Ron Watson

COMMUNITY

Ron Watson is a former school trustee and city councillor, who remembers the population of Scarborough was 250,000, when he and his wife arrived in 1956.

Ron worked in sales and marketing for a Scarborough-based company before fi nding his way into public service in 1964, when he was elected as a school trustee. Voted onto municipal council in 1966, he remained there, with only a few brief retirements, until 1997. Ron ran in 13 Scarborough elections and has served on dozens of boards and committees. In 1996 he chaired the year-long bicentennial celebrations for the former City of Scarborough.

In 1985, Ron Watson authored Keep ’Em Rolling: A History of the Canadian National Railway, which was also a hit south of the border. The book later served as a basis for the engineering fi eld studies of what is now the Rogers Centre.

In recognition of his contribution and long-service to Scarborough, Toronto City Council honoured Ron in 2005 by renaming Tam O’Shanter Park the Ron Watson Park.

Artist, author and newspaper columnist with The Scarborough Mirror, Ron is affectionately dubbed the “Mayor of Agincourt” and still resides in Scarborough.