Thank you, Karin

And when it comes to public service, few can boast the accomplishments of Mayor Marks, who leaves office with a litany of good deeds to her credit. There are too many of them to list here, of course, but the biggies include her significant contributions as a councillor to the refurbishments of the Westmount Public Library and Victoria Hall, not to mention what would be by far the most important ongoing news story in Westmount’s history.

In what could best be described as a veritable coup of inter-municipal diplomacy, she put herself at the epicentre of controversy throughout Westmount’s four-year “lost weekend” as a borough of mega-Montreal, serving not only as our borough mayor but also sitting on several megacity committees and really entrenching herself in that complex, overly bureaucratic entity in order to ensure that Westmount’s interests were always protected.

It was a difficult position to be in, for she found herself having to serve on the very body she was fundamentally opposed to, but all that experience proved invaluable and it allowed her to come back and lead Westmount during the first four years of the difficult restoration period that followed the demerger triumph.

Most recently, with the huge arena/pool refurbishing proposal causing a serious rift within the community, Mayor Marks worked hard to ensure that new plans were presented to the public and a huge government grant, representing about half the estimated cost, was secured before she left office. It may still be controversial, and theoretically may all be rejected by the incoming council, but at least she has presented Westmount with a viable project, plus funding, instead of leaving it all up in the air for her successors to deal with — which is exactly what a lesser person would have done.

As Mayor Marks retires from public life to spend more time with her family, she deserves our thanks for her many years of service to this community. All clichés aside, she really has left Westmount a better place.