Former Winnipeg mayor Susan Thompson still hoping to see 2nd woman in the job, but prof says obstacles remain

Susan Thompson did not become Winnipeg's first female mayor because she wanted to break the glass ceiling at city hall — which is a good thing, because 30 years later, that still hasn't happened.

"Everyone talked about how I broke the glass ceiling," recalls Thompson, who was mayor from 1992 to 1998. "Well, I obviously didn't. I think I put a little crack in it."

Three decades ago this month, Thompson was sworn into office as the 40th mayor of Winnipeg, and the first woman elected to the job. 

"It was a calling — I had a calling," she says. "It was my destiny."

She's disappointed that no other woman has pulled it off since. And on a cool November afternoon, that's what she wants to talk about.

"There's a saying: change happens slowly, or by revolution," Thompson says. "Well, I might be in the mood for a revolution. There needs to be another seismic shift."

Thompson is sitting in her Winnipeg apartment, on electric pink furniture (inspired, she says, by a magazine article that featured the stylings of Lee Radziwill, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis's sister).

A painted pink metal toolbox sits next to her, holding stickers with one-word messages that inform her rules for life: Faith. Hope. Perseverance. Destiny. (They're also the themes of the second book that she's writing about her life.)

Then there's the small framed sign, with a more revealing insight: "First they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win."

That resonates with Thompson. From the get-go, her political career has been met with varying levels of ugly. 

There was the time a prominent radio personality asked her who would be her date for her mayoral engagements.

"Do you think he asked that question to [former Winnipeg mayor] Bill Norrie?" she says. "I told him I'd see if Tom Selleck was free."

There was the time she was sworn into office. As per tradition, she should have been escorted into council by a marching pipe band. But they refused to do it, she says. So she recruited a lone piper.

There was the failed meet-and-greet with council members. She invited them all to lunch — on her own dime, she adds — to articulate their goals. Two refused. "They said it was a bribe," she says.