- George Samis
George Roy Samis (born
March 24 ,1943 ) is a former politician inOntario ,Canada . He served in theLegislative Assembly of Ontario from1974 to1985 as a member of the New Democratic Party (NDP).He was born in
Montreal ,Quebec , and was educated at theUniversité de Montréal and theUniversity of Waterloo . He first sought election to the Ontario legislature in the 1971 provincial election, and lost to Progressive ConservativeFern Guindon by 7,099 votes in Stormont.Guindon resigned from the legislature on
May 31 ,1974 , and Samis contested aby-election to succeed him onSeptember 9 . He was successful, defeating Progressive ConservativeGuy Leger by 2,704 votes. Samis was re-elected for the redistributed constituency of Cornwall in 1975, 1977 and 1981. He supportedBob Rae for the party leadership in1982 .Samis announced his retirement from the legislature in early 1985. He remains the only New Democrat to have represented the city of Cornwall at either the provincial or federal level.
At the time of Samis's retirement, the Progressive Conservative party had governed Ontario without interruption for forty-two years. Samis argued in March 1985 that the NDP would be unable to remove to the Progressive Conservatives from office unless it formed an alliance with the
Ontario Liberal Party . After the 1985 election, an historic two-year pact between the Liberals and NDP allowed Liberal leaderDavid Peterson to form government as premier. The Peterson government appointed Samis to the Ontario Highway Transport Board in1986 .Samis later moved to the Kingston area. In the 1999 provincial election, he endorsed Liberal candidate
John Cleary inStormont—Dundas—Charlottenburgh , a successor constituency to Cornwall.
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