Forty years ago, when he was deputy reeve of Vespra, Ken O’Brien had a ringside seat for the City of Barrie’s annexation of township land in 1984.
As a member of Vespra Township’s council for 10 years, from 1978 to 1988, the 82-year-old says Barrie made its annexation intentions clear years before the land was ever annexed.
“I think they (Barrie) made their first move the year I was elected or the year before,” O’Brien recalled during an interview at his home on the outskirts of Midhurst. “It took quite some time to come together, but it was clear from the beginning that it was going to happen.
“And it’s going to happen again.”
O’Brien says Vespra Township fought hard in those days against Barrie’s annexation plans. They even protested at Queen’s Park in Toronto.
Barrie ended up annexing about 2,200 acres from Vespra, including all of the land north of the city’s then northern limits at Cundles Road, including the Bayfield Street strip, which was home to Georgian Mall, a McDonald's restaurant, a Kmart store and a variety of other retail operations.
So while the politicians in Vespra didn’t win, they did learn a couple of very important lessons.
“First, you won’t beat government,” O’Brien said. “If there’s a will to make something happen at a higher level, that’s probably what’s going to happen.
“And second, draw your boundary first, before you start talking.”
O’Brien offered the second tip specifically for the present-day Springwater Township council.
Springwater was incorporated on Jan. 1, 1994 when the townships of Flos and Vespra were amalgamated with the Village of Elmvale and the Hillsdale/Orr Lake area from the Township of Medonte.
O’Brien says he’s been keeping an eye on Barrie’s latest boundary expansion talks with Springwater and Oro-Medonte townships. He believes folks in Springwater have been taking the wrong approach.
Rather than ”bickering among themselves” and voting to halt conversations with Barrie or have talks that are focused on cross-border servicing only, he thinks Springwater council should take the lead, come together and control their own fate.
“Look, it’s going to happen whether you want it to or not,” he said. “Decide where you want your boundaries to be and then deal with the other things, like servicing, after that because you may discover, after putting those boundaries on paper, that you don’t need servicing.
“Boundaries first, everything else second.”
O’Brien also advocated for smaller negotiating groups, saying more people at the table only creates more noise.
“You need the mayor, deputy mayor and the CAO of the township, that’s it,” he said. “Anybody else just bogs it down and these are the folks who have the power to get things done.”
The Vespra annexation of 1984 could have been done in an evening instead of dragging on for years, he said.
“The whole thing could have been settled at George Buie’s kitchen table,” O’Brien said, referring to the Vespra reeve at the time. “Barrie Mayor Ross Archer, a real gentleman, and George could have had it done in a night.”
Instead, it went on and on, racking up huge legal fees and creating friction among the participants that took years to dissipate.
At the end of the process, George Taylor, who was the MPP for Simcoe Centre at the time, summed up the experience in a way that may resonate with people today.
“The animosity is primarily between the elected officials,” Taylor said in the June 28, 1984 edition of the Barrie Examiner. “A great many of the public are pleased to see it over with and a decision being made, instead of this ongoing discussion and argument.”
