“For me, there's either do more or sleep,” says Mary Hynes of why she's running for the Ward 34 Don Valley East council seat at age 71, a time when many people are thinking about a quiet retirement.

We met at her co-op building at Don Mills and Duncan Mills Rds. She took me up to the roof where there are garden boxes residents can use and a panoramic view of the ward spreading south.

“There's so much potential here,” she says, looking out over all the lush green. “We could have a school for the environment up here. There are lots of underused schools.”

Highway 401 is the northern border of the ward, with Victoria Park Ave. along its eastern edge. Railway corridors, Don Mills Rd, and the Don River itself form an erratic western and southern border. The Don Valley Parkway (DVP) bisects the ward, as does the Don River though much of it is inaccessible to the public due to the sprawling Donalda golf club.

Hynes has been a schoolteacher since 1966, first in New York City, where she is from, then later in various capacities in Toronto until retirement in 2001.

She and her husband moved to Canada in 1971 to escape the Vietnam War draft. Hynes has long been an activist, working on issues such as public education, food security, health and the needs of Toronto's growing senior population.

Most famously, her satirical deputation at Mayor Rob Ford 's all-night Core Service Review in 2011 became an Internet sensation when she urged him to close down the entire library system.

Ward 34 has some serious hills and Hynes leads me around the roads she's canvassed, but with a lack of main shopping streets like downtown wards have, it makes finding a central place where neighbours congregate difficult.

“There's no such thing as walking down the street talking to the merchants here,” she says. Throughout our walk she points out there's a lack of public space for “older kids” — the oft-left out youth roughly between the ages of 8 and their early 20s when there's the greatest chance for boredom to turn into something more serious.

Hynes is running against Councillor Denzil Minnan-Wong . He is often in the news for opposing nice things in other wards that people like, whether it's the late-lamented Jarvis St. bike lanes, pedestrian scrambles at downtown intersections or most recently, his conspicuous dislike of the enormously popular Sugar Beach . Residents of Ward 34 deserve nice things too, suggests Hynes, saying there's a lack of recreation and community spaces here.

“People need to know you give a darn about them,” she says.

She takes me to the corner of Don Mills Rd. and Graydon Hall Dr. to show me a new condo going up that she wishes was planned as mixed-use rather than primarily residential.

“It's 1.8 kilometres to the nearest grocery store from here,” she says, a distance that ensures either car trips or long slogs with bags along busy roads.

We pass by the road's namesake, Graydon Hall, a 29-room Georgian manor built in 1936. Though now an event space, the estate was built by broker Rupert Bain.

It's a lesser Casa Loma, also built on a hill but now surrounded by houses and apartment buildings.

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Unlike many other candidates backed by a political machine with substantial money, Hynes is as independent as they come, her kickoff fundraiser only happening on Sept. 5. For now, find her walking the ward, chatting and handing out bookmarks with her policy issues printed on them, telling residents this place deserves nice things too.

Shawn Micallef writes every Friday about life in the GTA. His new book, The Trouble With Brunch: Work, Class and the Pursuit of Leisure is out now.

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