Stephen Juba

Juba, Stephen

Stephen Juba, businessman, Manitoba MLA 1953-59, mayor of Winnipeg 1957-77 (b at Winnipeg 1 July 1914; d at Petersfield, Man 2 May 1993). The son of Ukrainian immigrants, Juba was imaginative, colourful and politically independent, refusing Prime Minister John Diefenbaker's offer of a Senate seat in the early 1960s. He helped liberalize liquor laws and sweepstakes, and the 1967 Pan-American Games and the 1972 "anti-metro" unification of Winnipeg and its suburbs came to Manitoba mainly as a result of his efforts. He built a new city hall, promoted tourism and tried to get a monorail for public transportation. His dramatic intervention stopped the cutting of a giant elm tree on Winnipeg's Wolseley Avenue in 1957, resulting in international publicity. Similarly, in 1973, he protested the construction of a controversial public washroom by dumping a portable toilet on the Manitoba Legislature grounds. He received the Order of Canada in 1970.