There are four men in the running to be Renfrew’s next mayor, one an incumbent mayor and three challengers. Actually there’s a total of five challengers, but I’ve gone ahead and ruled two of them out with the belief that, aside from pulling a hundred votes or so, aren’t really in the legitimate mix for the mayor’s chair.
Tom Sidney is the current mayor and he’s running again. Looking to unseat him are current reeve Peter Emon, current councillor Jason Legris, and former councillor and past mayoral candidate Michael Coulas, a local businessman and real estate guy. These are my Big Four, in that one of these fellows will end up on top, but all four have what I believe to be legitimate paths to get to the top of the polls later this month.
All of these men are people of substance. I know two of them somewhat, and am familiar with three. Two of them have taken my calls or responded to emails, while two have not. One has labelled me a “keyboard warrior,” which, now that I think on it, isn’t much of insult given the old saw about the pen being mightier than the sword.
I have also been referred to as “Our Friend” behind closed doors. And that one I don’t fancy so much since it makes me sound like some recurring rash or condition.
Gosh, people can be cruel.
When I describe the men, as best I can, I hope that familiarity with some and not with others doesn’t have me leaning very far in any direction. I would like to give all four a “fair shake,” and I feel somewhat confident that I can offer a bit of insight into all four without indicating which way I might be leaning.
And actually, not being a Renfrew resident, I don’t have a vote in this race at all.
I’m going to run this alphabetically, just because it sounds like something that might work.
MICHAEL COULAS
Mike Coulas, as I said, has been a prominent member of the local business community since I can remember, and he’s been a successful one for longer than that. He owned and operated Renfrew Chrysler for many years and anyone who has even a passing interest in cars and dealerships knows what a wild west kind of business that can be. With full disclosure, I believe I’ve purchased three vehicles at that dealership over the years.
Currently, Mike is “luving2sell” in the real estate business, and you might recognize his licence plates there since he rocks iluv2sell plates on his car, or something very close to that.
Both of Micheal’s children were in my class while in grade 8, and I worked with his wife Betty when she worked as an EA at the same school. And all of this is the source of my familiarity with Mr. Coulas.
He also has some extensive experience as a former councillor, including the term immediately before the current one. He would likely still be on council had he opted to remain in that race back in 2022 rather than throw his hat into the mayor’s ring, where he finished third behind both Tom Sidney and Sandi Heins.
In that election for mayor, Coulas netted some 691 votes, which isn’t a lot, but in a town where evidently people don’t like to vote for mayor, he was only 170 points back of the second-place Heins and only 182 behind the eventual winner Sidney. That, to me, is striking distance.
For Coulas to find his path to the chain, his competitors need to take a step back in terms of their own support and possibly fall a little. I believe that one will face a significant vote deprivation later this month, and I’m seeing signs that another might be facing difficulty in this regard as well. Two of them have the Ma-Te-Way hullabaloo on their records, but then again, so does Mike.
A case could be made that one of the other candidates for mayor is more “culpable” than he with that disaster, but the degrees of culpability may be something voters actually consider, and maybe not. So that said, Ma-Te-Way may not have the same drag effect on him that perhaps a couple of others may experience. So that’s going to be a bit of a wild card.
The thing is, nobody I’ve ever encountered has ever mentioned Mike Coulas as part of Ma-Te-Way imbroglio, and that means something, because voters don’t necessarily know what the hell they’re talking about when they go to vote, if they actually go to vote. Most of the blame I’m hearing out there seems to directed towards one candidate primarily, and I’m starting to pick up some potential fallout for the other. But Mike seems to be way down the culpability list in the minds of voters I speak with, if they even have such a list at all.
Whether this is fair or not is not up to me to police. It is what it is, and it’s the kind of thing that make politics mostly unpredictable. But it may be something that Mike Coulas benefits from.
PETER EMON
Nobody running for public office in Renfrew has the political résumé of Peter Emon. From Calabogie to Renfrew to Pembroke, if there are people walking around that follow local or regional media, then they’re more than likely to be familiar with Emon.
Mr. Emon was Renfrew’s reeve for this past council term, a position that he was acclaimed in uncontested. But a very unhappy current council decided that the reeve’s position was redundant or maybe just not necessary, so they removed it, and now there is no more reeve position.
Most impressive is the fact that Mr. Emon has served a Warden of Renfrew County for no fewer than seven terms, albeit they are all single year terms. Nevertheless, if the Warden’s chair has foam memory support, he may be the only guy to fit in it. And I also believe that, if successful as Renfrew’s mayor, you’ll see him right back at it, perhaps as early as next year.
