In memoriam: Carlos Garcia (1945-2024)
St. Catharines city councillor Carlos Garcia passed away on December the 9th and those of us who knew him well are at a loss.
I met Carlos in 2013/14. I had recently come home to Port Dalhousie after serving in the military for 25 years and I was shocked at the rundown state of things.
Port Dalhousie had never been a swanky place—and many of my memories from the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s were gritty to be sure—but what I saw when I came back home was different. All around was evidence of widespread neglect at many levels. I had no idea what had happened, but I wanted to know what, if anything, could be done to reverse the downward slide of the community and how I could help.
That’s when I met Carlos.
He was one of the people with his finger on the pulse of Port Dalhousie. Within a week of reaching out to him he was in my living room having a coffee. That’s the kind of man he was, completely responsive and ready to engage. To a great degree he took me under his wing. I looked to him constantly for advice, guidance, background or general knowledge on any number of city issues.
I knew nothing about municipal politics until I met Carlos. My adult life had been spent in the military and we were not permitted to be involved with local politics. He was patient with me; giving freely of his time and knowledge. He reflected integrity, a sense of service and a work ethic that resulted in countless people turning to him with their problems within the city—not only those who resided in his ward either, he was a community wide phenomenon.
I have read the countless tributes that are flowing and I will keep reading them as they continue to appear in the days ahead. Carlos was the exact measure of a man who elicits widespread praise. He reminded all of us that respect—true admiration for those rare people who just have that way of making us want to be better—is not something that comes with birthright or wealth or family status or authority or power and privilege. People who expect respect for those reasons likely could never understand a man like Carlos. My guess is he never thought that much or cared about whether people respected him. But they did.
Despite thinking I knew him well, I am learning more about him by reading the tributes and it makes the sense of loss worse. Generally, I think of accolades and praise for people as containing a degree of predictability that borders on cliché, especially words only spoken once we depart this Earth. It’s been my observation that most of us are better portrayed at our funerals than we ever actually were in life, and therefore I long ago concluded that the truth was somewhere in between.
Not with Carlos, I don’t think it can be overstated how local politics will be different without him.
I never thought of him as a politician. I don’t think anyone who knew him thought of him that way. He was not political in the sense that has sullied the meaning of the word now. He was a neighbour trying to help his neighbours.
Over the past ten years I have watched 100 council meetings, probably more. I have not seen anyone around that table better prepared on all the issues. If you become a watcher of council you can tell. You can tell which ones took the time to read the agenda and prepare thoughtful intelligent questions, in service to the constituents who rely on them. You can tell who among them took the time to solicit dialogue from residents. And you can also tell who are the politicians among them bent on some personal agenda, often opposed to the ones there for service to the people.
Carlos was a leader who only wanted to serve the people.
To try and list all the significant issues he championed over his ten years in office would be folly, but here are a few from the past two years alone: He fought until there was no fight left to defeat the largest proposed tax increase the city has ever seen; when he lost that battle he continued to fight for solutions to the heavy tax burden council imposed in subsequent years; he fought to keep our tax dollars from being handed to developers of luxury condos; and he fought to keep parking free for citizens at the beaches.
Ironically he lost those fights, all of them, but he never tired of them, he never stopped fighting for people.
Ten years after first becoming friends with Carlos Garcia, it is not stretching the truth to say that Port Dalhousie looks better now than it ever has, far better. Carlos was integral to that reformation both as a neighbour—there is not a community group that does not have his DNA somehow imprinted on it—and as a councillor.
He fought the good fights for all of us. He will be missed.
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