Jane Pitfield says no

[attach]3734[/attach]Former Leaside councillor Jane Pitfield is busy with a lot of projects these days, but running a campaign for a seat in the Ontario legislature isn’t one of them.

Pitfield said she was approached to run provincially for this fall’s election, but declined.

“Three different ridings all looking for Conservative candidates asked me to think about it,” she said in February. “I said I wasn’t interested.

“The level of government that appeals to me the most is municipal.”

Pitfield ran in [url=https://streeter.ca/ward-29s-new-councillor-ready-to-work.html]a competitive race in Toronto-Danforth Ward 29[/url] during last fall’s municipal election. She came second to councillor Mary Fragedakis.

Though surely disappointed that she wasn’t able to get back to city hall as a municipal representative, Pitfield began tackling other projects.

This January, [url=http://www.exchangesolutions.com/]Exchange Solutions[/url] contracted her services to help them launch a new program Give Get that allows shoppers to donate to various charities just by buying products at participating retails.

It’s free to join Give Get and there will be a list of charities online that customers can choose to support when they purchase products at participating businesses. The website is going live this month. A website for that fundraiser connected to the Give Get program is [url=https://www.givegetnetwork.com/leaside]already online[/url].

Beyond charitable work, Pitfield is also the new owner of Gaultois Inn in the Coast of Bays region of Newfoundland. She said it is scheduled to open in May.

“The only way to get there is by water,” she said. “80 percent of the tourism in Newfoundland is from Ontario.”

The inn is located in a small town of about 190 people. The hope is to get an airport strip opened nearby to increase tourism and jobs for the small town, she said.

And she’s working on her third book — this one focused on the history of East York.

“I’m not the only author of this book,” she said. “This is to be a community book project.”

Students will write the histories of their local schools and church officials will write histories of those institutions.

Pitfield also remains vice president of the East York Historical Society and is on the fundraising team for the Leaside Memorial Arena ice rink expansion.