Of the four, Mr. Emon would have to be considered the only “true” politician in that he’s been at it perhaps the longest and has learned the position well. My earliest record of him in the political arena was from back in the 1990’s where he was an operative of one of one of Canada’s two major political parties, and if active then, he was probably active before. So experience is not going to be an issue with Peter Emon.
Well-spoken and articulate, and a verifiable policy wonk — not even close to an insult, instead a compliment — he demonstrates a solid understanding of all the issues and all the procedures. While taking in and reporting on council meeting for over a year, it appeared to be Emon to be the voice that more often than not brought the discussion back to where it ought to be.
But make no mistake, parts of the 2022 to present council term has been a rocky ride for the current reeve. Newly elected councillors not part of the Ma-Te-Way thing went after Emon almost from the outset as he became, in their view, one of the lightning rods for the fiasco in the community. They voted away his committee memberships and essentially stripped him of the opportunity to remain reeve moving forward. Had the reeve position been left intact, my feeling its that he wouldn’t be running for mayor at all.
It’s never an easy thing to have fingers pointing at you, and even worse when the finger-pointing is followed up with significant negative action. Peter Emon is no different, but on one occasion, in an attempt to sort of strike back, he became embroiled in a situation where a comment “misunderstood” in an email got under the skin of other councillors to the point where they called in the integrity commissioner. In the end, it didn’t amount to much more than a fart in a mitten, but still, it certainly illustrated the hard feelings that were beginning to sweep through the council chambers.
I don’t necessarily want to surmise that Mr. Emon has a bit of a thin skin, and I certainly wouldn’t mean it in a derogatory way. But still, his push back to criticism can at times come off as ill-disciplined and can, in some cases, lead to unforced errors, with that offending email being a case in point.
Emon has faced significant criticism from Brian Belanger, a guy running a Facebook Group called RENFREW ELECTION 2026. Again, offended and coming up shooting from the hip, the reeve came back with a fulsome clap-back at Belanger, but then also offered an unfortunate name to the operator of the Facebook page. This was very early on, Belanger is still active, and I don’t see Emon interacting with him anymore, which is probably the right move going forward. Because nobody cares about the blows Peter Emon may be able to land on Brian Belanger, but they will more than remember the blows Belanger landed on his own. So for Emon, in my estimation, there’s nothing to be gained there.
And if I’m correct about the thin skin, it will be important that he keep that in check for the next three weeks or so.
So far he’s run a polished campaign right out of the High Manual of Political Campaigning — a book I’ve not yet written and likely never will — hitting every mark flawlessly in terms of outreach and communications. There can be no criticism of of his campaign in terms of roll-out and presentation, other than the Belanger remark. Again, a very seasoned and polished politician.
If it weren’t for Ma-Te-Way, Peter Emon would have to be considered a front-runner, just by virtue of his experience and political chops. Unfortunately, he too was part of that previous council and people quite rightly might want to know how that mess happened with so many seasoned politicians, such as he himself, in the room. None of those veterans of municipal governance were seemingly able to get through the bluster of the head of one of the town’s department heads as important protocols were ignored.
That said, three other candidates share the same situation, and as I’ve indicated before, there are degrees of culpability at play here in my opinion.
JASON LEGRIS
Anybody thinking that Jason Legris is a lightweight in this contest doesn’t know Jason Legris.
I don’t know him either, but from what I’ve seen, heard, and experienced, this gentleman is no lightweight. In fact I’m of the opinion that he is as crafty and a wily as they come, and I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way. After winning his position in 2022, this current councillor has had his eye on this coming election in 2026, only this time he’s going to take a crack at mayor.
Some may scoff at that, and they can scoff to their heart’s content, but Legris led all councillors with 1,619 votes, the most of any candidate in that municipal election and close to double the amount of votes the successful candidate for mayor received.
Do not discount that number.
That’s an astonishing 58% of voters, albeit voter turnout was abysmal. This is a considerable base or foundation upon which to run for mayor. And as to voter turnout, even though low, in the mid forties percentage-wise, over half of them went looking for Legris on the ballot. That says something.
Perhaps he’s just got a solid way of identifying his own vote and then getting them to come out and support him on election day, the so-called ground game.
Another thing working for Legris is that the other three of the Big Four may all be fishing in the same pond for votes, which means the possibility of significant vote-splitting may allow him to come up the middle for the prize. As well, he alone of the Big Four was not on council during Ma-Te-Way.
