TIMMINS -- Gilles Bisson is celebrating his 30th anniversary as a member of provincial parliament without much fanfare, but he's still taking the time to reminisce and reflect.
It was on Sept. 6, 1990, he began serving the constituents of Timmins and over the years, its surrounding area.
"I remember walking into Queen's Park when I was first elected in 1990 and first of all it was like an awesome, awesome experience. It was like I couldn't believe I was there in the sense of history before you and the people that stood there before and it was quite, quite overwhelming," he said.
He gives a great deal of thanks to his family for its support and credit to his constituency staff.
Sylvie Vermette-Saunders is one of his employees who worked for him from 1990-1994 and said she loved the job so much, she's returning to his office again this week.
"He's a pretty open book kind of guy. He's honest, hard working....He's a pretty good employer. I mean we know what we have to do. We have our case work to do and of course scheduling and the outreach and that sort of thing, but whenever he needs something we just get it done and everything works out. Everybody works as a team," she said.
And Bisson agrees.
"There's this fallacy that it's all about the MPP or the MP or the mayor, but we're only part of it. You don't get anything done unless you get people that are willing to do it,” said Bisson.
“We've managed to do some really good work. You know we got family health teams; we got community health centres; we got dialysis services in different communities, you know infrastructure when it comes to assistive housing...different things that we've done."
Bisson said he's currently one of only three MPPs who shares the 30-year milestone: Jim Wilson who's sitting as an independent and Ted Arnott, a Conservative are the others.
