F H4, 5
Date of the items: 1969-2006
Physical description: 2.4 metres
Title: J. Paul Rexe Fonds
Creator: J. Paul Rexe
Repository: Trent Valley Archives
Reference number: TVA Fonds 343
Scope and contents: The fonds consists of materials pertaining to Rexe’s personal life and career as a teacher and politician, including correspondence, City Council memoranda and meeting agendas, planning documentation and reports, news clippings, personal notes, PCG reports and studies, court transcripts, legal invoices, and more.
The collection is organized into four series, Series B and C comprising the bulk of the collection. The first series, Series A, contains materials related to Rexe’s early teaching years and career(s) before re-entering politics in the 1980s. Series B contains materials from his years on City Council between 1980 to 1987, and is the largest and most extensive part of the collection. Series C contains materials pertaining to his legal matters, particularly Kazowski vs. Rexe (see biographical note, below); and finally, Series D contains materials from his later career(s), including his planning and consulting work (with Public Consulting Group, Inc.), his years teaching at Kenner Collegiate and Crestwood Secondary schools, his graduate work at Trent University, and his return to city politics in the early 2000s.
Access Conditions: No Restrictions
Finding aid: See separate file listing in Excel
Accruals: No further accruals are expected
Custodial history: Donated by Rennie Marshall in 2012. The materials were acquired without any discernible order, although they were contained in folders and binders and, at times, in piles with elastics around them. Approximately half of these files had control numbers on them — written in blue pen onto white masking tape — although their origins, meaning, and purpose were unclear. The materials were retained as they were received but placed into new, archival folders; the binders were replaced with folders where necessary. Though new control numbers have been applied, the former control numbers have been transferred to the new folders (in pencil) and recorded in the finding aid.
Biographical sketch: John Paul Rexe was a well-known Peterborough politician, planner, teacher, and writer. The first child of John and Ruth, Rexe was born on June 5, 1944 in Kingston, Ontario. When he was five his family moved to Peterborough where he attended Confederation Public School and later Kenner Collegiate. After articling in chartered accountancy with McColl Turner in the early 1960s, and later working in computer programming for Canadian General Electric, Rexe began a degree in history and economics at Trent University and graduated in 1964. In the late 1960s, Rexe earned a teacher’s diploma from the University of Toronto and eventually took a position at Thomas A. Stewart Secondary School in Peterborough.
Politics, however, was Rexe’s ultimate calling. He sat as Councillor with the City of Peterborough for the Ashburnham and Otonabee Wards from 1971 to 1973 and later ran (unsuccessfully) as the NDP candidate for Peterborough in the 1979 general federal election and the in the 1981 provincial election. He returned to City Council in 1980 where, for seven years, Rexe served on over 40 municipal boards and committees. For his community work, Rexe was awarded a Bicentennial Medal in 1984.
Two highly-publicized lawsuits (Kazowski vs. Rexe, Galvin vs. Rexe) led to his removal from Council in 1987 by judicial order for not properly declaring a conflict of interest in a real estate matter. Rexe continued teaching at Kenner Collegiate and Crestwood Secondary School, and managed a municipal consulting business (Public Consulting Group) in his spare time. In 1993-1994 he returned to Trent University and earned a Masters in Canadian Studies.
After retiring from teaching in the 1990s, Rexe worked with the Queen’s-Trent Concurrent Education Program and later became an adjunct professor in the Queen’s Faculty of Education. From 1998 to 2003 Rexe wrote a column (“Rexe Appeal”) for the Peterborough Examiner about local issues. He returned to city politics in 2003, winning election as Councillor for Otonabee Ward. In 2006 Rexe ran for mayor but lost to Paul Ayotte.
Rexe was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2008 and passed away in August of 2010 at the Peterborough Regional Health Centre.
Related fonds at TVA: See F395 Jenny Carter and F801 Hastings-Peterborough NDP Association for more materials related to the NDP party in Peterborough.
Access Points:
Ann Rexe
Lou Kazowski
Doug Galvin
1979 Federal Election
1981 Provincial Election
Peterborough, Ontario
Peterborough City Council
1971, 1980, 2003 Peterborough Municipal Election
Peterborough County Board of Education
Trent University
Municipal Consultancy