Not running — but not done

Four years ago, I left municipal politics without being entirely sure whether I was leaving it for good.

I had served one term on Fort Frances town council. I was 31 when I was elected and 35 when I left — one of the youngest councillors in the community's history and one of few 2SLGBTQIA+ identifying officials in the region. 

Those four years included a global pandemic, economic uncertainty, difficult debates about reconciliation and the future of our community, and more than a few lessons about the strange combination of intimacy and intensity that defines small-town politics.

When I decided not to seek re-election in 2022, part of me thought I was choosing between politics and everything else. Or worse, that I was letting my adversaries push me out of public life for good.

It turns out that was the wrong way to think about it.

The last four years have probably involved more public-interest work, more important fights with governments, more principled advocacy and, frankly, more politics than the four years when I actually held elected office.

They have also given me something I did not have when I left council: the benefit of hindsight.

And hindsight has been clarifying.

Some of the most bitter disputes of my time on council were about things that no longer seem particularly debatable.

I was one of the people who pushed back against the conspiracy theories surrounding the former paper mill — including the increasingly elaborate theories advanced by a former councillor about what had happened to it, who was responsible and what the Town could somehow do about it.

At the time, challenging those narratives was not always popular. In a community grieving the loss of its largest industrial employer, there was understandable appetite for explanations that supplied villains and promised that something taken from us might somehow be recovered.

But governments cannot govern on conspiracy theories. Public money cannot be spent chasing suspicions simply because they are emotionally satisfying.

History has, I think, settled that argument.

The same is true of the Point Park litigation.

By the time I left council, I had resigned from the committee overseeing that dispute after documenting what I believed was an extraordinary breakdown in municipal governance: litigation being reactivated without proper council authorization and, when the issue was put squarely before council, an unwillingness to confront what had happened for fear of offending old-boys-club lawyers and an embattled mayor. It was far easier for my peers to scapegoat the whistleblower. 

I thought the litigation was misguided. I thought the legal theory was deeply problematic, and based on racially-charged ideology. I thought the amount of public money being committed to it was also indefensible.

Those were not always comfortable positions to take.

Years later, after millions of taxpayer dollars were spent, the court dismissed the Town’s claims. Whatever disagreements people may have had with me personally, my central warning was vindicated: this was an enormously expensive legal adventure that should never have been allowed to consume the resources, attention and institutional credibility that it did.

There is satisfaction in being proven right. There is less satisfaction than you might imagine in watching your community spend millions of dollars proving it.

That experience taught me something about politics that I have carried with me ever since. Sometimes leadership means being willing to be wrong. But sometimes it means being willing to say something is wrong long before it becomes safe or fashionable to say so — and accepting what follows.

For me, what followed was not confined to angry letters or unpleasant conversations.

My years in public life brought threats of violence and death threats. The local newspaper ran entire pages of anonymous letters attacking my character. Municipal staff openly smeared me in emails. I had to invest in home security.

There were moments when political disagreement crossed into something darker and more personal. Living in a small community means that the people who despise what you say are not abstractions on the internet. They may know where you work, where you live and where you buy your groceries.

That takes a toll.

I don’t say that for sympathy. Anyone who enters public life should expect criticism, sometimes harsh criticism. Elected officials should have thick skins. Democracy would be impossible otherwise.

But there is a difference between criticism and intimidation, and pretending there isn’t only makes it harder to persuade thoughtful people to put themselves forward.

It also changes you.

I became more stubborn in some ways and more selective in others. I learned that not every fight deserves your energy, but that the fights that matter sometimes demand more of it than you imagined you had. Most importantly, I learned that holding public office and serving the public interest are not the same thing.

And while all of this was happening, something else happened too: my world got bigger.

I helped build a respected, modern law firm in Northwestern Ontario from the ground up. I spent several years leading an organization representing lawyers across the province. I continued working with community organizations and causes I care about. My legal work increasingly took me into courtrooms far beyond the Rainy River District and into disputes about government power, constitutional rights, human rights, freedom of expression and access to justice.

