Builder

Duncan Fischer at home in South Marysburgh.

The County loses an able defender

I have a love of South Marysburgh that has gotten deeper and richer over the past 40 years.”

Duncan Fischer made the comment in the context of a run for a seat on County council. He had a long and deeply profound connection to his community that propelled him use his considerable skills to protect and preserve the County.

Duncan passed away on Sunday.

He wasn’t born here—the County was where he came to unwind. In 1968, he met a County girl, Bernadette Johnson, in Inuvik. She was a registered nurse, he a young airline staffer. A year later they were married in Picton.

The couple settled in Alberta, where Duncan rose in the ranks of the airline. In time, he was named president of Canadian Regional Airlines, guiding a company with annual revenue of about $400 million, operating about 50 aircraft and with 2,500 employees. As head of Canadian Regional, Fischer oversaw the day-to-day operations of the airline that functioned primarily as a feeder service to the hubs served by Canadian Airlines International.

Duncan and Bernadette raised four children.

The Fischers visited the County often. In 1990, with an eye on retirement, Duncan and Bernadette built a cottage on South Bay. Six years later, the Fischers settled full-time in the County.

He wasn’t the kind of person inclined to take things easy in retirement. He immersed himself in the community—organizing, recruiting and managing an array of initiatives, including battling industrial wind energy developers and what he saw as poor financial administration at Shire Hall.

Duncan was an energetic, determined and skilled adversary of industrial wind energy developers. He viewed the prospect of 400-foot high industrial structures as intrusive to his rural community. He worried, too, about the impact of these machines on the health of those living nearby. He saw them as a threat to South Marysburgh’s fragile economy.

“I believe there shouldn’t be any turbines in South Marysburgh until population health studies are completed,” Fischer said in 2010. “Municipal decision-making, taken away by the Green Energy Act, must be restored in Prince Edward County so that we can have a say as to what happens in our neighbourhood.”

He was among the founders of the Alliance to Protect Prince Edward County (APPEC) and later, the County Coalition for Safe and Appropriate Green Energy (CCSAGE).

He was equally concerned by the inefficiency and mismanagement he perceived in local government. He hoped to apply some of the principles he had learned while running a multi-million dollar business to municipal governance. He worked closely with the advocacy group Concerned Citizens of Prince Edward County.

In 2010, Duncan ran for a seat on council, finishing second behind Barb Proctor.

“We need to go back to some simple business practices and principles—more performance and productivity measurements for each department— and then implement best practices from other municipalities.”

Duncan Fischer worked to preserve South Marysburgh because he believed in his heart it is a special place.