On the occasion of Luc Ferrandez‘s resignation from politics, I thought I’d compile a top 10 of Ferrandez moments over the past number of years — a rather worst-of compilation, if you will:
10. That time when he got a ticket for riding his Bixi the wrong way down St-Laurent in the middle of traffic. Way to set an example there as a cycling advocate, Luc.
9. Plateau Snow Removal Excuse-Watch 2015… that winter when he just decided not to do any snow removal, and kept coming up with ever-more creative excuses each time.
8. When he attacked and swore at flood victims on Facebook, telling them it was their own fault that their homes were underwater, and charmingly tossing f-bombs at them.
7. That time he suggested we tax everything, including parking, cars, investments, and meat. Oh yeah, that was today.
6. That time he fell asleep during a council meeting, and then threatened to sue the reporters who wrote about it. He claimed he was “just resting his eyes”. That’s what my sister used to say when she’d fall asleep in the backseat of the car on the way home from skiing when we were kids. It was as true for her as it was for him.
5. Amazingly, that may have been one of the only times he actually showed up to a council meeting. He had a tendency to miss those. Like, a lot. So much so that the opposition threatened to call a by-election to replace him in 2012 after he was absent for more than 3 months. (He didn’t respond right away, cause he was — you guessed it — on vacation. I think when it comes to time in office spent actually working, he actually may even be worse than Trump.)
4. The war of words he launched with the fire chief over “traffic-calming” measures that would have blocked emergency access routes. When the fire chief spoke up, M. Ferrandez … tried to get him fired. Yes, really.
3. When he demolished the baseball diamond at Jeanne-Mance park supposedly because it was “too dangerous” (i.e. because one person got hit by a ball)… and when there was a public outcry, he dismissed the players as “hot dog-eating anglophones“.
2. His ongoing war with Plateau merchants about removal of parking spaces. This one’s just kind of a constant facet of his administration. It has come to a head a number of times over the years, notably with a staged shutdown in 2015. But far from listening to the woes of small business owners, Ferrandez only became more dogmatic about his plans, as, one by one, the stores closed up shop and the formerly vibrant streets slowly died.
1. The wildly unpopular closure of Mount Royal to through traffic last summer, which was Ferrandez’s pet project, and which probably cost him whatever was left of his political career.
