John Gardiner (Montreal politician)

John Gardiner is a former politician in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He was a member of the Montreal city council from 1974 to 1978 and again from 1982 to 1994 as a member of the Montreal Citizens' Movement (MCM) and was a prominent figure in Jean Doré's municipal administration.

An anglophone Montrealer, Gardiner studied History at McGill University. He was a high-school teacher from 1967 to 1973 and a school commissioner from 1973 to 1977. He also co-ordinated Montreal's Milton Park project, in which capacity he organized six hundred units of non-profit housing.

Gardiner was a founding member of the Montreal Citizens' Movement and became one of its first elected councillors in the 1974 municipal election, defeating incumbent councillor Hyman Brock in the second Saint-Louis ward. He lost his seat to Civic Party candidate Joffre Laporte in 1978 but was returned over Laporte in a rematch four years later.

Mayor Jean Drapeau's Civic Party dominated municipal politics in this period, and Gardiner served as a member of the opposition. He was considered a radical left-wing activist in the 1970s and took part in several efforts to preserve historic buildings from urban development. By the 1980s, he had moved to the political centre.

Gardiner was the MCM's house leader and housing critic in the mid-1980s. In 1985, he called for the city to hold public consultations before approving any large-scale downtown development projects. The following year, he criticized the Drapeau administration's decision to cancel a housing renovations program.

Shortly before the 1986 municipal election, Gardiner said that francophone Montrealers were becoming increasingly engaged in municipal politics, in light of the growing role of the French language in the city's professional sector. He added that this change benefited the MCM's chances of winning the election.

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