5 defining times during Jim Watson's 12 years in office

It's official: after today, Jim Watson will no longer be mayor of Ottawa.

It may seem hard to believe, given Watson has spent the past 12 years presiding over council meetings and shaking handsat civic announcements.

But on Tuesday, he'll hand over hisoffice in city hall's heritage wing to mayor-elect Mark Sutcliffe.

• ANALYSIS |For incoming mayor Mark Sutcliffe, the hard part starts now

Some of Watson's big moments during the past three terms,like breaking ground on the future central libraryor decidingnot to support a downtown casino, were specificto life in the nation's capital.

Others, like managingthe arrival of ride-hailing apps and navigating the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, were challenges faced by cities across the globe.

Jim Watson on being mayor of Ottawa during the COVID-19 pandemic

2 years ago

Duration 1:25

In an interview with CBCs Omar Dabaghi-Pacheco, outgoing mayor of Ottawa, Jim Watson said he thinks his administration did the right thing to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

It's too soon, of course, to say what history will ultimately remember about the past decade-plus. But here are five highlights or lowlights, depending on your perspective that certainly helped shapethe Watson era in Ottawa.

Lansdownelives

When Watson announced he wouldn't seekre-election, he expressed pride at reviving several projects that were "stuck in neutral" before becoming mayor in 2010 the first big onebeingthe $300-million renewalof Lansdowne Park.

Watson was fond of decrying the Glebe urban space as not much more than a crummy parking lot before it was massively overhauled early that decade,courtesy of a public-private partnership with Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group (OSEG).

The CFL's Ottawa Renegades had packed up in 2006, leaving the former Frank Clair Stadium mostly empty. While the previous council had signed the contract with OSEG, at the time Watson took office residents were still fighting the plan calling it, among other things, too developer-friendly.

• TIMELINE |The fight over Lansdowne Park

By the time Watson was up for re-election in 2014, the CFLhad returned to the refurbished TD Placein the form of the Ottawa Redblacks. The city also had a new soccer team, while Lansdowne was filling up with shops and restaurants though perhaps not as many local establishments as some had hoped.

"We got that done, and it's been a vast improvement in terms of employment and green space and trees and shops and sporting events," Watson told CBC in an exit interview.

Still, Lansdowne remains a work in progress. OSEG was reporting serious financial losses even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and unveiled its plans for what's been dubbed Lansdowne 2.0 earlier this year.

Those were approved over the summer, but not without still-simmeringdiscontent.

Ottawa throws a birthday bash

Want to unite your city? Try having the streets invaded by towering, fire-breathingmechanical beasts.

That was essentially what happened in the summer of 2017, when the La Machine spectacle came to town as part of Canada's 150 birthday celebrations.

• La Machine spider and dragon coming to Ottawa 2017 celebrations

Organizers reported thatmore than 750,000 people watched the 12-metre-tall creatures roam through the downtown over the span of four days.

The entirety of the Canada 150 celebrations which also included the NHL outdoor classic and the Juno Awards ultimately led Ottawa-Gatineau to top the nation in tourism growth in that year.

Watson was noticeably proud of the role Ottawa played in the big anniversary, looking back fondlythis summer, five years after the fact.

The highs and lows of LRT

Speaking of unwieldy mechanical beasts: arguably nothing's dominated the entirety of Watson's tenure as much as the problem-plagued trains plus the tracks and stations that run along Ottawa's Confederation Line.

Another one of Watson's stuck-in-neutral projects, the $2.1-billioneast-west LRT network was approved by council midway through his first term in officeafter years of debate.

Within a few years, however, things would begin to goawry.

There was the gargantuan 2016 sinkhole outside the future Rideau LRT station. Then thelaunch date became a moving target.Then the delays became official. The costs associated with those delays started adding up, while concerning news emerged during trial runs about the Alstom trains' winter worthiness.

Finally, on a pleasant September 2019 afternoon,the fare gatesopened. Watson was beaming, saying the line's launch marked "the future of transit" in Ottawa while thanking would-be riders for their patience.

It would not be the last time that patience was tested.

• TIMELINE |The turbulent 1st year of Ottawa's LRT network
• Province to launch public inquiry into Ottawa LRT network

The subsequentcornucopia of breakdowns and derailments are now practically stuff of Ottawa legend, spurring aninquiry in which it came out that city officials lowered the bar for trial run successand calculated it was best to accept a defectiveLRT network and figure things out post-launch.

Watson remains proud of LRT, noting that over the past eight months the line aside from an errant lightning strike has largely worked as planned. And once theeast and west extensions come online, he says residents will wonder how we ever got around without it.

"One of the things no one really had a full grasp of whether it was our staff or the public or the politicians was how complex this system was going to be," Watson recalled last week.

"I think people will look back and say it took a lot of effort, it was a bit of a gutsy move to get a big project of that nature in a city our size. But it was the right thing to do."

The convoy rolls in

If the LRT's rollout was a slow burning debacle,this past winter's Freedom Convoy protests were a flash fire.

The multi-week occupation of Ottawa's downtown by protesters livid with COVID-19 mandates and the federal government sternly tested Watson's leadership and exposed cracks on city council.

No one had a roadmap on how to deal with the convoy protest, Watson says

2 years ago

Duration 0:37

Outgoing mayor Jim Watson told CBCs Omar Dabaghi-Pacheco that his job was to push the federal and provincial governments to provide resources during the Freedom Convoy.

As trucks clogged the downtown and incessanthonking drove residents up the wall, Watson as the ongoing federal inquiry has heard pleaded for more enforcement.

WhenPeter Slolysuddenly resigned as Ottawa's police chief, the fallout culminated in a tense meeting wherelongtime councillor Diane Deans was ousted as chair of the city's police board.

• Secret recording reveals deep rift over plan to hire new Ottawa police chief during convoy crisis
• How a plan to end the convoy protest came together and why it failed

"No one had a road map on how to deal with that," Watson told CBC, looking back on the demonstrations."My job was to push the federal and provincial governments to give us the resourcesso our police could clean up and clear out the whole area.

"We eventually got to that point. I think it should have been done sooner."

Coming out

A few days ahead of the 2019 Capital Pride Parade, Watson penned a heartfelt column in the Ottawa Citizen in which he publiclyacknowledged he was gay and that he'dknown he wasgay since he was a teenager.

"I feel comfortable with the decision and I'm glad I did it. But it took me a long time to get there," he said at the time.

The mayor's sexuality had been part of the public discourse for some time, whichWatson himself alluded to when he noted people at Pridewould ask when he would be coming out of the closet.

• Watson raises Pride flag as openly gay man

• 'I'm myself now': What it's like to come out as gay later in life

While he wished he'd done so sooner, Watson said his hope now is that living openly as a gay man willmake it easier on young people grappling with the same decision.

"Ninety-five per cent of the feedback I had was really positive, and it was really uplifting and nice," he recalled. "The overwhelming majority said good for you, and thank you for doing it.

"I waited a long time. I wish I hadn't."

Mayor Jim Watson officially reveals he's gay

5 years ago

Duration 0:25

Mayor Jim Watson officially reveals he's gay