For years, the old Royal Victoria Hospital sat half-used on Ross Street after Barrie outgrew it, its future in doubt until Janice Laking, the city's mayor from 1988 to 2000, pushed the city to take on the site rather than let it be sold off. It became Victoria Village, a non-profit seniors' community that still occupies the property today. Laking died on September 30, 2026, according to Barrie360 and CTV News Barrie, in her nineties.

She had taught in Barrie's high schools before she ever sat on council, and she later said the two jobs were not so different: both meant sizing up a room of strong personalities and finding a way to make them work together. Laking won her first council seat in 1972. Six years later she aimed higher, accepting a federal Liberal nomination in Simcoe South, then withdrawing it to challenge incumbent mayor Ross Archer instead. She lost, spent 1980 rebuilding, won back a council seat, and held it for eight more years before Barrie elected her mayor in 1988, taking the office Archer had held since 1977.

Voters returned her by acclamation in 1991. She tried federal politics again in 1993, running for the Liberals in Simcoe Centre and losing to Reform candidate Ed Harper by just 182 votes, in the only Ontario riding the Liberals failed to carry that year. Back in municipal office, she won reelection as mayor in 1994 and 1997, and used those terms to push through projects that reshaped downtown Barrie: the municipal purchase of the CN rail corridor to Bradford and Collingwood that eventually brought GO Transit trains to the city, the relocation of the MacLaren Art Centre to Mulcaster Street, and the construction of a new police station and the downtown branch of the Barrie Public Library.

The Royal Victoria Hospital project took the longest to land. The hospital board did not move to its new Georgian Drive site until 1997, handing the Ross Street property to the city for one dollar. Victoria Village opened there in 2003 and has since grown to 128 long-term care beds, 57 life-lease suites and 16 residential units for seniors, on land that might otherwise have sat vacant.

Her twelve years as mayor ended in 2000, when longtime councillor Jim Perri defeated her. Twenty years later, marking International Women's Day at Barrie's Waterford Retirement Residence, Laking was matter-of-fact about her place in that history: asked about it, she said simply, "I was the third one," noting that Marjorie Hamilton in the early 1950s and Dorian Parker in the 1970s had preceded her as the city's only other female mayors, BarrieToday reported. She recalled being the only woman in rooms full of male councillors, save for fellow mayor Hazel McCallion at meetings of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, and remembered bringing her knitting to committee meetings: "It drove the men mad!"

Laking was married to John Cyril Laking for 65 years before he died in December 2017 at 88. She outlived him by nearly nine years.

News of her death prompted the City of Barrie to lower its flags to half-mast for the week. Current mayor Alex Nuttall wrote on social media that she was "somebody who defined this city through our highest growth years, who has given us what we enjoy here in the City of Barrie today," adding, "To the Laking family, I want you to know our thoughts and prayers are with you." Barrie-Springwater-Oro-Medonte MP Doug Shipley said her "leadership and dedication have left a profound impact on our community."

What Laking built in Barrie is mostly still standing. Seniors live at Victoria Village on the old hospital grounds, GO trains run the rail corridor the city acquired on her watch, the MacLaren Art Centre occupies its Mulcaster Street home, and the downtown library branch she backed still serves the neighborhood she represented for twenty-six years, first on council and then from the mayor's office.