- Lorraine Bergstrand
Lorraine Bergstrand was the inaugural mayor of
Haldimand County, Ontario , Canada. Ms. Bergstrand helped Haldimand County make the transition fromcounty to single-tier municipality. During the late 1990s, she lobbied strongly to get a 400 series highway to connect to or come close to Haldimand County. Ms. Bergstrand is also running as a Liberal candidate forHaldimand-Norfolk in the 2007 Ontario general election againstToby Barrett , Steve Elgersma, and Jan Watson.Background
Lorraine was married to Randy Bergstrand in 1974, and they have lived together in the town of
Dunnville, Ontario since 1977. She entered politics in 1989 as a councillor for Dunnville.Prior to being elected as the mayor of Haldimand County, Ms. Bergstrand served as the mayor of Dunnville. She has also served in various other political positions, including regional councillor for Haldimand-Norfolk region. She has also held a number of positions in the private sector.
2000-2003 Term in office
As the first mayor of the newly created municipality, she was influential in organizing the administration of the amalgamated region and developing positive relations with the provincial government Fact|date=February 2007.
She was instrumental in bringing more Long Term Care beds to Haldimand County while at the same time taking the burden for those beds from the property tax baseFact|date=February 2007. Haldimand County is now the recipient of three new Long Term care facilities while the property tax burden for those beds was drastically reduced Fact|date=February 2007.
Ms. Bergstrand with the unanimous support of her council also passed a progressive but unpopular anti-smoking by law Fact|date=February 2007. A similar province-wide anti-smoking law was later passed by
Ontario premierDalton McGuinty and made effective on June 1, 2006 at 12:01 AM.Ms. Bergstrand was defeated by
Marie Trainer in the 2003 Haldimand County mayoral election and the 2006 Haldimand County mayoral election .Awards
Bergstrand received several awards for her efforts to combat smoking, including the
Heather Crowe award Fact|date=February 2007.
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