Mayor Towndale thank you so much for joining us for making the trip across the river and down the river to Watertown.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

It's really a pleasure to be here and joining you.

So I want to get to the heart of your draw to public service.

What inspired you to serve your community?

Yeah, politics has always been an interest of mine, even at a young age.

It's interesting, there's no family history in it to be honest with you, but I remember going back to the 92' federal election in Canada and there were a lot of hot topics going on at the time.

NAFTA was one of them.

The 89' recession was kind of wrapping up a little bit, and Canada had just introduced the GST, the goods and services tax at the federal level.

So that was the conservative party under Brian Mulrooney, prime Minister Mulrooney.

And the liberal party was campaigning against that tax saying they were going to scrap it and they had their campaign document was called the Red Book.

And my dad doesn't get involved in politics anymore except for my own campaigns, but at the time, he felt strongly about it.

So I remember handing out red books with my dad and I don't know how old I was, probably about nine years old or something like that.

And I would say maybe that put a spark buried a spark in me.

And I just remember always Cornwall being a smaller community, knew who the elected officials were.

You knew who counselors were, who the mayor was, who the member parliament and member provincial parliament were, and just something that always seemed to be there kind of around family, friends and whatnot.

And my parents used to host a lot of dinner parties and a lot of these individuals would come over and that spark persisted.

So when it was time for me to go to school, I went to University of Toronto.

I studied poli-sci and Canadian studies and of course political science and university doesn't really train you to do this job by any means, but things worked out well.

I was fortunate the timing of my graduation coincided with the provincial election.

I went home, I worked on a campaign for, at the time, member of Provincial Parliament, Jim Brownell, who was very much a mentor to me and he was successful and the party was elected and I was offered a job at Queens Park.

And so began my official career in politics in 2007.

So I worked at Queens Park for about five years and then things changed a bit and I always thought, why don't I try my hand at municipal politics back home in Cornwall?

I always thought could try to do something, try to improve my community, try to contribute, especially with some experiences having lived away for a little while and new ideas, new ways of thinking.

And 2014, I put my name on the ballot I was elected.

The rest is history.

So you grew up in Cornwall?

Yes.

Was there anything from that experience growing up there that shaped how you see your city today?

Yeah, it's interesting because there's been quite a drastic change in Cornwall over the years.

For me, I think I've been thinking about this more and more as we see the change that's coming, but also what's happening in other communities.

Our community has always been a quiet place.

Generally, let me talk about crime for example.

Violent crime happens sometimes, but it's very rare, so you don't see that as often.

But there's this heart, there's this big heart in the community and our community is very generous and I think we look out for each other.

So I can think of a couple things growing up.

Interestingly enough, they both involve the hydroelectric dam that's in Cornwall live around the corner from there.

And the recreational path that's along our waterfront, one of the ways to get to it is right in front of the gate that leads to the dam itself.

When I was younger, much younger, I was riding my bike, my parents were walking, but I got ahead of them and there's a stop sign.

So the wreck path comes to a road and there's a stop sign.

I'm sitting there and then there's the guard booth for the hydrodam and there's a guard in there.

And as a kid taught to respect authority and someone's wearing a uniform, et cetera, and he's doing this, he's like, come here.

I'm like, oh, I'm in trouble.

I did something wrong.

He probably thinks I'm alone or whatever.

But at the same time, parents and still don't go off, especially with strangers.

So I waited for them to catch up.

And then finally he came over and it was funny because he handed me, I kid you not a toy balloon.

He had made a dog out of it, a toy dog balloon, and you see clowns make right.

And he did this, I don't even know where he got a balloon, and he said he wanted to give me that because I had stopped at the stop sign.

A lot of people just go right through it.

So he wanted to kind of reward good behavior and that was like, oh, that's really nice.

But again, a few years later when they had one of the open houses at the hydrodam, they had some of the equipment out.

You could go on the scissor lifts and things like that.

And I'm like, oh, we will do the tour and I'll come back after and I'll try out one of the lifts.

I want to see what that's like.

But by the time the tour was done and we came out, they had put them all away and they were done.

And as a kid, when you're disappointed, you cry, that happens.

So I started crying and a worker came over and said, oh, what happened?

What's wrong?

And I talked about it and he's like, I'll take you up.

So he brought it back out and took me up and it was really kind of him.

He didn't have to do that and just making that effort.

So I think those are two very simple stories, but I think what it illustrates is that people step in, they're willing to help each other, they're willing to, when they see something wrong or they see something they want to recognize, they do that.

So there's this friendliness even from people you don't know, those are two strangers trying to be nice.

