Marion Dewar - Ottawa City Politics

Ottawa City Politics

Dewar became an Ottawa alderman for Britannia Ward in 1972 and was elected Deputy Mayor in 1974, a position she held until 1978. In 1977 she ran unsuccessfully for the Ontario New Democratic Party in the provincial election in the riding of Ottawa West. She was elected mayor in 1978.

As mayor she convened a convention on the issue of homosexuality six months after taking office, and in 1979 she helped to launch Project 4000 with the aim of finding sponsors for 4,000 Vietnamese refugees in Ottawa. Ottawa today still has a large Vietnamese community. In 2005, she appeared on the Vietnamese diaspora music variety show Paris By Night 77 as part of a show commemorating the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. She was interviewed and given a plaque for her support for Vietnamese refugees.

Dewar was a peace activist and campaigner for nuclear disarmament, and, for example, picketed the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa after the invasion of Grenada. She appeared in the 1985 documentary Speaking Our Peace.