Helen Fotopoulos

Helen Fotopulos is a member of the Montreal Executive Committee and borough Mayor of Plateau Mont Royal. She began in city politics with a run for office in 1978 for the Montreal Citizen's Movement in that city's Cote-des-Neiges district, losing badly to the Civic Party incumbent. She returned many years later in 1994 to run as a member of Jean Dore's Montreal Citizens' Movement and was elected councillor for Mile End, serving as the MCM's intercultural affairs adviser for six years. In 1998, she quit the MCM after Therese Daviau took charge. She briefly considered running for mayor of Montreal but eventually rejoined Dore in Team Montreal, Dore's ill-fated attempt at a comeback. She eventually joined Mayor Gerald Tremblay's team which won two straight elections but she courted controversy in 2006 when she went along with Mayor Gerald Tremblay's unpopular plan to rename Park Avenue after Robert Bourassa, a plan she ultimately renounced, owing to public pressure, before the Mayor shelved it permanently.