Mayor Andrea Horwath and Councillor Maureen Wilson Speak About the Late Mayor Bob Wade – TPR Hamilton | Hamilton's Civic Affairs News Site

May 5, 2023
Mayor Andrea Horwath says Bob Wade helped “create one big city out of a number of very diverse communities” as Hamilton’s first post-amalgamation mayor during the 2001 – 2003 term of Council.
Wade brought a “style of leadership that was very, very thoughtful,” Mayor Horwath says.
“I always saw him as a very calm person … he always brought a sense of calmness” to the work of leading Hamilton.
The 2000 mayoral race was close between Mayor Bob Wade of Ancaster and Mayor Bob Morrow of the former City of Hamilton.
Following the election, Horwath says her then-young son asked “as only children do, Mum, do you have to be named Bob to be the mayor of a city?”
Horwath says Wade’s “straightforward, very calm” leadership held during “a lot of fraught conversations” and “some fraught times” bringing the six former municipalities together into one new City of Hamilton.
Ward 1 Councillor Maureen Wilson served as Wade’s Chief of Staff for the first two years of his term.
“He played an important role at an important time,” Wilson says of leading the new City of Hamilton. “He brought a level of dignity to the office.”
Wilson says Wade saw politics as a public service and listened to people.
“It was calm, thoughtful belife that everybody had a right … to be heard.”
Being from Ancaster, Wade ensured “that people from Ancaster, Dundas, or Glanbrook could see themselves in this city, that there was a place for them, and that their style of leadership and their priorities could be heard,” Wilson says.
Wade ensured the legitimacy of the new City of Hamlton, Wilson adds.