Random Access

A lot of people who claim they really don’t like Carolyn Parrish are awfully happy to see her careering around City Hall these days.
There is reason again to tune into the council meetings on Cable 10, to pick up the newspaper and to keep tabs on municipal politics.
Someone has begun to probe beneath the placid waters of 300 City Centre Dr. (Cue the Jaws music.) The council meetings no longer resemble a Sunday morning sermon, complete with McGenuflection .
Parrish, the woman who Frank Magazine dismissed curtly with the description, “Big Hair, Big Teeth, Big Deal” may have launched a Big Mac attack.
The former school board trustee has professed nothing but admiration for the 86-year-old queen of Mississauga in her public statements. Her actions, however, speak otherwise.
Not that she has displayed disrespect per se. More like the kind of hint you might give your grandmother that it’s time to give up driving so she can enjoy the view better from the front passenger seat.
Parrish has very effectively, to date, gone about exposing what you could call the unspoken dark side of the Long Reign.
From challenging the appointments of long-standing citizen members on municipal committees (so Ron Starr wouldn’t be the only obvious floater, a cynic might say); to making a grandstanding threat to run a slate of municipal candidates to challenge social service pooling with Toronto; to warming up the electric chairs under several staff and board members at Enersource, LaParrish has made the jarring impact that was predicted.
Her many detractors will say that she has put her Jerry Springer School of Municipal Etiquette training to good use.
While the Ward 6 councillor’s self-aggrandizing style gets all the attention, her exceptional political instincts tend to get overlooked. She knows which targets to attack. She knows what upsets people.
And she knows that many Mississaugans believe it is long past time for the mayor to go, even if they would never in a million years say so publicly.
Take the silly debate last Wednesday where McCallion and the self-designated Mayor-in-Waiting went at it.
Parrish was probing staff about Enersource when the mayor took exception to the long, rigorous process, which could have been taken as a political fishing expedition. McCallion suggested Parrish ask her questions ahead of time and satisfy her curiosity, as the mayor does.
Well, that prompted a contretemps that served neither woman well. Parrish said she didn’t need a civics lesson from the mayor (who better to teach one) and said she’d continue to ask questions because, “This isn’t a secret society.”
The irony in that debate, for anyone who has been around long enough, was rich. It was McCallion, the ward 9 councillor, who earned much of her reputation for toughness by cross-examining the paid help when she was the unofficial leader of the opposition.
On election night last November, the mayor was asked if she thought that there was potential for the City’s business to be highjacked this term, as mayoralty and would-be mayoralty candidates, jockeyed for position.
She said she didn’t think that would be any problem and she would deal with if it arose. To be fair to everyone, if she does decide to retire, she would make an announcement around the end of the third year of the four-year term.
Wednesday may have been one of her ways of dealing with it.
The apocryphal stories are going around again about how “the mayor is losing it.” Some of them should have a heritage designation. The wishful thinkers have been saying the same thing for 20 years and, eventually, who knows, it may come true. But in the meantime, better beware.
The mayor is older. The mayor is more tired. But make no mistake about it, the mayor is the only one who will decide when — and if — she goes.
Parrish, and anyone else who is too quick to reach for the chain of office, had better be careful not to provoke the incumbent. She could ultimately exact the sweetest revenage, and just stay exactly where she is.