Frank Roger Mazzuca, Sr. (15 March 1922 - 9 September 2009) was a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

politician and businessman in

Capreol Capreol ( ) is a community in the Ontario city of Greater Sudbury. Situated on the Vermilion River (35 mins north of the downtown core), Capreol is the city's northernmost populated area. From 1918 to 2000, Capreol existed as an independent to ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...

. He served as mayor of the town from 1975 to 1997, and as chair of the

Regional Municipality of Sudbury The Regional Municipality of Sudbury was a Regional Municipality that existed in Ontario, Canada, from 1973 to 2000, and was primarily centred on the city of Sudbury. It served as an upper-tier level of municipal government, aggregating municipal ...

from 1998 to 2000.

Early life

Born in

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

, he moved to Capreol with his family at the age of seven."Mazzuca a local legend"
'' Sudbury Star'', September 10, 2009. He worked in his parents' family-owned grocery store in childhood. As a young man Mazzuca went to work for

CN Rail The Canadian National Railway Company (french: Compagnie des chemins de fer nationaux du Canada) is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. CN i ...

, where he was a brakeman for 37 years. In 1950 he opened Mazzuca Furniture & Appliance Company.

Political career

First elected to the town council of Capreol in 1957, Mazzuca served as the town's mayor from 1975 to 1997. In that year, he ran for chair of the

, losing to Peter Wong — however, Wong died in office the following year, and Mazzuca ran in and won the resulting

by-election A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, a bye-election in Ireland, a bypoll in India, or a Zimni election (Urdu: ضمنی انتخاب, supplementary election) in Pakistan, is an election used to f ...

. He served as the final chair of the regional municipality, which was amalgamated into the current city of Greater Sudbury in 2001. During Mazzuca's term as regional chair, Sudbury resident Ron Billard wrote a letter to the editor of the '' Sudbury Star'', criticizing Mazzuca for using a

limousine A limousine ( or ), or limo () for short, is a large, chauffeur-driven luxury vehicle with a partition between the driver compartment and the passenger compartment. A very long wheelbase luxury sedan (with more than four doors) driven by a pr ...

to travel to

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

for a meeting at Queen's Park;"Man successfully sued city: Ron Billard, 70, a vocal critic of local government, dies". '' Sudbury Star'', December 18, 2003. Mazzuca's response to the letter was "just tell the stupid bastard to call me on the phone"."Answers denied in killer's transfer". '' Sudbury Star'', December 27, 2000. Billard sued for defamation, demanding $150,000 in damages, although the suit was settled out of court for $7,500; Mazzuca in turn sued the ''Star'' for printing a comment he had intended off the record. Although a longtime opponent of proposals to amalgamate the regional municipality of Sudbury into a single city, he endorsed the proposal in 1999 after provincial Municipal Affairs minister Steve Gilchrist indicated that reform of the region's existing model of government was inevitable. In a reform model proposed by Mazzuca, the existing number of councillors across the seven municipal councils of the region would have been retained on the new merged council, in order to protect the level of representation in the suburban towns; however, in the model that was ultimately implemented, the number of councillors was significantly reduced. As a result, following his retirement Mazzuca went back to being a bluntly outspoken advocate of holding a deamalgamation referendum."Councillors rally support for de-amalgamation"
, '' Northern Life'', April 25, 2006. The community newspaper '' Northern Life'' quoted Mazzuca as saying that "It was a great thing to call up the mayor and say, 'A dog shit on my lawn, what are you going to do about it?' When they'd call me I'd tell them, 'Not my dog, not my lawn, not my shit.'" Mazzuca was a recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002.Governor General Of Canada - Honours
- retrieved 12 September 2009

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mazzuca, Frank 1922 births 2009 deaths Businesspeople from Greater Sudbury Mayors of places in Ontario Politicians from Greater Sudbury Italian emigrants to Canada