Jack Heath:
CLASS OF 1966
Richview Collegiate InstituteClass of 1966
Etobicoke, ON
University of Toronto - Arts & SciencesClass of 1970
Toronto, ON
Royal York Collegiate InstituteClass of 1965
Toronto, ON
Parklawn SchoolClass of 1961
Etobicoke, ON
Jack's Story
Workplace -
I served as Deputy Mayor of Markham from 2008 to 2018. Since then, I have been a Markham and York Regional Councillor. Markham is just north of Toronto in Ontario, Canada. We have about 365,000 residents. It's always challenging, and I enjoy it. This is now my 7th term - first elected in late 1997. I am retiring at the end of the term (2022) even though it's still very interesting. I'd like to have run for Mayor this year, but the current Mayor decided to stay on! I owned a book company which sold legal books for many years, but the Internet signaled the end of that!
Military -
Me, in the military? Not that I recall. The Royal Canadian Navy would have been interesting but who would have any confidence in a navy that would have me in it? Besides I would be claustrophobic in a submarine.
Favourite Way to Relax -
Driving in Canada is wonderful and I do it as often as possible. I spent 4 days in June 2010 and June 2015 touring central and northern British Columbia and the Yukon and a similar number in southwest Nova Scotia in 2011 and 2018 including New Brunswick. Wow. I remember a drive with my wife in eastern Quebec up to, and through, Labrador and then a ferry over to Newfoundland. Lovely. My French is not great but high school, Canadiens hockey on Radio Canada, and political conventions taught me enough to get by. Even reported in French a man beating up a woman to the local QPP and they came and hauled him away! I should have studied French harder in school, or even studied at all. That part of Canada is so beautiful; eastern Quebec and Labrador are almost empty! You'll find me relaxing in Barbados in late December / early January.
I enjoy golf but Tiger Woods could still beat me easily and his game has fallen off so much! Several times a year I can be found at Toronto Maple Leaf games where I share season tickets a...Expand for more
nd at the CFL's Toronto Argonaut games as well.
Family -
I am married to Krista, having flown down quickly to Barbados two weeks after proposing. We don't have any children, just didn't happen. We talk occasionally about friends sending this son or that daughter through university and the ever mounting costs, but I do think it's nice to have some wonderful nieces and nephews and grand nieces and nephews! We also find it interesting that many of our friends also have no kids or at most one. Brother Carl and sister Maureen have great kids; Carl now lives in the Vancouver area and Maureen is now retired in suburban Halifax. My mother Nella Heath passed away at 91 in 2008, my father Len in early 2014 at 96.
Heroes -
I met and talked with Pierre Trudeau many times. And his son Prime Minister Justin (Trudeau the Younger) too. Prime Ministers Sir John A. Macdonald and Laurier, Presidents Lincoln, FDR and Obama, Queen Elizabeth the first, our current Queen, Churchill and Kings Henry II and V would be on my hero list too - all people who took a society to the next step or through tumultuous times. Martin Luther King as well. I was honoured to meet Desmond Tutu during a visit to South Africa a few years ago. Extraordinary speaker, extraordinary man. I would include my father as a hero for many reasons, mostly private though! As a group, the women who brought the right of Canadian women to vote in the first decades of the 20th century - what perseverance and what an accomplishment. A second group would be those who first eliminated the trade in slaves and then slavery itself in the British Empire, including Canada, in 1834. Oh, and I would like to have met Shakespeare - everytime I see one of his plays, I am awed at his talent, the beautiful way he uses our language and his understanding of people - they are the same today as they were then.
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