As Thompson goes to the polls next month on Oct. 22 to elect its seventh mayor, we recall that it was Jack Knight, a colourful police court magistrate, who also ran the Strand Theatre, who won the first-ever municipal election in Thompson on Oct. 26, 1966, defeating A. Brian Campbell by 185 votes.
Local politics could get heated in Thompson’s early years – some things apparently never change – heated enough for voters to send Thompson first two incumbent mayors packing between 1968 and 1972.
Thompson was simply part of the Local Government District (LGD) of Mystery Lake from 1956, overseen by Carl Nesbitt, the resident administrator, until it became a separate incorporated town with a population of about 11,000 in 1966. Nesbitt later served as Thompson’s first town and city manager after its elevation to town status in 1966 and city status in 1970. Almost 50 years later, the population in May 2011, according to a revised Statistics Canada count, after a challenge by the city to a lower number, was 13,123 – a decrease of 2.4 per cent between 2006 and 2011. The original StatsCan number for Thompson for 2011 had been 12,829. As a result of the revision, Thompson traded places with Portage la Prairie to become the fourth-most populous city in Manitoba, dropping Portage back into fifth spot. Winnipeg, Brandon and Steinbach remained first, second and third largest respectively. The most recent census in 2011 marked the first time Thompson hadn’t been the third-largest city in Manitoba in 40 years since 1971. Steinbach was the fastest-growing city in the province over the five years between 2006 and 2011, with a growth rate of 22.2 per cent and a 2011 population of 13,524.
Tara Newton, a demographics and census statistician with the Manitoba Bureau of Statistics in Winnipeg, said Thompson’s population, according to Statistics Canada census data, peaked at 19,001 in 1971. By 1976, the population had dropped to 17,291. In 1981, the population continued to plunge downward to 14,288. The 1986 population was 14,701; in 1991 it was 14,977; in 1996 it was 14,385; 13,256 in 2001; and 13,446 residents in 2006.
After winning that first municipal election in 1966, Knight lost the rematch to Campbell on Oct. 23, 1968 by 207 votes. Campbell, the first commanding officer of the air cadet squadron here, and owner of Campbell North, defeated Knight again by 207 votes in their rubber match on Oct. 28, 1970. Three years later in 1973, Knight was convicted of a federal tax offence by Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Wallace Darichuk and sentenced to three months in jail.
In the Oct. 25, 1972 municipal election, Ald. Tom Farrell, the deputy mayor, defeated Campbell by more than 700 votes in a four-way race. Dr. Arthur Philip-Stewart was a close second while Ald. Andy Nabess placed fourth. City Hall at 226 Mystery Lake Rd. was nicknamed “Campbell’s Castle” when it opened in August 1971 on the watch of Campbell as mayor, and grand brown edifice was still very much fresh in voters’ minds during the municipal election the next year in 1972.
Farrell, a retired chairperson of the Workers Compensation Board of Manitoba (WCB), until July served as reeve of the Rural Municipality of Victoria Beach on the southeastern shores of Lake Winnipeg, about 100 kilometres north of Winnipeg.
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