John Savage

John Patrick Savage (May 28, 1932 – May 13, 2003) was a Welsh-born Canadian physician and politician. Savage was the 23rd premier of Nova Scotia between 1993 and 1997. He was born in Wales, and educated in both the United Kingdom and Ireland. He immigrated to Canada in 1967 and was a noted family physician in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. He became the mayor of Dartmouth in 1985, and won re-election twice. He then became the leader of the Nova Scotia Liberal Party in 1992 and stepped down as mayor. In 1993, he defeated the incumbent provincial government and became premier. Savage was a controversial premier, bringing in many reforms in taxation, regional government, and government hiring practices. He resigned as premier in 1997 due to his low approval ratings in public polls. He died of cancer at the age of 70 in 2003. He was the father of Mike Savage, former mayor of the Halifax Regional Municipality.

Early life Born in Newport, Wales, he was the son of an Irish Roman Catholic doctor father and a Welsh Baptist housewife mother. He attended school at Prior Park College, Bath, before attending Queen's University of Belfast to become a physician. He made a name for himself as the "hippie doctor" in the 1970s, due to his beard and progressive health stances. He was re-elected as mayor in both 1988 and 1991.

During his term as premier, and saddled with huge operating debts left by the previous government and declining equalization payments from the federal government of Jean Chrétien, he became a tough fiscal conservative, balancing the provincial budget in 1996 for the first time since 1978.

In doing so, he imposed 4 day layoff of thousands of civil servants. Other programs, such as constructing a toll highway, municipal amalgamations by creating the Cape Breton Regional Municipality and the Halifax Regional Municipality, and the implementation of the Harmonized Sales Tax were initiated under his watch.

His government also led the country in the creation of tougher anti-smoking legislation, consolidation of school boards and local health authorities, creation of the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre, the establishment of one of the most modern emergency health services in North America along with province-wide emergency field communications systems, modernizing its vocational schools to form an independent NSCC, and he waged a tough and ultimately successful fight against an entrenched patronage system in the provincial Department of Transportation and Public Works, as well as within his own political party.

Savage's detractors labelled him as inexperienced and stubborn. he resigned as premier in 1997. In its editorial page on March 22, 1997, The Globe and Mail, after citing his list of reforms, called him "the best premier in a generation," and berated both Liberal party members and the public for forcing him to resign.

Later life and death After Savage resigned, he and his wife Margaret traveled to Africa to perform missionary work. They worked in The Gambia, providing HIV/AIDS education to youth. which had metastasized. He died on May 13, 2003. Just three days before his death, he was made an officer of the Order of Canada. He died in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, about six weeks after his wife's death from cancer.

Savage and his wife had seven children, with their son Mike Savage following in his father's footsteps and becoming the mayor of the Halifax Regional Municipality in 2012.

Electoral history