Being a mayor or a councillor in a small, rural municipality in a small, largely rural province, has got to be a thankless position. Everybody knows you and where you live, remembers any past slight, and blames you personally when their ditches aren’t filled or the sidewalk stops before their yard. If all politics is local, you can’t get more local than the decisions around these council tables.

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In fact, only a few years ago in P.E.I., there was a bit of a crisis in getting people to serve on rural councils. Out of 19 resignations from Island councils in 2018, 14 of them were in Crapaud, leaving the municipality without the number of representatives required by the Municipal Government Act to carry out its business.

Tom Patterson, one of the three councillors left, told The Guardian at the time, “From what I understand, before we got involved, it wasn’t working. Nobody would work with the existing council. We need to have committees to do anything, so if I wanted to put a parade on, I would need people to work with me as a councillor. Those past councillors couldn’t get people to work with them.”

The state of affairs led the provincial government to dissolve Crapaud council in August 2018 and it wasn’t until the municipal elections in 2022 that the municipality had a full complement of mayor, deputy mayor and five councillors.

Crapaud was by no means the only place or the last time where filling council seats has been an issue.

Part of the reason small councils can experience mass resignations, Kinkora Mayor Robert Duffy previously told The Guardian, is that council work can be more time-consuming than people realize and they aren’t necessarily compensated for their time.

“When it isn’t a paid position and is purely volunteer, there are a lot of things that can come before their position on council. What happens is if someone isn’t keeping up with their job........

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