Tribute to a great, great man: David Pecaut, 54
I think the Toronto Star obituary I’m linking to here says it all in the headline: “The greatest mayor we never had.”
David Pecaut, a partner with Boston Consulting Group and probably one of the biggest champions of Toronto, died at 10 a.m. this morning after a two-year battle with cancer. I’ve met and spoke with David only a few times, so there are hundreds who know him much better, but I can’t help but feel great loss with this news. David founded the Toronto City Summit Alliance in 2002, and of the many projects he helped spearhead through this organization, one of the most recent — the initiative Greening Greater Toronto — has been a powerful force behind efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of Canada’s largest city and bolster the local innovation needed to do it. He was a galvanizing figure with a vision for a city that far too often underestimates its own potential.
My heart and thoughts go out to David’s wife and four children. Your city will miss you, David.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
