The Citizens’ Association undertaking the campaign for good government and the conduct of the forthcoming elections formed up in the middle of 1909, and was hailed by all good citizens, receiving the support of all public and volunteer associations having a civic tendency. About this time an important association was formally inaugurated on April 12, 1909, by His Excellency Earl Grey entitled the “City Improvement League,” and lent its aid in the campaign of education on good government and civic progress. Other societies also cooperated. The women associations under the local Council of Women on the English-speaking side, and La Fédération Nationale St. Jean Baptiste on the French, entered more largely than ever before into the movement for civic progress and influenced the women voters for clean government. The choice of the people for the new officers was made on February 1, 1910, when the “whole slate for the board” prepared by the Citizens’ Association was unanimously adopted at the polls as follows: Mayor, J.J. Guerin, M.D.; controllers, E.P. Lachapelle, M.D., president of the Provincial Board of Health; L.N. Dupuis, merchant; Joseph Ainey, labour candidate; and F.L. Wanklyn, a civil engineer and former manager of the Montreal Street Railway. (The latter resigned in the fall of 1911 and was succeeded by the election in the spring of 1912 of Mr. C.H. Godfrey.) The thirty-one wards were represented as follows:
* English-Speaking.
The consequent dispatch in city business, the improvement in public works, the strengthening of heads of departments in the city hall, hitherto hampered by aldermanic interference, and the abolition of patronage secured universal approbation of the new form of civic government. After awhile the spirit of opposition among a certain number of the aldermen began to jeopardize the early universal acceptance of the board of control system. Again the Citizens’ Association, with its backing, had to seek to strengthen the hands of the Board of Control. The following extracts from the Secretary of the Board of Trade’s annual report (Mr. George Hadrill) will indicate the new phase:
“In 1908, it being evident that the City Council, while comprising some good and capable men, was sadly misgoverning this city, your Council, with representatives of other organizations, endeavoured to secure such amendment of the City Charter as would provide for a reduction in the number of Aldermen and for the election of a Board of Commissioners. This effort resulted successfully in 1909, but unfortunately the amendments to the Charter submitted by the Citizens Committee were so changed in their passage through the Legislature that the Board of Commissioners did not possess the full powers it was intended to give them, and the result has been that, while the Commissioners have done much for the City, many of their plans for its advantage have been frustrated by the City Council and hence the hope for improvement in the condition of the City has been only partially realized. Your Council, therefore, in October last, joined with the following other organizations in an endeavour to secure such further amendments to the City Charter as would give the Board of Commissioners all executive powers, leaving with the City Council the general legislative powers and the making of by-laws: Montreal Trades and Labour Council, Canadian Manufacturers’ Association, La Chambre de Commerce, Montreal Citizens’ Association, Association Immobilière Montréal, Montreal Business Men’s League.
The substance of these amendments was as follows:
“That the Commissioners shall prepare the annual budget and the supplementary budget, and submit each to the City Council, which shall have the power to amend them by a two-thirds majority, or to reject them by a majority.
“That in the event of the budget not being adopted, amended or rejected within a certain period, it would be considered adopted.
“That once the budget is adopted, with or without amendment, the entire control of the expenditure, within the limits prescribed by the budget, would be left to the Board of Commissioners.