Mayor Chris Peabody (Image from Municipality of Brockton website)
While taking a look back on 2025, Brockton’s mayor says that it was a year of triumphs and challenges.
When speaking with Bayshore News, Brockton Mayor Chris Peabody started off by taking a moment to remember the loss seen by the community after a collision that claimed the lives of four students and a staff member of Walkerton District Community School.
He said that it wouldn’t be a proper look back on the year without acknowledging the loss of students Olivia Rourke, Rowan McLeod, Kaydance Ford, Danika Baker, and teacher Matt Eckert, who lost their lives while returning from a softball tournament earlier this year.
Peabody also acknowledged a more recent motor vehicle collision, which killed three students and injured a fourth teen, all students of John Diefenbaker Senior School in Hanover.
In particular, he mentioned that one student from each tragedy had been from Elmwood, and that his thoughts were with the small village, which sits on the Grey-Bruce border as well.
From there, he talked about several positive things happened for his municipality, including the progress that was made for the East Ridge Business Park, particularly with the groundbreaking event for the LiUNA Local 1059 skilled trades training facility, which will be located at the corner of Creighton Road and Bruce Road 19.
The centre will teach skills that have practical application to prepare for a community’s growth, from building sidewalks to installing fibre-optic cable, which will serve the entire region.
There was also the approval for 40 new housing units that would be built adjacent to the East Ridge Park.
The park also recently celebrated the opening of a new Best Western hotel, which has an addition that allows for long-term stays.
There were improvements he’d like to see for 2026, particularly an answer to the Bruce County losing the funding from the Provincial and Federal governments for expanding childcare.
In June, it was announced that the province would be reducing funding to add fewer spaces than originally proposed.
The initial plan would be to create 645 new childcare spaces in the region. That was reduced by 133 to give the financial allotment to other counties that needed the additional space.
This led to the county campaigning to make up part of the difference – with 72 spaces being created with funding directly from the county without the province’s involvement, with 15 meant for Walkerton.
However, it was shared at the time by Bruce County’s CAO, Christine MacDonald, that even if county funding was used to create those 72 spaces, they would not be covered by the Canada-Wide Early Learning Child Care (CWELCC) system funding.
Peabody said that he’d still like to see a solution for those childcare spaces, especially since there are pressures for space even after new spaces get added. He added that the system needs to be reformed on both the provincial and federal level.
Despite some challenges, he said that Brockton’s relationship with the provincial government has been going well.
“There’s lots of great stuff we’ve got here in Brockton,” he said, while hinting that exciting funding announcements are going to be coming for the municipality, but that he didn’t want to hint at.
Peabody, who celebrated 25 years as being member of council for the Municipality of Brockton said that when he first ran for a spot on council in 2000, he never thought that he’d still be on council — let alone mayor — all these years later.
“No, I did not,” he admitted. “I was a high school geography teacher with a strong interest in environmental issues. And when the E.coli tragedy struck, I thought that people who have an interest in environmental protection, should stand up and run for office.”
He said that it was why he chose to run and why people put their trust in him. Twenty-five years later, he’s now mayor for the municipality after being elected to the position in 2018, and serving as Bruce County’s Warden for 2023 and 2024.
“I never imagined that I would be able to engender that much trust from the people that have such a high level of responsibility,” he added.
He also shared that he was anticipating running for his third term as mayor for the municipal election that is scheduled for October 2026.