View from the Voting Booth / 2

Westmount needs a solid and competent mayor

By Wanda Potrykus

October 25, 2025

Welcome back.

Let’s fast-forward to when you are standing in the voting booth at the polling station during the Advanced Poll on October 26, or on Election Day on November 2. Looking closely at your ballot paper, you will see five or six names or more on it (unless you live in Ward 3, when you will only see a choice of the three mayoralty candidates).

Now, which one of the names will get your personal X for Mayor?

Will it be:

Mary Gallery: Build the community we all deserve

Mary Gallery – Image: Marygallery.ca

Although she was second to announce her run for mayor, Mary Gallery was ready and eager to get out of the starting gate. She was the first to launch her campaign posters. Even before the official election period began on September 19, she was out and about in early August, having her photo taken in a Greene Avenue parking lot with a host of “I love Mary” supporters holding election posters. Her website was also up early. Apparently, she was very well-funded. She is the only mayoralty candidate to offer ‘proven’ municipal experience, but is this truly an advantage given the mixed legacy of the outgoing council, which hangs like a millstone around her neck?

Let’s dig deeper.

Most recently, Mary was the Councillor whose special assigned responsibilities were as Commissioner, Sports and Recreation and Parks and Greenhouses; Member, Planning Advisory Committee (PAC); Trustee, Westmount Public Library Committee; and, finally, Councillor responsible for relations with Marianopolis College and Dawson College.

So why are our parks still so poorly maintained? How hard or expensive is it to plant ground cover on bare patches to prevent soil from running off onto paths, making them muddy, slippery, and dangerous to walk on? Mud also runs off the denuded formerly grassy waterside berms into the lagoon. Was she also responsible for the (thankfully short-lived) awful blue lights positioned along the waterfall feature that was so deleterious to the ducks and other wildlife?

And why have so many of our lovely greenhouses been left unused and allowed to rot?

Plus, why did our wonderful antique heritage cascading greenhouse turn into an 8-million-dollar covering for an underutilized wheelchair ramp? For the number of wheelchairs and strollers that actually use it — if they use it (I’ve yet to see one on it) — the former wheelchair lift was more than adequate. If that technology is still good enough for Montreal’s Pointe-à-Caillière museum, with many thousands more visitors than our Greenhouse, surely it is/was good enough for the passage of wheelchairs from our greenhouse to the library.

In return, we lost a captivating layout, so much sitting space, so many flowering plants that were a salve for the soul during the long winter months, our fish pond, our little bridge, space for the bunnies at Easter that so delighted generations of children, and our spectacular seasonal flower displays at spring, autumn and winter. And for all that taxpayer money, we got far fewer plants, a water feature reminiscent of open drains on the floor, and bare-bones seating similar to what one might find in a bus station or Home Depot.

I was told it was necessary so the wheelchair and walker residents of the Manoir Westmount didn’t have to go outside. Still, fact check: most don’t use that entrance because, if they are going to the library, there is a huge, awkward step up from their below-ground-level sitting room to reach the side-door lobby of Victoria Hall. Then they have to manoeuvre through the doors to the art gallery and then through more doors into the greenhouse. Far shorter and easier to go outside and get a breath of fresh air on the way to the wheelchair accessible direct entry door facing Sherbrooke Street.

Also, please do remember that Mary Gallery also voted for the highly controversial SE Sector PPU¹. Many can’t and won’t forget that. Her campaign literature assures us that, as mayor, she wants to “build the community we all deserve.” The problem is, most Westmounters don’t want and certainly don’t deserve another collection of 20 to 25 story high-rise towers along St Catherine Street, opposite the ones we already have and filled with 500 square foot micro apartments and blocking off the heritage residential quarter of Dorchester and below from the rest of the city. I currently live in a 750-square-foot apartment, which is small enough, but I wouldn’t dream of raising a family in it. For those who really want to live in a high-rise in that corner of town, there are plenty of empty apartments in the Plaza Tower ².

Mary Gallery voted for the highly controversial SE Sector PPU that most Westmounters don’t want.

Apparently, the developers of these future towers can choose to provide residents with green roofs and some micro ‘green space’ on a platform way above our heads. Both are inaccessible to the public and certainly not visible from the street. Have you ever stood on the roof of a 20-storey building? The wind shear is impossible most days, so who’s the green space up there for? The birds? As for green space on plinths, to get an idea of what this means, check out how much of their vaunted green space is visible or even occupied at the monstrous Square Children’s development across Atwater Avenue in Ville Marie. How many truly ‘enjoy’ it?

