TORONTO — Bonnie Crombie recently celebrated a milestone birthday — the kind that usually prompts a big party, or at the very least a special gathering with family and close friends — but instead she sat in an office doing debate prep.
Ahead of the big day, the Ontario Liberal Party leader sat down for an interview and the thought of not being with her loved ones seemed to weigh on her more heavily than the number itself.
But for Crombie, who started her political career at 47 and is now in the midst of a whirlwind election campaign at 65, it did stir up thoughts on ageism and the double standards that exist for women in so many walks of life.
During the 2023 Liberal leadership race, she hit back hard when fellow contestant Nate Erskine-Smith suggested Crombie wouldn't stick around for multiple election cycles as leader, comments she said were ageist. They have not been forgotten.
"I think women are judged differently, you know, and there's a lot of subtle — a lot of nuance to the commentary about that, as we saw in (Erskine-Smith's) comments, but also in some of the attack ads I see," she said in a recent interview, referencing the ubiquitous "Bonnie, who?" ads from the Progressive Conservatives that started running right after she won the leadership.
"The whole 'She's expensive' (comment in the ad)," Crombie said. "What does that mean, exactly?"
The ads talk about tax increases in Mississauga during her time as mayor and say she supports the federal carbon tax — she has since said she's against it — but they also talk derisively about her having a house in New York's wealthy Hamptons area. She notes the house was inherited from an aunt, is closer to Queens and is being sold as part of her divorce.
D'arci McFadden, who has worked on Crombie's political campaigns since she first ran for Mississauga city council, said the attacks fuel Crombie.
An opponent in Crombie's first Mississauga mayoral race questioned her corporate credentials and Crombie was "livid," going home to find business cards and old security passes to prove her bona fides, McFadden recalls.
"I think back on all those ... campaigns I've worked with her on where we've gone into battle, gone to fight something, and that brings out a really sincere and beautiful Bonnie," she said.
"It's where she's forced to be a little bit vulnerable, maybe, and face a challenge or face something that is untrue — she doesn't like it, but I also know that she's not going to let it stand and take it."
Crombie sees the PC ads as trying to portray her as something she is not. That's one of the reasons she has been open about her upbringing, to show the contrast with Doug Ford, who grew up in a well-off family and held a job at the family label business.
"I grew up in Etobicoke too, but my life was completely different," she said. "I grew up in very humble beginnings, and have achieved a certain measure of success because I worked hard, but I wasn't given anything."
Her father was an alcoholic and her parents split up when she was three. Divorce was unheard of at that time, Crombie says, but her mother wanted a better life for her only child so they moved into one of the rooms in a rooming house her grandparents ran in west Toronto in order to make ends meet.
As a child she never felt that she lacked anything, though, and recalls taking the streetcar with her mom to see the Nutcracker ballet as a treat, or visiting Wasaga Beach for the day several years later with her stepfather, after her mom remarried.
"She announced she was marrying the neighbour's best friend, which was really interesting, because I thought, 'Ah, that's why he was always hanging around,'" she said with a smile. "He was a lovely guy."
But her father's troubled life, and absence from hers, still left a mark.
At the end of his life, Crombie visited him twice at the Toronto homeless shelter where he was staying, though she hadn't otherwise seen him since she was seven.
"I hadn't seen him since I was a child and when he died, they called me and I said, 'I'm very sorry to hear it, what's next?' And they said, 'You decide, you’re next of kin,'" she recalled, breaking down in tears.
Crombie's childhood really shaped her, said her eldest son, Alex.
"I think because of those experiences she's truly empathetic," he said. "She truly does care about some of these issues that a lot of politicians just espouse about."
Alex Crombie said his mom is someone with an almost unlimited social battery — McFadden said the team calls her the "Energizer Bonnie" — who loves to cook and host big family discussions around the dinner table, and stays close with her three kids. Alex, who is in Ottawa, gets calls at least once a week through FaceTime.
She also has a dry, sarcastic sense of humour, he said.
Crombie raised some eyebrows recently on the campaign trail with a joke about challenging Ford to a pushup contest. The joke stemmed from talking about Super Bowl ads, and while it may not have landed as intended, McFadden said it shows a refreshingly unscripted politician.
"The more unfiltered and the more real they are, the more interesting they are, and the more people get to know who they are," she said.
The real Crombie does dedicate time to physical fitness and could definitely win a pushup contest, those close to her say. Just after Christmas, she took a rock climbing trip to Arizona with her partner.
Crombie does not want to publicly discuss her relationship, but notes he's not in politics. "God, no," she said.
But she did first get into politics because of a boy in high school.
"He said, 'What are you doing this weekend?' And I got all excited," she recalled. "(I said), 'Nothing, why?' He said, 'Want to come help me drop flyers?'"
It turned out his uncle was a cabinet minister and Polish like her family, so she agreed, pleased to learn that Polish people could hold positions of power.
"Then I learned about Pierre Trudeau and what he was trying to accomplish and change our country, all about rights and freedoms and the Charter, and it was so exciting," she said. "These were heady issues, and I got hooked very early."
Crombie began her career in the corporate world, working for McDonald's, Disney, the Insurance Bureau of Canada, and she started a cosmetics company with a classmate from her MBA program. She and her then-husband lived in Cambridge, Mass., Los Angeles and Vancouver before returning to settle in Mississauga.
She worked on a few political campaigns before putting her own name forward.
Crombie served as MP for Mississauga-Streetsville from 2008 to 2011. After her electoral defeat, the powerhouse Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion encouraged Crombie to run for a seat on city council.
Crombie would go on to succeed McCallion as mayor, after McCallion retired at age 94, and serve three terms at the helm of the fast-growing city west of Toronto.
Alex Crombie said his mother has handled the transition from municipal to provincial politics well and is still going strong.
"A lot of my friends ask me, 'Why the heck is your mom still doing this after so many years?'" he said.
"And the honest answer is that, number one, she still has issues she cares about and she really enjoys this. She really, really enjoys meeting new people. ... She's still raring to go."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 16, 2025.
Allison Jones, The Canadian Press