And that persists today, I think in a big way in Cornwall.

And certainly I think that's part of the reason that I'm proud to be the mayor of Cornell and I'm proud of my community.

And more recently when we see fundraising efforts in our community, we're about 48,000 people.

But every time there's an ask, every time there's a need, our residents step up in such a big way that it's outstanding.

It's hard to believe how much money gets raised through these charity drives and everything else for all these different causes.

So that's part of it.

There's just this big heart in Cornwall.

Community with a lot of heart.

So when you're not busy with policy discussions, daily operations of city business, how do you spend your free time when you find free time?

Try to sleep.

No, yeah.

That's important too.

Yeah.

I find relaxing is a really good way to have done that.

Sometimes it's as simple as just catching up on TV shows that maybe don't have time to watch playing board games.

If there's a chance to go somewhere, maybe sitting by the water, relaxing with that, with family and friends especially.

I think one thing that's been challenging is unfortunately don't get a lot of free time with friends anymore and family.

So if there's the ability to spend time with them, even if it's just very quiet, not doing anything, that's great.

I used to spend more time running and cycling.

I have to get back to that.

I have to be honest, I'm a little negligent in that regard.

But certainly anything that's quieter in general really appeals to me right now just because it's this kind of job.

Even the smaller communities, it's very busy.

It's very go, go, go.

So when you can kind of tune out a little bit, it makes a big difference.

I. Think for a lot of maybe Americans and probably Canadians when they think of Cornwall, the hydrodam immediately comes to mind.

Obviously.

The city has a bit of an industrial past, so many of the small communities up and down the river.

But how is Cornwall evolving, would you say?

Yeah, I mean, thank you for that.

We certainly have an industrial pass.

One thing that may be of interest to people, especially here in the United States, I don't know how well known this is, but the first industrial application of the light bulb was in Cornwall and Thomas Edison himself came to Cornwall to oversee the installation of that.

And that was what was in the Weave shed area of town.

The Weave shed of course, being a large facility manufacturing textiles during World War ii, they made a lot of the commonwealth uniforms in Cornwall for the military.

Now these days it's more turned into commercial and condominium, but at one time, and I say this and it's tongue in cheek, but it's more or less true, you name it, it was made in Cornwall.

We've made everything from, like I mentioned, uniforms to paper.

Pfizer had a facility in Cornwall, Levi's jeans were made in Cornwall at one time, paint all kinds of things if you want to get even further down the rabbit hole, mustard gas, let's be honest.

So today we've seen a shift away from that.

I think a lot of companies have turned offshore manufacturing, and I know it's the same here in the us.

So what's coming to fill that void is distribution and logistics in a big way.

Walmart is actually our major employer in Cornwall.

They have two large distribution centers, the superstore and a fleet for the transportation and goods.

All in all, they employ about 2,500 people in my community.

So we have a great relationship with Walmart, Canada, obviously subsidiary of Walmart, us.

We've also seen a shift into food production as well.

We have a couple companies that make food and actually do export to the United States in a big way, including some of the private label brands that are grocery stores down here.

We've seen this interesting shift from more industrial where it's kind of a, if I be blunt, some of a dirty industrial to a more cleaner manufacturing or sustainable manufacturing in a sense.

Because when we look at production and requirements, things like food, so pork products and bacon are processed in Cornwall.

Demand for that is always high.

That's not going away.

And then that's all a melt and then LeClaire, cookies, bisque LeClair, which is a company from Quebec, still family.

Really?

Yes, they make some of their products in Cornwall.

And so those things aren't going away either.

And then there's a lot of other niche industries in Cornwall.

It's been an interesting transition for us.

We've also seen a lot of the industry that was in Cornwall was along the waterfront using the water for production, manufacturing or generation of power or even transportation shipping.

Now we're seeing the St.

Lawrence cleaning itself.

It's recovering and there have been investments recently.

The province just announced an investment yesterday in Cornwall for more remediation of the St.

Lawrence.

But certainly we're seeing fishing recover and there are fishing derbies being hosting Cornwall and the water's clean enough that you can eat the fish you catch.

Whereas maybe go back even 50 years ago that may not have been the case.

So it's an interesting transition for us.

We're seeing that change and we are the hub in the area.

It's not just Cornwall and its own, the United Counties of STNG, Akwesasne, and also Northern New York.

A lot of individuals from all these regions come into Cornell for their day-to-day needs.

So we've seen that transition into sustaining the local area as.

Mayor Towndale, we so appreciate your time and for making the trip down to Watertown to see us.

Thank you so much.

Oh, thank you.