Yves Ryan
| Yves Ryan | |
|---|---|
| Mayor of Montreal North | |
|
In office 1963–2001 |
|
| Succeeded by | final mayor |
| Personal details | |
| Born | February 28, 1928 |
| Died | February 2, 2014 (aged 85) |
Yves Ryan (28 February 1928 – 2 February 2014) was a Canadian politician in the province of Quebec. He served as the mayor of Montreal North from 1963 until 2001, when the suburban city was amalgamated into the new city of Montreal.
Ryan was the son of Blandine (née Dorion) and Henri-Albert Ryan. He was the youngest brother of Claude Ryan, a prominent politician and journalist in Quebec. Like his brother, he was a newspaper editor before entering political life. He edited Le Montréal-Nord from 1952 to 1956 and later co-founded Le Guide de Montréal-Nord.
Ryan was personally involved in many aspects of municipal government and was acknowledged, even by his opponents, as a very popular figure in his city. He was often re-elected without opposition or by large majorities, and he had little difficulty controlling city council through his Renouveau municipale party. In 2005, a journalist in the Montreal Gazette wrote that Ryan was usually able to "direct city business by doing little more than forcefully pointing his cigar butt."
Ryan was also known for his tight budgetary spending; in December 1985, he said that Montreal North had the lowest per-capita spending of all Quebec cities of a comparable size. Montreal North did not introduce a curbside recycling program in the 1990s, largely because Ryan did not want to introduce the requisite tax increase.
In 1999, anti-poverty groups accused Ryan of neglecting low-income housing; he disputed the charge, saying that his administration participated in three provincial programs and had created significantly more units than his opponents suggested. Some critics have charged that Ryan was unwilling to deal with long-term poverty issues in the Montreal North and was ultimately responsible for economic decline in the region.
When Ryan first became mayor of Montreal North, he promised that his community would receive a Metro transit line. He continued to promote the line for most of his time in office but was opposed by other municipal politicians, who argued that it made little sense in a broader urban framework.
In addition to serving as mayor of Montreal North, Ryan was for many years a member of the regional Montreal Urban Community (MUC). In 1972, he was the main proponent of an accord that brought Montreal Island's twenty-five police forces into a single organization. He later served as president of the MUC's security council, which oversaw the unified force. He announced in 1979 that Montreal would resume issuing English-French bilingual driving tickets, following a Supreme Court of Canada ruling that required bilingual tickets in Manitoba. (Quebec's Charter of the French Language, introduced two years earlier, had mandated that tickets be issued in French only).
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