THUNDER BAY — The Thunder Bay Police Service Board’s June meeting was John Hannam’s last.
Likely.
Police board chair Karen Machado announced Hannam’s retirement as secretary of the board at the outset of Tuesday’s meeting, joking that the veteran civil servant has retired before, only to subsequently take on more work. She said he brought professionalism to his role.
“John should be proud of his work and his work should be recognized and celebrated,” Machado said, calling him a “steady presence despite changing board leaders and members.”
“As a bright and thoughtful person who understands the importance of community policing and police oversight, John has had high standards for himself and he sought to hold others to the same high standards.”
Speaking with reporters after the meeting’s open session, Hannam said he believes he’ll stick to retirement this time, as the police service board is set to hire a full-time executive director — a workload he said he wasn’t ready to take on.
“The board needs more support, and they made a decision six months ago to move to a full-time individual and, you know, that's not me,” he said.
“I'm not at this stage in the game wanting a full-time job, so that was certainly part of it,” Hannam continued.
“But I've worked with the board for 20 years over both my municipal career, when I also was the secretary of the board, and then more directly in the last five years and time to let someone else step in with fresh ideas and a little more energy perhaps.”
Hannam spent just over 20 years at Thunder Bay city hall, retiring as city clerk in 2019. Prior to that, he spent seven years working in the provincial Registrar General’s office, and a decade in the private sector.
As for his work with the police board, Hannam said he stayed on as long as he did, partly because he was “well vested in it.”
“The board … had various challenges it was trying to work through, as the public well knows, and I thought I could make a contribution to support the board in that,” Hannam said.
“I was really wanting to see the board be successful and offer what I could in support of that.”
The board, which acts as a civilian oversight and policy development body for the city’s police service, came under fire in 2018 when Sen. Murray Sinclair released a damning report for the Ontario Civilian Police Commission into the then-board’s conduct, and recommended the board be effectively stripped of its power and largely dismantled.
The commission would subsequently appoint an administrator to make decisions while the reconstituted board underwent cultural competency training.
Then, after nearly two years of turmoil within the board's membership that the OCPC would call an “emergency,” — and amid a number of investigations into the police service and the board itself — the commission appointed another administrator to run things in 2022, while the board was, again, reconstituted. Malcolm Mercer’s tenure was extended several times, before he departed in March 2024.
Nowadays, Hannam said he feels the new Community Safety and Policing Act, which replaced the decades-old Police Services Act as the legislation that governs police services and their boards, defines the board’s role much more clearly.
“Under the new act, there's a long list of very specific policies that the board must develop and maintain that that provide direction to — through the chief — to the service, and that's new,” he said.
In retirement, Hannam said he’s looking forward to spending more time at camp, fishing, and taking up some new hobbies.