Some of those cases broke new ground. Some attracted attention far beyond Canada. Others resulted in federal law being declared unconstitutional.

Along the way, people elsewhere started noticing the work.

Benchmark Litigation recognized me as a Litigation Star and named me to its 40 & Under List. My law school alumni association recognized me as “One to Watch.” The Canadian Association of LGBTQ2S+ Lawyers honoured me for queer legal advocacy that began here in Northwestern Ontario.

I am proud of those recognitions. But their significance to me is less about the plaques or titles than what they represent.

When I left council in 2022, there were people who undoubtedly thought I had been defeated, driven out or had simply exhausted whatever influence I once had. The once golden boy who flew too close to the sun. 

Instead, leaving office gave me room spread my wings and build something else.

The fights became bigger. The institutions became bigger. The consequences sometimes became bigger too.

And I discovered that elected office is only one platform from which a person can contribute to public life.

Sometimes a courtroom is a platform. Sometimes it is a boardroom. Sometimes it is a newspaper page, a community organization, a professional association or simply having the independence to say something that people in office would rather not hear.

That realization mattered when I considered whether to put my name on a municipal ballot again this year.

I thought seriously about it. I was encouraged by many people.

I still believe profoundly in local government. In many ways, municipal politics is democracy in its purest form. The people making decisions about your taxes, roads, parks, neighbourhoods and economic future are people you see at the grocery store. There are few layers of insulation between an elected official and the consequences of a decision.

There are things happening in Fort Frances and the district that excite me, and things that deeply concern me. I have ideas about economic development, infrastructure, housing, reconciliation, regional cooperation and how we position ourselves as a community that young people might actually choose rather than merely inherit.

And anyone who knows me knows that the prospect of a difficult campaign has never been much of a deterrent.

But eventually I came to a different conclusion: that I don’t want to go backward simply because the road is familiar.

That is not a judgment on municipal office. Serving on council is a great privilege. Rather, it is a recognition that the person contemplating a return in 2026 is not quite the same person who first put his name on a ballot in 2018.

My professional work now takes me across Ontario and into questions that extend far beyond one council chamber. I have had opportunities to participate in debates about the justice system, government accountability, and public institutions at a level I could not have imagined eight years ago.

Those experiences have changed my sense of where I can be useful.

There is also something liberating about being a citizen again.

I can praise council when I think it gets something right and criticize it when I think it gets something wrong. I can ask questions without wondering whether they will poison my relationships around the council table. I can take on unpopular causes without calculating what they mean for the next election. And when a public institution behaves badly, I can say so plainly. And act forcefully.

I have come to value that independence.

So my name will not be on the municipal ballot this fall. But that should not be mistaken for retirement from public life.

If anything, the years since 2022 have convinced me that public service can take many forms — and that sometimes the most interesting opportunities are the ones you cannot quite see from where you started.

I remain fascinated by institutions: who gets to lead them, whom they serve, how they exercise power and what happens when they lose the confidence of the people they are supposed to represent. 

I have spent much of the last four years thinking about those questions from the outside.

Lately, I have found myself thinking about them in some other ways, too.

For now, though, I am content to watch this municipal election from the other side of the ballot.

There are some good people willing to put their names forward. They deserve a serious debate about the future of our community, and voters deserve candidates prepared to offer something more ambitious than seat warmers, and a list of grievances about the past.

One lesson of the last four years is that time has a way of resolving arguments that politics cannot. Positions once dismissed as obstructionist become obvious. Warnings once treated as alarmist become paragraphs in judgments and lines in financial statements.

Being vindicated is gratifying. But vindication is not much of a political program.

The more important question is what you do with what you learned — and where you decide to take it next.

As for me, I have learned not to confuse declining one opportunity with abandoning an ambition.

Sometimes you decide not to run because you are done.

And sometimes you take a pass because you have started wondering where else the road might lead.

-Douglas W. Judson