The Best Man for the Job: Joe Fratesi and the Politics of Sault Ste Marie

Ashley Thomson is a full librarian at Laurentian University and co-editor or co-author of nine books, most recently Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide, 1988-2005.

In January 1996, Joe Fratesi stepped down as Mayor of Sault Ste. Marie
and the next day became the town’s chief administrative officer (CAO).
Later that year, Judge John Poupore decided that the new CAO had
violated the Ontario Municipal Conflict of Interest Act, 1983. Fratesi
was banned from elected office and local boards for a 10-year period but
allowed to remain CAO, a post he holds to this day.

One of the driving forces against Mayor Fratesi in the conflict of
interest suit was Harvey Sims, a freelance writer and consultant then
living in the Sault. This book tells the story of how Fratesi pulled the
whole stunt off, beginning with his emergence as a champion of
English-language rights is 1990. In that year, Fratesi, who had been
mayor of the city since 1985, led the city council in passing a bylaw to
make the city unilingually English. Fratesi, also a lawyer, had his eye
on a provincial judgeship, but those jobs increasingly were going to
francophones and that put him in no mood to resist the thousands of
Sault citizens who were demanding the new law.

Fratesi’s connection with the English-only bylaw effectively
terminated his chances of ever becoming a judge, not only because he was
associated with anti-French sentiments but also because any potential
judge should have known that the municipal bylaw was ultra vires.
Ignorance of the law was the least of Fratesi’s problems; he was also
completely insensitive to ethics. So how did get away with all this?
Answer: his fellow councilors—and Sault citizens—thought he was
“the best man for the job” and were prepared to support him, even to
the point of threatening opponents with reprisals. The irony in all this
is that all Fratesi had to do was step down as mayor when he first heard
of the incumbent’s interest in retiring from the provincial judgeship;
in an open competition, he would have succeeded had he truly been “the
best man,” and he would have saved the Sault’s still-tarnished
reputation.

Rather than an irrational diatribe against Fratesi, Sim’s book is
smartly written, well documented, and consistently compelling. The
book’s obvious weakness is careless editing (e.g., a cartoon that is
supposed to appear on page 134 is found elsewhere; chapters are referred
to by number rather than title in the end notes, even though the
chapters themselves have titles, not numbers). Amazingly, there is no
index. These quibbles aside, the book will appeal to readers who are
interested in Northern Ontario or municipal politics, or who just like a
good read.