That housing development is where an estimated 50% of the apartments haven’t yet been rented, and the developer is offering three months free rent to tempt potential tenants to sign a two-year lease. Also, there’s not much to see for the residents who do live there, except maybe the odd concrete container with shrubs, if one is lucky. As for the ‘green’ roof on top of the former red-brick doctors’ and nurses’ home at the corner of Atwater and René-Lévesque, its trellis foliage looks like the 4-season plastic plant offerings at Dollarama. At least that will reduce maintenance costs, although it’s not exactly environmentally friendly.

Note: the minuscule street-level ‘park’ to the east was already there, just subsumed into this area by the developers who paid nothing for it, but it no longer gets sunlight due to the shadows cast by the new collection of tall buildings along Cabot Square. These are examples of the ‘incentives’ that ‘permit’ or allow the developer certain ‘privileges’ not mentioned in the PPU, such as adding more floors in return for adding ‘green space’. And sadly, this is the future for that block of Ste Catherine Street as signed into reality by Christina Smith, Matt Aronson, Anitra Bostock, Mary Gallery, Conrad Peart, and Jeff Shamie. Conrad, Mary and Matt are standing again for council. Jeff has been acclaimed, but only one, Mary Gallery, hopes to be mayor.

Mary is campaigning on her leadership skills and municipal experience. Yes, she has served on council for eight years, but it’s debatable how that corresponds to stepping up from a District Councillor to the leadership role of Mayor. According to her LinkedIn profile, she’s certainly held, and still holds, a variety of volunteer board positions, but her earlier work experience in the 1990s with recruitment firms was at the assistant to counsellor level, i.e., one level up from entry level. Her board experience is only as a member, not as a Chairman, Vice Chairman, Treasurer or Secretary, just as her municipal experience is as a councillor, not a Mayor.

Thus, my main questions centre on how she will perform when she has to negotiate with the Mayor of Montreal, the Agglomeration Council, and the Province. Don’t forget Westmounters pay 52% of our municipal taxes to the City of Montreal, thus a strong negotiating voice in French is required to ensure it doesn’t creep up further and further. I don’t see any in-depth experience that indicates Mary’s leadership and management abilities in this regard.

Yes, Mary Gallery is personable, friendly, kind, and caring, and some Westmount employees certainly enjoy working with her, just as I enjoy talking to her. She is energetic and appeals to some younger voters. Perhaps from her work with Dawson and Marianopolis? For some older ones, she represents the wave of the future, towards a new crop of younger people on council. Although I’m far from being convinced we need the resident ID cards she is proposing, we all are to be issued with them. Where’s the budget line costing for that initiative? However, in my opinion, this is not yet the time for youth to replace hard-core professional leadership experience at the mayoralty level.

‘Mary’s management, finance and leadership skills haven’t been tested sufficiently long enough in the business world.’

We have been told Westmount is at a crossroads. The timing is not suitable for a less-than-optimum mayor. Our city needs an experienced businessperson as our new Mayor, with proven leadership and management skills to navigate the current fissures and lack of trust between City Hall and residents, along with the ongoing choppy waters of the homeless and mental and physical health crisis on the outskirts of our city. We need someone with a proven ability to work with a wide variety of organizations, both within and outside our City. Westmount does not exist in a vacuum on the island of Montreal. Islanders and visitors cross our territory daily by bus, metro, car, bicycle, scooter, and on foot. We are part of the Greater Montreal metropolitan area.

As far as the future of youth in municipal politics is concerned, the recent councillor candidates’ debate showed that Westmount youth want to — and are eager to — step up and get involved. Some will need a guiding hand to be sure. Still, my preference is for someone with more than volunteer board experience, and eight years following behind a Mayor who had definite ideas about certain things, like Westmount councillors not getting involved directly with Heads of Departments. How can you learn to lead if you have no vital experience dealing directly with top-level staff?

Mary’s commitment to Westmount is in no doubt, but her management, finance and leadership skills haven’t been tested sufficiently long enough in the business world. Is this truly the person we want to entrust our taxes, our spending budget, and our infrastructure repairs and future planning to, or even ask to maintain our parks and re-establish our weekly garbage collection, which her tenure on council got rid of? Or do we have to endure another four or more years of our city engaging high-priced consultants whose questionable, costly suggestions are rubber-stamped by the Mayor and council against the wishes of many citizens?

marygallery.ca

Michael Stern: Listen, lead and deliver

Michael Stern – Image: LinkedIn – Michael Stern

Michael is a newcomer to politics, municipal politics that is. In the politics of tax and business planning, he is an accomplished hand with 23 years at Ernst & Young (EY) as a partner, followed by experience as CFO with two local companies. His LinkedIn profile provides details of his career in finance and management.

