#528 He Ran Against the Ballpark. The Ballpark Won.
The Ottawa Titans are Atlantic Conference champions. They swept New Jersey in the wild card round, took Games 1 and 2 in New York 6-0 and 6-3, and finished the Boulders 3-2 at Ottawa Stadium on Friday in front of 7,912 fans. The final is a best-of-five. The Atlantic champion hosts Games 3 through 5.
That park is standing because a politician who ran against it lost the argument and never paid for it at election time. THINK!
He ran on no. The city built it anyway.
In 1991, Jacques Legendre took a Rideau-Rockcliffe council seat by running against the new baseball stadium and upsetting longtime councillor George Kelly. His pitch was consultation and nuisance: residents weren’t asked, and the stadium would bring traffic and noise. Once elected, he could not get the city out of its contract with the developer. Promise made. Promise unmet. The park opened in April 1993. The Lynx sold out 43 games in year one.
Legendre stayed in office until 2011. Failing to stop the project cost him nothing. He did get funding for the St. Laurent community centre. That is not the same as being right about the stadium. On the biggest file he ran on, he picked the losing side and the voters never made him pay for it.
The park he warned about is now a destination.
The Lynx left after 2007. Baseball came back. It is not a museum piece. Home attendance in 2025 was nearly 100,000, up 16 percent. This May the Titans put 10,278 in the building for the home opener — a league record and the first sellout since 2002. The thing he said would be a problem is where Ottawa now goes on a Friday night. Such is the irony of politics.
That is the lesson. Opposition is easy to campaign on. Results are what people live with.
The ward rewarded the stance, not the outcome.
Legendre won by saying no. He could not deliver the no. He kept the seat for two decades. That is the outputs-versus-outcomes problem I keep documenting: the announcement, the motion, the posing gets paid. The result does not.
Rideau-Rockcliffe has run that play before. It is running it again. Its time for a change!
Same move. Bigger file.
Councillor King says no to the East End Crossing. I say yes: get the trucks off King Edward and Rideau. At the September 11 debate he stayed off the subject. I put it on the record in my closing because someone had to. Saying no is not a transportation policy. It is a refusal to write one.
King’s case rests on a 2021 study that the bridge would divert only about 15 percent of King Edward’s truck traffic. Fine. Put that number on the table in public and let it take a beating. My answer is simpler: heavy freight on downtown streets is a design failure, and pulling it off those streets frees arterial capacity. Without a designed corridor, that traffic already cuts through Ward 13 unmanaged. A councillor who only says no does not stop a federal project. He takes this ward out of the room where the terms get written. This is the paucity of leadership and vision.
I want three terms written in: dedicated cross-river transit lanes, a depressed grade with noise walls along the Aviation Parkway, and direct emergency access to the Montfort. That is a position. “No” is a slogan.
The test I apply to both files.
I support what is good for Ottawa. I say in advance what would make me walk: costs that do not add up, no clarity on who pays, no negotiated protections for the ward, no measurable outcomes. Lansdowne 2.0’s financing has to clear that bar. So does the bridge. The difference is I will sit in the room and fight for the terms. Sitting out and calling it principle is how you inherit someone else’s design.
Where the analogy stops — and where it does not.
A ballpark works if people show up. A bridge works if it moves trucks without wrecking neighbourhoods. The stadium case does show that resistance to the bridge can be quite wrong headed.. It proves something colder: in 1991 this ward paid a candidate for saying no to a big project, the project got built anyway, and the political class learned the wrong lesson. Opposition became the product. Both the stadium and the bridge will be built!
Rideau-Rockcliffe can do better in October. Inform yourselves. Vote differently. Vote for the person who will stay in the room.
Vote Peter Karwacki for Rideau-Rockcliffe.
Peter Karwacki — Ward 13, Rideau-Rockcliffe
Campaign page
References
- CBC News, “Ottawa Titans sweep New Jersey, advance to Atlantic Conference finals,” Sept. 13, 2026. Link
- Ottawa Titans release via OurSports Central, “Villa Cruises, Titans Take Game One over Boulders.” Link
- Ottawa Titans release via OurSports Central, “Hampton Brilliant, Two Key Homers Guide Titans to Victory.” Link
- Ottawa Titans, “Playoffs” (format and home-field rules). Link
- Wikipedia, “Jacques Legendre (Canadian politician).” Link
- Ottawa Titans, “Ottawa Stadium” (ballpark history). Link
- Baseball-Reference Bullpen, “Ottawa Stadium.” Link
- Wikipedia, “Ottawa Lynx.” Link
- Ottawa Titans, “History” (2025 attendance). Link
- Wikipedia, “Ottawa Stadium” (2026 opener). Link
- Ottawa Titans, “Titans Set League Attendance Record, Drop Season Opener in Sudden Death,” May 9, 2026. Link
- Karwacki, “#204 NIMBY..it is part of the history and fabric of Rideau Rockcliffe,” June 7, 2026. Link
- Karwacki, “#525 This time a real choice,” Sept. 17, 2026. Link
- Karwacki, “#526 Climbing the 8000 vote mountain,” Sept. 18, 2026. Link
- Karwacki, “#508 Ward XIII Debate 2026.” Link
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