Catholic board chairman defeated

FORT FRANCES—The Northwest Catholic District School Board lost its chairman and 12-year trustee Monday night when Gerald Rousseau came last among the four candidates vying for the three Fort Frances seats on the board.
“I’ll be very, very sad to see Gerry not on the board anymore. We started on the board at the same time,” noted incumbent Anne Marie Fitzgerald, who was re-elected with 597 votes.
“We’ll miss him.”
“I’m really disappointed that we lost Gerry because Gerry was an excellent chair. He really did do a good job,” echoed Harold Huntley, also an incumbent, who was re-elected with 552 votes.
“He had excellent leadership skills and worked really, really hard,” he added.
New to the board will be Paul Cousineau, who earned 554 votes—well ahead of Rousseau (378).
Neither Cousineau nor Rousseau were available for comment Tuesday.
Both Fitzgerald and Huntley said they were looking forward to working with the new trustee over the next four years.
“We’ll all be looking ahead and looking forward to working with Paul Cousineau,” Fitzgerald said.
“Paul is an ex-student of mine,” Huntley noted. “It’s always kind of nice to see an ex-student do well.”
Both also were pleased to have the opportunity to serve another four years on the board.
“I’m very happy to be re-elected,” Fitzgerald said. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had an election for Catholic school board trustee.
“It’s nice to know the Catholic school board supporters still have faith in my ability to do the job,” she added.
“I’m quite pleased. This will be 43 years of officially being in the separate system,” Huntley said, referring to his time as a student, teacher, principal, and trustee.
Like most Northern Ontario school boards, the local Catholic board faced a funding shortfall during its budget process last year. And the incumbent trustees are prepared to face similar issues this time around.
“It seems to be always a bit of a challenge for us here in the northwest,” said Fitzgerald.
“What we need to do is keep reminding the Ministry of Education that we’re up here and we are different,” she added, citing the small populations and large distances between schools.
“I’m looking forward to the challenges, and I know there’s going to be lots of them,” Huntley said.
The Catholic board also had a race Monday for its seat in the west end of the district, where incumbent Mark Chojko-Bolec was running against Don Marquis and Kim Desserre.
With one municipality still having to report its results, Chojko-Bolec had a one-vote lead over Marquis (53-52) as of press time Tuesday night.
Desserre was third with 44.
(Fort Frances Times)