Random Access

If anyone is thinking that David Culham might be interested in trying politics again after his six-year term on the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB), they can think again.
Looking tanned, healthy and happy, Culham dropped by the office this morning to deliver a letter to the editor. Now that he’s retired from the OMB, the former Ward 6 councillor (for 23-years) can once again speak out on public issues.
Anyone who knows the 62-year-old realizes that the most difficult thing about accepting the OMB appointment must have been the restriction on expressing his opinion publicly. No one enjoyed expressing his thoughts, and expressing them forcefully, more than the passionate Culham whose hard-nosed advocacy basically bludgeoned his fellow regional councillors into introducing the blue box recycling system here in the early 80s.
If there was one thing Culham enjoyed more than expressing his opinion, it was planting trees. Over the years his philosophy of “sweat equity,” the euphemistic term he used to describe the process of getting your hands dirty to improve the community, resulted in thousands of new trees in parks, conservation areas, and along the Credit River trail that now bears his name.
Culham told me this morning that he has no interest whatsoever in resuming his political career. Although he works out regularly, the councillor knows how much energy the job takes. He’d rather devote himself to more productive things, like watching his grandchildren grow up.
The most important thing that happened this week was that his 10-year-old granddaughter Alex headed in her first goal at a soccer game in Guelph where Culham often travels to take pictures.
Culham and Mayor Hazel McCallion, who both came on Mississauga City council in its inaugural term in 1974, had some monumental clashes and fought an internecine war of words for years as he awaited the rumoured retirement that was (is) never to be.
Although they spent the last few years of Culham’s career sniping at each other, the mayor and councillor agreed on most goals. They regularly disagreed on how to achieve them.
The pair ran into each other not too long ago in Streetsville and ended up chatting about the ins and outs of the new legislation governing the OMB for the better part of three hours.
I once asked Culham about the tough rhetoric and the semi-belligerent tone he sometimes employed in debates. He replied with one of his fractured quotations, the ones that often had his colleagues scratching their heads in puzzlement.
The councillor had a unique way of not quite saying what he intended, but still leaving you knowing exactly what he meant. His response to the question was, “I’m a reasonably nice guy, but in hockey and in life, you have to carry your elbows.”
The Gordie Howe of Mississauga politics, unlike his namesake, looks like he knows how to stay retired.