His campaign is low-key, but he presents as a jovial, likeable fellow. One tends to believe him when he says he wants to “listen, lead and deliver”, but I came away from hearing him speak on several occasions with the sense that although he will certainly listen and lead, I’m not 100% certain he will be able to deliver, for his knowledge about, and inexperience in municipal management is thin on the ground. He has certainly worked hard on the campaign trail, spoken with and engaged citizens, and noted their issues. Nevertheless, with so many years of experience at EY, I wonder if he, too, will resort to hiring costly consultants to fill the gaps in his knowledge? Perhaps I’m wrong, but I’m not wholly convinced otherwise. He promises to engage citizen volunteers with the necessary expertise, including architects, engineers, etc. This is back to what we had in the past, when Westmount operated with vibrant community volunteer organizations that were cavalierly disposed of early in the last two council mandates. Notably, Lynne Casgrain also supports this goal. Fact is, Westmount lost out big-time with the disbanding of these volunteer advisory committees, such as the Healthy Cities’ yearly sidewalk repair check, so problems could be fixed before they worsened.

‘I’m not convinced he [Stern] has all the verbal and political skills it will take to negotiate and facilitate improved Westmount relations with the Montreal Mayor and with the province, especially as an anglophone.’

Stern’s website adequately explains his platform and its four pillars, although I’ve yet to see a flyer or brochure. Indeed, nothing has been delivered to my apartment building. Michael promises he’ll accomplish a great deal, including “top-quality, well-maintained roads, parks and public spaces”. He’ll get residents’ inquiries answered in 48 hours, he’ll make our streets safe (though how he’ll do that we’re not sure, as details are sparse), and he’ll ensure there is an infrastructure management plan for the city, as will Lynne Casgrain. But the fact is, the municipal budget can only go so far, no matter how adept he is at handling finances. How well will he energize and motivate employees without alienating them?

In addition to my similar reservations about Mary Gallery, I’m not convinced he has all the verbal and political skills it will take to negotiate and facilitate improved Westmount relations with the Montreal Mayor and with the province, especially as an anglophone. He’ll continue to perpetuate the mistaken image of Westmount as a bastion of wealthy anglophones hunkering down in our mansions, even though 75.6% of Westmounters speak both French and English, according to the 2021 census. Some of us also live in social housing, others in very modest homes and apartments and not all of us earn six-figure salaries. A sizable number live on fixed pensions. Michael’s French is mostly adequate face à face, but he’s definitely not as comfortable in French as he is in English. In fact, during Question Period at the Contactivity Centre, he relied on his campaign manager to answer one particularly long, convoluted question posed in French. In today’s political environment in Quebec, Westmount needs a perfectly bilingual Mayor, entirely at ease in both working languages.

michael-stern.ca

Lynne Casgrain: Time for a change

Lynn Casgrain – Image: lynnecasgrainwestmount.ca

Last, but certainly not least in this rundown of mayoralty candidates, is lawyer and experienced problem solver, fixer and ombudsperson Lynne Casgrain. She, too, like Michael Stern, has no municipal experience, but she does have a wealth of other pertinent and valuable skills and knowledge she can call upon at the drop of a hat — or, should I say, at the donning of the chain of office.

Top of my list is her flawless French and English language abilities and her presentation skills. She can pass effortlessly from one language to another without missing a beat. Not only has she honed her impressive courtroom and legal skills, including presenting cases to the Supreme Court of Canada, but she has also demonstrated in several ways how her problem-solving abilities will be of help as Mayor.

As a mayoralty candidate, she has reached out to organizations such as the Old Brewery Mission and CIUSSS West-Central Montreal to request future support and advice, for instance, on the humanitarian crisis evident at Westmount city limits. In the process, she discovered that Westmount had never asked them for information or help! Meanwhile, work is seemingly progressing at the hoped-for new site of Resilience Montreal, for their larger centre, further south down Atwater between St Antoine and St Jacques streets. If Resilience Montreal gets the necessary funding, it’ll move some of its operations there. It won’t completely prevent or dissuade the ongoing panhandling and other street issues, but it might help alleviate the situation somewhat.

Lynne is surrounded by a volunteer team of supporters and advisors from all levels of Westmount and beyond. She’s a known name on the Quebec provincial scene, and people respond to her phone calls. Her website clearly outlines her priorities, as do those of the other two candidates. In fact, most goals and aspirations are remarkably similar.

