MONTREAL

'Big shoes to fill': Dollard-des-Ormeaux city council veteran Colette Gauthier passes away

Luca Caruso-Moro CTV News Montreal Videojournalist

Published Wednesday, February 10, 2021 12:13PM EST Last Updated Wednesday, February 10, 2021 3:06PM EST

Dollard-des-Ormeaux city-council veteran Colette Gauthier was a strong advocate for the city’s independence from Montreal during the 2005 demerging referendum. She died on Feb. 7, 2021 at the age of 75. (Source: City of Dollard-des-Ormeaux)

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DOLLARD-DES-ORMEAUX -- Dollard-des-Ormeaux city-councillor Colette Gauthier passed away while in palliative care Sunday evening after suffering a stroke in November. She was 75 years old.

“They’ll be very big shoes to fill,” Alex Bottausci, the mayor of Dollard-des-Ormeaux, said on Wednesday.

After the stroke, Gauthier received care at the Jewish General Hospital before being transferred to the Teresa Dellar Palliative Care Residence in Kirkland, where she had volunteered for more than a decade.

She was allowed visitors while staying at Teresa Dellar, where she spent her final weeks in the company of her family.

Flags were brought down to half-mast at the city council building, where Gauthier was first elected in 1994. She was councillor for District 8 and was known for “always putting the community before herself,” said Bottausci.

Before becoming mayor, Bottausci sat next to Gauthier as a councillor for district seven.

“We had many hoots and hollers together,” he said.

On any issue that came up, "You would know where she stood," Bottausci recalled. "‘Well, you have your opinion on that and I have mine,’ she’d say. You always knew where she was at.”

Gauthier was a strong advocate for the city’s independence from Montreal during the 2005 demerging referendum.

Between 2002 and 2005, Dollard-des-Ormeaux was considered a Montreal suburb before residents voted to become a municipality once again. Gauthier worked hard to make that happen.

“Door to door, making phone calls,” recalled the mayor, “she was one of the key individuals involved in that.”

He says she was regarded as a leader in the Dollard council, as well as in her previous job, working for the city of Dorval.

With her, people would “tend to lean over and ask questions. She had an intimate understanding of local government," he said.

“When I look to the future, God, let us find another one like her to serve our community.”