His committee work appears to be solid, his reporting of committee work is clear and concise, and I don’t believe I’ve ever heard anyone say a bad thing about him. His tone in council is calm, deliberate, and professional, at least in my estimation.
Still, running for mayor is a big leap. That said, the other three he really needs to keep his eye on have potential problems of their own that Legris doesn’t have to deal with or face, so vote-spitting and the possible downward pull of Ma-Te-Way on other candidates may create a situation where Legris’ campaign is more than viable.
Anyone underestimating Mr. Legris does so at their peril.
TOM SIDNEY
Renfrew’s current mayor, Mr. Sidney is the incumbent, which sometimes has advantages, and then again, sometimes not.
I don’t know Tom Sidney and have never communicated with him outside of a terse hello at one of our local grocery stores. I guess terse is what I could have expected, given the coverage I provided on council with Mayor Sidney at the helm. It wasn’t exactly praise-worthy.
Honestly, although I have no reason to believe he’s anything other than a solid candidate, the whole observational experience left me with a feeling that there wasn’t exactly a strong or steady hand at the tiller. I can’t make the same judgement of the other three because none of them had their hands on the steering wheel of Renfrew Town Council. But Sidney did.
The current council term was often bogged down in squabbling between two groups of politicians, mostly the Ma=Te-Way group versus the post-Ma-Te-Way group. Sidney is in that first group, having been on council during the Ma-Te-Way thing. What’s worse, he was chair of the very department that had operational control over the Ma-Te-Way thing.
It’s quite possible he was successful in the last election because (a) not many people voted for mayor despite being eligible to and (b) the scope of the Ma=Te-Way disaster wasn’t fully known back in 2022. But it is now.
Maybe I’m still a little put out that he made no attempt to respond to any of my outreach attempts over the past eighteen months, but neither did Jason Legris, and I still had nice things to say about him. The passage of time, however, has revealed that the mayor is a serial non-responder to communications outreach, an opinion I’ve encountered in several people over time. So there’s that.
He used his recently gifted strong mayor powers primarily to keep a museum open and to promote the town’s clerk and pop-up her salary. To me that makes sense, because in my opinion, if it wasn’t for Clerk Carolynn Errett, the council meetings of the past four years might well have been more difficult to watch than they already were. So maybe that was Mayor Tom giving props to his Clerk for services rendered.
Mr. Sidney garnered 873 votes last time out, enough to squeeze out former mayor Sandi Heins who was right there in the rear view mirror just a dozen votes back. From my point of view, many voters last time weren’t interested in handing the job back to Heins, but she still almost took the job anyways. Those Heins votes aren’t on the table anymore, at least for mayor, and how those 861 votes fan out among the current candidates will be interesting, if they fan out at all. In an election where voters don’t have to use all the votes they’re allowed, those Heins voters may just trot over to the contest for council to support Heins there, or possibly ignore the race altogether.
You’ve seen me mention degrees of culpability for Ma-Te-Way. My conversations around town have revealed that, in every single case, Mr. Sidney’s name came up in reference to the Ma-Te-Way debacle, and that’s going to hurt him I think. Fairly or unfairly, Ma-Te-Way will bruise this candidate’s chances the most.
I also believe that his 873 votes back in 2022 represent a high-water mark for Mr. Sidney. I can’t really see anything that’s happened over the last four years that indicates that he would be able to significantly build on that number, so in all honesty, I don’t like his chances. In fact, I actually see that 873 total significantly reduced, although that would be dependent upon voter turnout. Maybe there’s a full cadre of committed Sidney supporters out there I don’t know about, just sharpening their knives and preparing to pounce on election day.
But I don’t think there is.
I have to be honest here, but I was really surprised that Tom Sidney was even thinking of defending his title given the trials and tribulations he was part of over the past four years. The turbulence that rocked his tenure was damaging enough, but his closeness to the Ma-Te-Way file as part of the last council may well cause more damage than a person can come back from. In fact, I feel it will be. I can’t see it any other way.
But Sidney can take comfort in the fact that I’m often wrong.
Pessimist and cynic that I am, I’ve entertained the notion that Mr. Sidney is in this race entirely as a spoiler for the campaigns of political rivals, and I would suspect his efforts might be directed at either Peter Emon or Mike Coulas, or both. I don’t think he has a jag on for Jason Legris, but since Legris was part of that post Ma-Te-Way grouping in council, you just never know.
If Tom Sidney is to win the mayor’s chair again, there will have to be an extraordinary confluence of factors coming together to achieve it. And as random and chaotic as politics often are, unfortunately for Mr. Sidney, I just don’t see that confluence happening.
