Everyone’s entitled to his exit interview- but some departures affect folks more than others.
When the Renfrew Victoria Hospital Annex on Health Village Lane hosted a tour of the complex while under construction September 5th, 2017, it was this reporter’s first encounter with the gentleman who was then the Member of Provincial Parliament, John Yakabuski.
That interview hasn’t survived the test of time, but it bookends our recorded conversations up to January 27th of 2025, at Yakabuski’s third-to-last official duty, a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the newly-arrived CT Scan at Arnprior Regional Health.
Yakabuski shared his self-deprecating humour at the Arnprior function.
The son of a former MPP, Paul Yakabuski, John was first elected in 2003 by a margin of 595 vote. He subsequently won six consecutive Provincial elections in the RNP riding.
In the 2018 campaign he achieved his greatest margin of victory, winning by a plurslity of 25 thousand votes, as 70 percent of the electorate put an “x” beside his name.
Yakabuski introduced Doug Ford when the now-Premier kicked off his election campaign at the Renfrew Armoury May 9th of that year.
Yakabuski would serve as Minister of Transportation from June of 2018 to November of that year, and as Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry from November 2018 to June of 2021, and then occupy a number of Parliamentary Assistant roles after leaving Cabinet.
We know Yak can sing- but his leading the assembled in a Christmas carol at the Sawmill Flats opening December 15th, 2022 was not a clip we saved.
Returning to Yakabuski’s Exit interview, to conclude:
By Rick Stow