2007), would be equal to $172 billion dollar commitment. Since 1953, no other Chairman or Mayor of Toronto has made that level of commitment to capital infrastructure to grow the city of Toronto.

Gardiner's famous saying related to his strong commitment to prosperous growth: "You build it and they will come". Some challenged this belief when Gardiner set out to build the Yonge subway line. Opponents felt that Toronto would not need to build a high capacity, underground, rapid transit (a first for Toronto and Canada). Opponents felt that there was not a need for a subway and claimed that the Yonge line would not meet its capacity for 10 years after construction. However, it only took 5 years for the Yonge line to reach its capacity of 40,000 passengers per hour at its peak. In this regard, the success and world wide fame of Toronto's most notable street - Yonge Street - was born, accredited to Gardiner's long term vision to growth and prosperity.

However, Gardiner was careful not to build too much, or build unnecessary projects for political gains. He reminded people during one of his final speeches before leaving office that "You have to be a large shareholder in a company known as Patience and Persistence Unlimited; that you have to take a step at a time; that it is just as bad to try to do too much too soon as it is to do too little too late. We found that we must spend many millions of dollars to provide the area with the services it needs. But we recognize that such expenditures are investments in the plant and equipment which this rapidly expanding metropolitan area must have, if it is to remain attractive to industrial and commercial development without which it cannot continue to expand."

During Gardiner's Chairmanship of Metro Toronto, there was one democratic defect to the metropolitan region. The 13 local municipalities were not equally represented on the Metro council in the sense that each had one seat. This meant that expanding regions such as Scarborough at 125,000 people were represented equally against stagnant regions like Swansea with a less than half the population at that time. Gardiner understood that the establishment of the Metro council was a necessary first step towards amalgamation, which did eventually take place nearly 40 years later. In this regard, Gardiner can be known as the father of the amalgamation of the entire region into the one large city of Toronto, which exists today.

Opponents snorted that the democratic defect of the whole system, which did work well to accomplish its investment into the region, should have been scrapped. Gardiner's rely: "Stop, look, and listen before you throw a wrench into a well-oiled piece of machinery and build a monument to your stupidity". In this, Gardiner was known as a maverick with a loud and challenging political voice which dealt hard political blows to his challengers.

At the end of the debate, Gardiner's voice ruled over those who challenged him. He instead proposed that the one defect of the metropolitan system of government which did not conform to the principle of representation by population and financial interest was to be corrected in any one of three ways:

The Metro Council could be increased in number so as to give the desired representation.

A system of multiple voting for Members of Council could have been established to accomplish the same purpose.

Or a more evolutionary idea for the time: the establishment of a five-city metropolitan government, which Gardiner suggested would be the more "logical and reasonable answer".

This third option which Gardiner pushed was to be accomplished by taking back:

Into Etobicoke - Long Branch, New Toronto and Mimico

Into Toronto - Swansea, Forest Hill Village, Leaside and East York

Into North York - Weston

This led to the creation of the boroughs of Toronto: York, North York, Etobicoke and Scarborough which were given representation by population in a Metropolitan Council with the same powers.

[edit] Later life

The opening day of the fifty-ninth year of The Empire Club of Canada was designated "Frederick G. Gardiner Day" in honour of a life member of the club, who announced his retirement as Chairman of the Municipality of Metro Toronto.

After politics, Gardiner became Commissioner of Toronto Hydro In 1965 and retired in 1979. Gardiner is buried at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto, Ontario.