John Lindsay has lived in Sudbury since 1966, but he remains reluctant to behave as a booster of the city. Instead, the articulate Chair of CARP’s local Chapter seems to relish in the role of being a vocal critic of Sudbury’s reigning establishment, which he sees as being too wrongheaded to make the changes necessary to make the city more livable for its seniors, the homeless, and longtime residents. Despite his willingness to take on Sudbury’s establishment, his hard work has been recognized numerous times, notably with a Sudbury Community Builders Excellence Award, a 125th Anniversary of Confederation Medal and a Queen’s Jubilee Volunteer Award.
The accolades may be empowering Lindsay to remain in the fight to improve Sudbury. He tells CARP Action, “We have a history here of people saying, ‘It won’t work in Sudbury.’ But Sudbury was the first community in Canada to put in parking meters. The first community to have a private TV station. We have had firsts.
“I organized a bicycle advisory committee that said, ‘we need bicycle lanes.’ We were told ‘Oh, that won’t work in Sudbury.’ Now we have them all over the place. They’re working fine. And crosswalks. ‘They won’t work here.’ Now we’ve got them all over the place. We’re dealing with a sort of a closed mind here.”
A tough and feisty individual, Lindsay is the sort of bluff critic who makes his views known. Last December, he submitted through CARP a series of recommendations to the city council. A key proposal was to have the annual property taxes deferred for homes owned by seniors. The city would collect the amount owed when the house was sold, presumably after the older adult moved to a long-term care facility or passed away.
At that point, the city would receive payment in full plus interest. This compassionate and practical proposal wasn’t acted upon by the Council, nor have they looked kindly upon Lindsay’s critique of reviving downtown Sudbury. For him, a city needs to consist of three C’s: content, cost and convenience. Those C’s exist in Sudbury’s strip malls, outside of the downtown, in Lindsay’s estimation. Instead of spending millions, which the city intends to do, trying to create a cultural hub in the core of Sudbury, with universities and libraries, he would like to see the administration make an area for the homeless, although not in a tourist area.
The December CARP submission concludes by offering the support of Sudbury’s seniors as people who “want to better serve our citizens and achieve other sustainable goals. 50 percent of our population is over the age of 50, while 40,000 are over the age of 65. Our senior population which helped build the city has years of individual and collective experience which can be of value in helping to determine our future.”
Lindsay takes a realistic attitude towards Sudbury, though it’s mixed with pride. “We’re stuck with our reputation. Sudbury is the city where the astronauts went to climb on the rocks because all the vegetation was destroyed. When I was 30, I climbed up and as far as you could see was just black rocks. Now you go up there and what do you see? Trees everywhere. We’ve got a fantastic science center and other dynamic attractions.”
Before he came to Sudbury, John Lindsay had lived an intense and productive life in radio and television in Newfoundland and Ontario as an engineer, producer, announcer and host. “I worked in 13 different stations over the years,” he recalls. “I actually like TV better than radio, even though I spent a lot of time in radio. But in TV, at least you knew there was somebody watching because you had a studio crew operating the camera, the lights, booms and so forth. When I started, it was all brand new. There was no videotape. Everything was in black and white. It was a pretty exciting time.”
Born with a low-pitched resonant voice and an approachable personality, Lindsay has done everything from commercials to the news over the years. He’s been at a slew of stations with call letters like CHNO, CKSO and CJMX and for a while worked with all three of his sons, Dave, James and Bruce, on radio. Dave Lindsay went on a long career for Rogers, where he retired recently.
“I used to go in to see him and everything was totally automated,” recalls John Lindsay. “It was all set up. All the breaks were pre-programmed. There was no fun.” You can sense his excitement when he remembers the primitive nature of early Canadian broadcasting when “if you made a mistake, everyone saw it or heard it.”
In Sudbury, Lindsay volunteered at the local cable television station for over 15 years. “I think I was the longest serving volunteer,” he says, with evident pride. Though he doesn’t question why, Lindsay admits that “I love volunteering. I’ve done so ever since I was a kid.”
Besides CARP’s local Chapter, he has led or was a key member of Friendly to Seniors Sudbury, the Sudbury Symphony Board and the Minnow Lake Community Action Network. He’s also run in local elections. “The advantage of running is very simple. You don’t want to get elected, but you want to have a voice. When you’re actually a candidate, the media and maybe some people will listen to you.”
Lindsay is a seniors’ advocate, an environmentalist and someone who wants to help Sudbury’s homeless population but it’s important to emphasize that he’s an expert in fiscal responsibility. While he’s always been involved in radio and television, Lindsay worked for decades at Employment and Immigration Canada as a councillor and labour market analyst. As so many seniors do, he has continued working since his “retirement” with a company he set up with his wife, Linda. Their firm, called Financial Decisions Inc, creates a “fiscal wellness” plan for its clients.
Asked about his goals as CARP’s chief advocate in Sudbury, John Lindsay just shrugs. “We’re tilting at windmills. The number of times we achieve success may be relatively small but there are odd times you win. And that’s the stuff for TV series and movies.”
