Jun 20, 2017 — This morning we remember George Canon. The town supervisor in Newcomb in Essex County for 25 years, Canon grew into a major power broker in the Adirondack Park. He struck deals with governors. He fought bitterly with and sometimes collaborated with environmental groups. He left office in 2015 after a lengthy illness. Brian Mann talks with Martha Foley about George Canon and his legacy.

Martha Foley: Digging back through our archives, one of the coolest memories of George that I found was his conversation with Andy Flynn, the journalist and historian. They talked about the year in 1963 when the old mining town of Tahawus shut down and everybody was forced to move down into the town of Newcomb.

Brian Mann: That story really does tell you a lot about George and his role in the Park. He kind of came of age at a time when the Adirondacks were changing, entering what you'd have to call the post-industrial era when big factories and mines and large-scale logging operations were slowly giving way to a tourism economy. And it was painful. George told Andy about leaving Tahawus and how hard it was.

"I hated the thought of having to move out. For whatever reason, call it stubbornness or whatever, I didn’t go anywhere near much of the move. Obviously I’d see it as I went to work every day, but my place was at the Upper Works. I think I stayed at the Upper Works a year after the village was moved, until they finally forced me out and said you can’t stay here anymore, we’re closing the place up."

Martha: By the early 1990s, George was town supervisor and he also helped create the Adirondack Association of Towns and Villages. It became - and still is - a major force working on behalf of the Park's small towns.

Brian: George really believed that elements of the modern Adirondack Park were broken. That a lot of local people just weren't listened to in Albany and Ray Brook when big decisions were being made. Here's what he told me two years ago.

"When you walked through the door, quite frankly, if you weren't from one of the environmental groups, you were treated like you had leprosy back in the early 90s." 

George dramatically grew the power and influence of local government. Governors listened to George. Now local towns have veto power over big land deals. They have a seat at the table shaping those deals. They have influence in the state Conservation Department and the Adirondack Park Agency that actually makes some environmental groups uncomfortable. Some critics think small towns may have too much power over things like the Boreas Ponds classification and decisions about snowmobile trails. 

Martha: So George really swung the pendulum. But he was also a guy who could compromise and strike deals.

Brian: That's right. We live in a time when politics are often viewed as warfare, especially when you pit urban interests against the kind of small town point of view that George represents. George felt some of that resentment and he fought incredibly hard for the things he wanted, but he also talked a lot, especially behind closed doors, about the need for compromise and finding ways to get things done.

"It's my nature I guess that just because somebody has a different point of view than I do, doesn't mean I dislike them or hate them. I do see the benefit of people as people."

What George ushered in with that approach is what I think will someday be seen as the era of big Adirondack deals. Things like the Finch Pruyn land deal that gave environmentalists and Governor Andrew Cuomo some huge wins, but that also meant big new state investments in the Park's economy and funding for things like the restoration of Great Camp Santanoni in Newcomb. It's an approach that you see local leaders across the Park taking now. They don't set up road blocks and haul out the torches and pitchforks the way local leaders did in the 1970s. Instead, they cut deals and make swaps.

Martha: You talked about the transition from the old industrial days of mining and factories in the Adirondacks to the new era of tourism and service sector jobs. Did George make peace with that change in the end?

Brian: I think he found ways to survive it and to adapt, but the truth is that he always regretted the fact that the mines never reopened. He saw the same thing happening in Moriah and Clifton Fine and Tupper Lake and a dozen other places and he had real doubts and questions about the survival of small towns in the Adirondacks. After all his years of work, Newcomb itself has very little in the way of a private sector economy - most of the jobs there are in local government or the school or SUNY's College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Is that sustainable long-term? In our conversations, George talked about his love for the Park's towns but he was uncertain about their future.