William Hawrelak - Return To Office and Second Stint

Return To Office and Second Stint

The city sued Hawrelak, and he ultimately paid $100,000 plus $4,000 in legal fees to settle the lawsuit; this settlement also made him eligible to again seek elected municipal office, which he did in the 1963 election. In an election that has been called the dirtiest in Edmonton's history, he narrowly defeated alderman Stanley Milner. His victory was marred by a riot that erupted when a group of students marching to city hall to protest Hawrelak's re-election victory were met by a mob loyal to the mayor, leading the Edmonton Journal - which was regularly critical of Hawrelak - to speculate that the mob was organized by the same people who "toured meetings during the recent election campaign with the sole purpose of preventing anti-Hawrelak candidates from speaking".

Hawrelak was re-elected in the 1964 election, defeating incumbent alderman and former Member of Parliament George Prudham, but his second stint as mayor would also end prematurely: on March 11, 1965, Chief Justice C.C. McLaurin of the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta disqualified Hawrelak from his position after ruling that he had violated the City Act through his involvement with Sun Alta Builder's Ltd., of which he owned forty percent and which had bought land from the city while he was in office. Again Hawrelak denied wrongdoing, and appealed the decision up to the Supreme Court of Canada, which upheld it (he did win a partial victory in March 1975 when the same court reversed a ruling of a lower court that ordered that he return $80,117 in profits from the dealings to the city; the Supreme Court of Canada found that there were no profits to be returned).