Charles Morris Godfrey CM OOnt (September 24, 1917 – July 24, 2022) was an American-born Canadian physician, professor and politician in Durham Region.
[4] When in his 70s, he was still working 13-hour days teaching and maintaining his own practice while spending weekends at his country home in Madoc, Ontario with his wife, Margaret, and family.
He organized "People or Planes" (POP) in 1975, which grew from a small grassroots group to a membership of 8,500 residents dedicated to preserving the proposed airport as farmland.
[1] In the 1977 provincial election, he lost by 593 votes to Pickering mayor George Ashe, who was running for the Progressive Conservatives, and returned to private life.
He criticized the NDP for focussing on doctors' salaries, calling the issue a "red herring", rather than on hospital financing and health cutbacks.
"[1] He was criticized for his stance by Gary Herrema, chairman of Durham Region, who complained that Godfrey never lived on land that had been expropriated for the airport but in nearby Uxbridge.
[1] "After all these years, he's still trying to exert influence over a part of the country he doesn't live in", Herrema protested, adding that "Sometimes I think he'd like to drop a few letters off the end of his name and just call himself God.