As regards the SE sector revitalization, Lynne’s complete of ideas for what to do with that forlorn stretch of Ste Catherine St awaiting development, which could take five to ten years or more before anything is actually constructed. Until then, she plans to tidy up and rejuvenate that block with exciting interim ideas, such as street furniture, food trucks, and pop-up events. Along with mandating, if possible, desolate, abandoned properties are hidden from street view by secure, high construction hoarding³ even before construction begins, making it an incentive to developers to construct sooner rather than later to avoid mounting costs. She promises to explore the pros and cons of Bill 39, which allows municipalities to impose additional taxes on owners of abandoned, undeveloped commercial properties, hoping to deter ‘flipping’ that has already occurred on Ste Catherine. Unfortunately, now with the passing of the SE Sector PPU, this practice could increase, thus adding to future property developers’ costs.

‘Lynne Casgrain has no municipal experience, but she does have a wealth of other pertinent and valuable skills and knowledge.’

But it’s her twenty years of working as the MUHC Ombudsperson that really indicates how well she will be able to step into harness at City Hall, previous municipal experience be dammed. On the campaign trail, this is one competent and surprising lady. From what I have witnessed, she learns amazingly fast, researches and assimilates information daily, and employs it seamlessly in her next presentation, building on what citizens have told her in previous meetings.

As Lynne explains, her role as Ombudsperson required her to interact with people across the entire MUHC workforce of +/- 20,000. This was needed so she could present, mediate, obtain ‘buy-in’ and solve and settle matters at all levels. She didn’t have a choice as to who she would deal with; she had to do it. And she did it well for twenty years.

She promises new ways for citizens to be listened to, heard, and informed. I do not doubt at all she will be more than able to manage Westmount’s +/- 350 workforce and answer to its almost 20,000 residents (as per the 2021 census) in a clear, concise and helpful fashion. This is someone who knows how to lead, listen, and act.

At Council meetings, not only will the customary question-and-answer periods continue, but any submitted questions will be published on the City website, with the answers provided alongside afterwards. Talk about accountability! As she says, if the City of Côte Saint-Luc can provide this service to its citizens, why aren’t we doing the same in Westmount?

That is just one example of how Lynne Casgrain explains her belief in ameliorating some of the current, less-than-satisfactory conditions in Westmount. For others, she’s committed to researching and applying best practices from other municipalities and indeed countries such as Finland and Medicine Hat, Alta. She doesn’t promise to end specific crises overnight, recognizing that some humanitarian crises, like the care of the unsheltered and the deprivation of health services, are much more difficult — and, yes, expensive — to eradicate than answering citizens’ requests in 48 hours. But her energy and enthusiasm are infectious, and her commitment to addressing many of Westmount’s short-, medium-, and long-term issues is persuasive.

Through her presentations, one understands that this mayoralty candidate is a force of nature to be reckoned with.

lynnecasgrainwestmount.ca

Oh yes, and contrary to rumours circulating, all three candidates plan to be full-time mayors ready and able to start work on Day 1 of their mandate.

Over to you, Westmount voters… It’s time to turn out and choose which name you want to position your X. Let’s all do our part, instead of moaning about what we don’t like. Let’s be active participants in our local government process, regardless of our ages or personal preferences.

See you in the Voting Booth!

¹ A special urban planning program (Programme particulier d’urbanisme, or PPU) is a component of the City of Montreal Urban Plan. It provides more specific planning information for a particular area. Source: montreal.ca/en/articles/special-urban-planning-programs-ppu-18114

² Plaza Tower offers studio, 1-bedroom, and 2-bedroom units for both short-term and long-term rentals, with furnished, unfurnished, and semi-furnished options available.

³ This could potentially allow for the passing of a municipal bylaw similar to Toronto’s, where 50% of construction hoarding needs to be used for community art if it is on part of the public right of way; the bylaw changed the way construction hoarding is used, turning it into a canvas for public art. In addition to benefiting the community, covering more than half of the hoarding with art also offers developers incentives by reducing hoarding permit fees. Source: secure.toronto.ca/council/agenda-item.do?item=2014.PG34.6

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of its author and do not reflect the views of WestmountMag.ca, its publishers or editors.

Feature image: Élections Québec

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Other articles by Wanda Potrykus

Wanda Potrykus is a writer, editor, translator and poet. A graduate of McGill, she has spent most of her career in marketing communications, PR, event and media relations specializing in international aviation, telecommunications, education and the marketing of the arts.