Sammy Forcillo, 75
Sammy Forcillo, city councillor for three decades, has died at 75. Note the Gazette’s observation that Forcillo was “closely associated with Frank Zampino” but no explicit shade thrown. Forcillo left politics in 2013.
The Gazette also notes that Forcillo was councillor for Peter‑McGill, but not – as his Wikipedia entry claims – that he was mayor of Ville-Marie borough, back when it had its own mayor.
…Odd that I can’t find out who was Ville‑Marie’s mayor before 2009, when Gérald Tremblay pulled a fast one on Benoit Labonté and clawed back the Ville‑Marie mayoralty for himself. Someone must have been in that role between the institution of the borough system in 2002, and 2009. French Wikipedia only summarizes the borough’s political history since 2009 in a table; English Wikipedia says blandly “This governing structure is due to the unique status of Ville-Marie as the centre of Montreal” and doesn’t dig into the petty but relevant spat that created it.
ChatGPT says the borough mayor throughout that time was Labonté. He’s been effectively erased from history.
Nicholas 00:41 on 2026-04-13 Permalink
It’s a little confusing, but you may be wrong on two points. Going back and forth between the French and English Wikipedia, it seems the only election for mayor of Ville-Marie was 2005. On the English page for that election it says the incumbent was Martin Lemay, though he was also the incumbent for the Sainte-Marie district on city council; he didn’t run, running for the PQ the next spring. In Lemay’s bio in English it was he became borough president in 2000 (but there wasn’t a borough), while in French it says he was president (chair of the borough council) then mayor of the borough in 2001 until 2005. Though the borough was only created on Jan 1, 2002, nowadays people take their seats in November so maybe 2001 is accurate, but there were no borough mayors in the 2001 election. Another site notes that borough presidents were replaced by borough mayors on 18 December 2003, and Lemay was leader of the city official opposition for half of that year, and borough president during that time.
So it seems Lemay was chosen as borough council president (either by the borough council or the city mayor?) after the merger elections, and then became borough mayor when the designation was changed. Labonté then took over after the 2005 election.
But it is also unclear how long Labonté served. A few weeks before the 2009 election connections between him and Tony Accurso came out. Labonté had been running for city mayor before he stepped aside for Harel, and then ran for city council because borough mayor was being abolished after the feud you mentioned. So when the Accurso news came out right before the election, Harel made him resign from the party and withdraw from the election. That’s noted in a few articles I found. A few days later some blowback articles refer to him as the former borough mayor, so it seemed he resigned that too. And though council couldn’t sit regularly during the election, it’s possible that Forcillo, a councillor in Ville-Marie, became the acting or actual borough mayor for a month. During a search Google’s AI told me that’s what happened, but none of its links it cites or any I could find say this, and the links AI cite didn’t even say Labonté resigned, as some of them were from before that time. But La Presse and another source do say he resigned, but not if he was replaced during this lame duck, by Forcillo or anyone else. But it is possible Forcillo was borough mayor, even if he never got to chair a borough council meeting.
Kate 08:43 on 2026-04-13 Permalink
It’s odd that there’s no clearer account of such recent history. But thanks for writing all that up, Nicholas.