Moosomin mourns passing of former mayor Larry Tomlinson
February 2, 2026, 9:29 am
Kara Kinna, chief editor
The town of Moosomin was in mourning last week after the passing of former long-time mayor Larry Tomlinson.
Tomlinson passed away on Monday morning at the Southeast Integrated Care Centre in Moosomin due to health care complications. He was 78.
Tomlinson served for 11 years as mayor until 2024, and spent six years on Moosomin town council before that. During his years as mayor, he was known for his extensive work as a member of the Moosomin and District Health Care Foundation.
He also served for over 45 years on the Moosomin Regional Park Board, was a member of the Moosomin Elks Lodge for 45 years, and was still serving as the town’s EMO co-ordinator when he passed away.
“My relationship with Larry started when I was a kid because I was the same age as his oldest son. So I actually spent a lot of time in his house around him as a kid, and got to know him probably at the age of five,” says Moosomin Mayor Murray Gray.
“When I worked with him on council, I learned so much from him in the eight years that I was a counselor. He was a great mentor. It was really an honor to work underneath him for that time.
“When you’re on council, you work together with the mayor on everything, so any project that we were taking on we would talk about. But I also learned the expectations of being mayor from him, as far as how the public would view a mayor, which helped me to transition into the role.
“Larry was a laid-back guy, fun, soft spoken, and an all around really good guy. He was the kind of guy that you want to spend time with. I really admired his passion. He did whatever it took in order to make sure that our community was moving forward and our area was moving forward. His passion was second to none.”
Gray says one thing that stood out about Larry was his commitment to health care in Moosomin.
“He championed health care in our region. He went above and beyond in order to make it better for the area. He always wanted to see the community move forward. He always was thinking of the betterment of the town and of the area in every decision that he made.
“It’s a huge loss for the community. There will be a huge hole left in everything that he did for the community, and it’s too bad that he never had the chance to step away and have a long retirement, being proud of all of his accomplishments. It’s unfair that he was taken so soon.
“He definitely left the world a better place than it was when he started in local politics, and for that his family should be very proud. He was a he was a friend to all of the staff, he worked well with people. I think everybody’s mourning in their own way around our office, and around the public works staff, and the members of council who served with him.
“He was an easy guy to get to know and to respect. He’ll be dearly missed.”
Bill MacPherson
Bill MacPherson is the Reeve of the RM of Silverwood and the chair of the Moosomin and District Health Care Foundation.
“We went to lots of meetings together,” says MacPherson. “We really started to get to know each other when he became mayor of Moosomin, and myself being reeve of Silverwood, and then we were on the Health Foundation together. I was the Chair and he was the Vice Chair. So we both attended every meeting that was concerning the hospital and the clinic for many years.”
MacPherson says Larry is the reason the Moosomin Family Practice Centre is where it is today, after forming a corporation to buy the building from Borderland Co-op so the doctors could continue to operate out of that location.
“Larry was the one that really saved the day,” he says. “He was determined that the doctors weren’t going to go anywhere, we were going to do something. We formed the corporation from 15 urban and rural municipalities. We bought the clinic and did some work on it, and kept the doctors there, and he was the big push behind that.
“We thought so much alike, that’s why we got along, I agreed with everything he did. He agreed with everything I did.”
MacPherson also says Larry has been championing the need for a CT scanner in Moosomin from day one.
“We’ve been working on that since 2018. He was the main push, and I was right beside him, trying to do everything we could to get it in there.”
What kind of person was Larry?
“Larry was just a pure gentleman,” says Bill. “If I had to describe him in one word, that’s the word. He never ran anybody down. He was always so level headed and spoke to people with respect, he didn’t talk down to anybody. He was a quiet person. When the discussion was going around the table, he didn’t lead the conversation. I guess that was my job as the chairman. But he would think about what everybody said, and then when he spoke, everybody listened because you knew he had really thought about what he was going to say. And that’s what I liked about Larry, he didn’t BS anybody, it was the plain truth.
“Most people don’t know how much Larry did for the town of Moosomin, and for the foundation, and the corporation. He was just an awesome guy. I call him a good friend. I talked to him before Christmas, and I never got a hint that he was sick. He went on and said everything was good, he was feeling good, he wasn’t the kind of guy that would complain. He was always positive.
“I really respected Larry and he made big shoes to fill. Larry did a awesome job for Moosomin, and people should be proud of him.”
David Moffatt
“My relationship with Larry likely started right back into when I was a kid, and he was actually a hardball coach for us,” says David Moffatt, the reeve of the RM of Moosomin. “Then much later when we got into the mayor and the RM reeve positions, my first real meeting with Larry would have been at a Health Care Foundation meeting, and from there our relationship really took off. We we got a little closer, and we developed. I wouldn’t say there wasn’t a relationship before, but I feel the town and the RM relationship grew quite substantially.
“Larry was a straight shooter. If there was something bothering him, or bothering me, we could lean on each other somewhat and talk about it, and he didn’t hold back if there’s something bothering him. Him and I could talk about it. He was a very fair person. You see a lot in the political side that there’s agendas that get brought to the table, and if Larry had an agenda, it was for the people and for health care in this community.
“He always took a lot of pride in the town. He made himself available for whoever had questions and did what he needed to do to answer them for people.
“One thing that I really learned from Larry was the ability to be open and be able to address it if there’s questions being asked and to make sure that gets done. Just watching him on that foundation board, how passionate he was, he did a lot of work for this community and for the town.
