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Mel becomes the North York Nabob
Lastman then turned his restless energy to municipal politics in his new home
of North York. He was elected to the city's board of control in 1969, where
he formed an alliance with a young alderman named Paul Godfrey. In 1972, he
was elected mayor. (The only election he ever lost after that one was a 1975
run for the provincial legislature as a Progressive Conservative candidate.)
But Lastman's tenure as mayor got off to a rocky start. On Jan. 15, 1973,
Marilyn disappeared. When she returned home that night, she said she had been
kidnapped, drugged and chained to a bed in a basement room. Then, she said,
she was released. The predictable media frenzy ensued, but no suspects were
ever identified or arrested in the case.
Marilyn would be back in the news again before the decade was out.  While
her husband split his time between Bad Boy and the mayor's office, she became
head of a company that made devices to detect police radar. The "Fuzzbuster"
was an efficient tool for motorists who wanted to speed without getting caught,
and Marilyn's company thrived until the Ontario government introduced legislation
banning the devices.
Her business wasn't the only one to flounder. Bad Boy's profits dwindled and,
in late 1976, Lastman sold control of the chain. Within a year, it was bankrupt.
(Lastman's son, Blayne, revived the Bad Boy chain years later. He can currently
be seen in jailhouse garb on TV commercials and in print ads, flogging furniture
and appliances with his dad's trademark "Nooooo-body!" slogan.)
The Blossoming of North York
His Bad Boy days behind him, Lastman focused on transforming his sleepy bedroom
community into a major metropolitan centre. He was a champion of redevelopment,
most notably along a strip of Yonge Street running north of Sheppard Avenue.
Over the next two decades, the street blossomed with stores, restaurants, office
towers, even Mel Lastman Square. As mayor, he was equal parts celebrity and
civic leader; the man who "sold a refrigerator to an Eskimo" was now
using his legendary skills to sell voters on his vision for North York. They
in turn treated him like a celebrity as much as a civic leader, and awarded
him with victories in every subsequent election.
And yet there were signs of the erratic behaviour—that sometimes inappropriate
"shoot-from-the-lip" style—that would later characterize his
term as mayor of Toronto. Critics pounced when Lastman said there were no homeless
people in North York, a statement made shortly before a homeless woman was found
dead in the city.
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