OPINION: Age is just a number. Experience matters.

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I go to the gym most mornings. I tell myself it’s because I like starting the day with a workout. The truth is probably that, like most of us, I’m trying to ward off getting older.

I’m 66. I have three grown children and one beautiful granddaughter. Somehow, I am a grandmother.

I don’t feel old.

But I’ve discovered that, at a certain point, the world starts telling women that we are.

Three years ago, when I ran for leader of the Ontario Liberal Party, a younger male opponent raised my age and questioned whether I would really be around for the long haul. I was 63.

It hurt. It also made me angry.

Because women spend so much of our lives being told we’re the wrong age. Too young to be taken seriously. Then we’re raising children and people question our priorities. We’re too ambitious, too aggressive, too emotional, too cold. Then, almost overnight, we cross some invisible line and become old.

Men become experienced.

Maybe that helps explain why women still make up only 31% of municipal elected officials in Canada — and just 22% of mayors.

It also explains why I’ve been thinking about second chances.

Reinventing oneself

My daughter’s former professor, Kate Graham, called her podcast about women at the highest levels of Canadian politics No Second Chances. Her research found that Canada’s female first ministers tended to last about half as long as men.

That title hits differently now.

Politics loves a comeback. Men lose elections and come back as elder statesmen. They leave jobs and return to them. They reinvent themselves.

But I’ve heard a lot lately about how Bonnie Crombie “wants her old job back.”

There is something subtly diminishing about that phrase. I left the mayor’s chair because I wanted to fight for Mississauga on a bigger stage. I believed our city needed change at Queen’s Park and I thought I could deliver it.

I took the risk. I lost.

It hurt like hell.

And then I got back up.

There is a younger male candidate in this race who, in eight years, has run some six times for political office, across different municipalities and different levels of government. He’s spent most of his first term on Council running for Mayor, twice. I don’t begrudge him his ambition. He believes he has something to contribute.

So do I.

Why is his ambition about the future, while mine is so easily dismissed as wanting my “old job back”?

Mississauga isn’t the city it was when I left the mayor’s chair. The world isn’t the same either.

Demanding something more complicated

Like you, I see it at the gas pump and the grocery store. I see it in the struggle young people face to buy their first home. I see businesses confronting tariffs and global economic uncertainty and families wondering why everything costs so much more.

We can’t solve all of that from City Hall. But we can decide how Mississauga responds.

And these times demand something more complicated than choosing between experience and change.

We need both.

We need experienced leadership that knows what has worked, what hasn’t and when the old playbook needs to be thrown out. We need to revive the time-tested ways we used to get things done in Mississauga while being prepared to try entirely new things for an entirely new world.

That’s why I’m running.

Not because I need my “old job” back. Because there is a job to do.

Hazel McCallion was 57 when she first became mayor. Imagine if, at 66, we had decided her best years were behind her.

I’m not planning to serve until I’m 93. I’ve committed to a maximum of two more terms. I know why I’m coming back and what I want to accomplish.

Experience matters. So does failure.

I know more at 66 than I did at 46. I’ve built a career, raised a family, won elections and lost them. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve been knocked down. During this campaign, I’ve even been threatened and told to withdraw from a debate.

I went anyway.

Nobody owes me a second chance. Judge my record. Question why I left. Challenge my ideas.

But don’t tell women that losing means disappearing. And don’t mistake getting older for having nothing left to give.

I rolled up my sleeves in July to earn your vote. If Mississaugans give me the job, I’ll hit the ground running.

I do that most mornings anyway.

Cher was 64 when she sang “You Haven’t Seen the Last of Me.”

I’m 66.

I know exactly what she meant.

— Bonnie Crombie served Mississauga as mayor, MP and city councillor after a career in business.

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