“It’s a huge loss, because even though he wasn’t mayor anymore, he was still passionate about the community. He still kept up on things when that position has been filled. Larry was still pretty devoted, and still looked for knowledge and wanted to know how things were going, so he still had a deep passion for the community. He’ll be greatly missed because when he was in term, we had monthly meetings where we could bounce things off of each other. It will definitely be a loss for the community.”
Paul Listrom
“Having worked with Larry since 2006, I can truly say that he was deeply committed to this town and took his role as an elected official very seriously,” says Moosomin CAO Paul Listrom.
“Whether he was serving as a councillor from the fall of 2006 to the fall of 2012, or as the mayor from 2012 to 2024, Larry consistently put the community first. He believed in public service, he valued the role of staff and council, and worked hard to ensure the town remained strong and well-governed.
“His years of service reflect a true leader and dedication to the people he represented, and his loss will be felt by many, far and wide.”
Chris Davidson
Chris Davidson served on town council with Larry, as well as the Moosomin Regional Park Board, and both men were also long-time members of the Moosomin Elks Club. Davidson says Larry is the reason many things gone done both at the park and in the town of Moosomin.
“Larry and Margaret bought their cottage at the lake in 1975, and he got appointed to the park board the same year and retired in 2025, so he was actually on the board for 50 years. This was a big part of his life for a long time, and he was quite instrumental in the development of the north and south cottage subdivisions. That happened in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s,” says Davidson.
“Back in the ‘70s, there was really nothing for serviced campsites out here. From that point in about the late ‘70s, they started developing. They put power in and started building serviced sites. So from in that period of time that he was on the board, we went from basically no service campsites up to today, and I think we got about 140 campsites out here.
“He was always involved in all that stuff. From the beginning, he was kind of the liaison, the go between guy between the federal government, which, at that point, owned the dam. It was the PFRA, the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Agency. He was the man with the federal government for decades, and they built the dam and owned it all this time up until 2021. Larry operated the dam—he was the guy. If they needed the gate opened or closed, he would run the gate before they computerized it all. He did all the water measurements out there and oversaw it. He did that for years and years.
“We got a lot of stuff done over the years on council. We opened the hospital in 2008. We raised money and saw all the fundraising happen. We built the Convention Center, he was part of that. We did that major lagoon expansion. We built the Sportsplex in his time and my time. We built the new water treatment plant—so we got a lot accomplished together over the years.
“He was also a member of the Moosomin Elks Lodge for 45 years. The Elks are known for helping children with speech and hearing issues, and over that period of time, I’m sure he helped many kids that have had trouble with speech and hearing. That’s a big part of the Elks. He’s helped with donations to all kinds of events or projects and things around the community. Over that period of time, he’s done a lot of work.”
“He was a great man. He cared deeply about the town, and he could work with anybody, he was a good negotiator. He didn’t lose his temper or anything, he was calm and cool and got things done.
“It’s a huge loss for sure. He put a lot of time and effort into working for the whole community, the whole area. He’ll be really missed.
Kevin Weedmark
Moosomin-Montmartre MLA Kevin Weedmark knew Larry for many years in a number of capacities.
“I’ve known Larry for many years, because as a reporter, for many years, I covered Moosomin town council when he was a councillor, and then mayor,” he says. “I also knew him because of my role with the Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development, and those groups worked with him. We worked with Larry on all sorts of different issues over the years, and always found that Larry always had the best interests of Moosomin at heart.
“He had a special interest in making sure that health care in Moosomin was the best that it could possibly be, and he worked like no other elected person I’ve ever seen. He worked dusk to dawn to try to make sure that the town’s voice was heard at higher levels of government, working to make sure that everything ran smoothly in the town.
“On the health care file, he was a vocal advocate for the community and for the Southeast Integrated Care Centre. He also sat on the Moosomin and District Health Care Foundation and the Southeast Municipal Health Care Corporation. He was instrumental in the role of those groups in promoting health care in the region, and was instrumental in setting up the Health Care Corporation, which actually purchased a building that is used by the Moosomin Family Practice Centre.
“He went above and beyond. He not only did his job as mayor because he was elected to do it, but he did it with a tremendous amount of heart, because he truly believed in this community, in the unlimited potential of this region, and did everything he could to make sure that people’s lives here were the best that they could be.
“Larry was an incredibly committed person. When he believed in something, he worked so hard to make sure that what he believed in would happen. He never stopped, never slowed down, just kept working to make sure that what he saw as the most important priorities for the town got addressed and got taken care of.”
Weedmark says Larry oversaw some large changes in his time, and was never afraid of them.
“It’s a huge loss. There will never be another Larry. There will never be anyone like him again,” he says.
“He was instrumental in so many ways in making this community what it is today. And sometimes he was willing to get go out on a limb. Sometimes the Economic Development Committee came up with things like the $30,000 incentive that took a leap of faith by the council, that took a little bit of work, and Larry always trusted in us, and he was willing to work with the different groups that came to council.
“Some different stuff has happened in Moosomin when Larry was mayor—funding for the arts centre, for instance, things like that, that never happened before, some things that were a big change, and Larry was never one who was afraid of change or afraid of trying something different. He would back those who, if he believed that they had they understood a file very well, and they had an idea they wanted to run with, he was he was 100 per cent behind them.”
