New BrunswickJean-Guy Levesque says he often worked 75 or 80 hours a week attending meetings and fulfilling other civic commitments.Jean-Guy Levesque’s term was to continue until municipal elections in May 2026.Victoria Walton · CBC News · Posted: Nov 04, 2025 3:37 PM EST | Last Updated: 3 hours agoListen to this articleEstimated 3 minutesJean-Guy Levesque served as a councillor and mayor of Atholville before he became mayor of the amalgamated city of Campbellton in 2023. (Charles-Étienne Drouin/Radio-Canada)The mayor of Campbellton has announced he’s stepping down before his term ends.Jean-Guy Levesque has been mayor since 2023. Before this, he served as mayor of Atholville from 2021 to 2023, before the village amalgamated with Campbellton, and as deputy mayor of Atholville from 2015 to 2021.“It’s hard, and I don’t just don’t have anymore the energy and the passion, if I could say, to be sitting in the mayor’s chair,” Levesque said in an interview Tuesday.Levesque will continue in the job until next Friday, when Deputy Mayor Luc Couturier will act as mayor.“There’s a lot of files that I want to make sure that he’s OK, he understands and all that,” Levesque said.The demands of the job, especially since amalgamation, are his main reason for resigning, he said.“At the end of this summer, I decided to slow down a little,” he said. “Before that it was 75 to 80 hours every week. We usually do 40 hours in a week, I was doing almost double that.”Levesque said he’s looking forward to spending more time with his four children and six grandchildren.“I know that a lot of mayors do the same thing that I do. But at 66, I said, well, maybe after 10 years, it’s the time to give my chair to somebody else.”Building up the Campbellton regionLevesque said he found the impact of amalgamation difficult.“It’s not that amalgamation is complicated, it’s the way that we do things,” he said.“Because of course when you amalgamate Campbellton, Atholville and Tide Head … the bylaws and a lot of things are different. You have to make sure that you become a new entity.”There are seven smaller communities that make up the city of Campbellton, and Levesque said he tried to ensure each has received funding for important projects, while also working toward larger goals for the entire city.��“The seven of them have a little community centre. Because it was, for them, the place that they meet,” he said. “Everybody should grow. Everybody needs to go forward and we try to be fair with everybody.”Over the past two and a half years, Levesque said, many new committees have been created to help files progress faster. He cited an economic development board made up of 11 entrepreneurs.“We’re working right now to have more businesses in our [city] centre,” he said. “We have hope that’s going to help a lot.”Levesque said he’s also proud to have created a municipal plan for the newly amalgamated city and to have laid the foundation to grow more in the future.“Teamwork and all that stuff doesn’t look, for the population, maybe [as] important,” he said. “But for us, I know if you don’t have a good foundation, you’re going to have a hard time to grow.”The city will have the opportunity to elect a new mayor in May 2026, when municipal elections take place across the province.
Campbellton mayor resigns, citing loss of energy and passion for job
