The Personal, The Political, The Public by Jim Foulds
Jim Foulds
June 2010
Several years ago, Johnny deBakker stopped me cold in my LU Ontario politics course with the question, “Why did you quit, sir?” Recently my fellow columnist, Gerry Poling, echoed him with, “Why in Hades did you give up on politics?”
Back in 1987, I didn’t take that life-changing decision lightly.
Firstly, I wasn’t burned out, but I could tell that I was getting close. I had fought five elections, and had been working fourteen hour days, six days a week, as the MPP for Port Arthur for sixteen years. Because politics costs so much in time, commitment as well as emotional, psychological and intellectual energy, politics has to remain fun – if you’re going to retain your sanity. If I couldn’t do politics at the top of my game, and still thoroughly enjoy it, I didn’t want to do it at all. It’s a bit like being a professional athlete. Some hang around well past their “best before date.” I always wanted people to ask me the question, “Why did you quit?” rather than “Why don’t you quit?”
Secondly, Judy and I had been married the same year I was elected (1971). Our family had never known anything except a political life. About 1984 I began to think that maybe we should experience how other families lived. In 1985, Frank Miller called an unexpected early election. I remember telling Judy, “I’m running for the wrong reasons.” Two years later, I woke up one sweltering hot June day in my un-airconditioned apartment in Toronto after several nights of fitful sleep, saw Judy’s picture and those of our children on the wall and asked, “What the hell am I doing here?” Our boys were 13 ½ and 15; I had begun to feel – as much for my sake, as theirs – I should get to know them before they left home. At the press conference later that fall, when I announced I would not seek re-election, Judy quipped, “Jim and I have been married sixteen years, we thought we might try living together.”
Thirdly, by that time, Bob Rae, then the Ontario NDP leader, had made it very clear he didn’t want me around anymore. I had led the internal caucus opposition – and helped Michael Lewis organize the broader party opposition – to Rae’s proposal to form a coalition with the Liberals in 1985.( Next year I’ll do a column on why coalitions aren’t all they are cracked up to be – especially in Ontario.) Instead Rae had to settle for the “Accord,” in which the NDP agreed to support the Liberal government for a two-year period. I don’t think Rae ever forgave me for that opposition.
After the Liberals came to power Premier David Peterson and Treasurer Bob Nixon asked me, as the Finance Critic for the NDP, to go on an Ontario trade mission to China. By parliamentary protocol my own party leader would need to approve. Rae nixed the deal. He wouldn’t allow me to go unless I agreed to run again, so the NDP would have a better chance of holding the Port Arthur Riding. I was so incensed by this tawdry attempt at bribery, that I replied, “If you think I’m going to make as important a decision about my future and that of my family, on the basis of whether or not I get a free trip to China, you’ve got another think coming” (Or words to that effect.) From that point on, our relations – which had never been buddy-buddy – were correct but distant.
Finally, I had loved teaching as much as I loved politics. The Lakehead Board of Education, had generously given me an extended leave of absence (and the OSSTF had made it part of the collective agreement.) So I could easily return to a job I loved. As my political career wound down, I didn’t need to pull any of my political punches – as I saw some of my colleagues do – to get a government appointment in order to put spaghetti and meatballs on the table.
My only real regret is that I never had the experience of actually being in government. You have to have power to bring about real change. Opposition members can have considerable influence, (I did as the architect of the Northern Health Travel Grant) but they don’t have power. I really would have liked to have exercised political power and experienced its limits.
But do I regret retiring when I did, a mere three years before the NDP formed a government in Ontario?
Not one bit. I retired from front-line politics at the right time for me and my family
Some of the best years of my professional life occurred after I returned to teaching high school English. Teaching an additional course in Ontario Politics at Lakehead University was a bonus. Most importantly, I did get to know my two sons well. Today, Judy and I glory in them, their accomplishments, and our grandchildren.
But I must emphasize that I can’t think of anything I would rather have done for the sixteen years of my life between 1971 and 1987 than represent the people of Port Arthur Riding as their Member of the Ontario Legislature. I was lucky to have been a legislator!
May 2010
Reflections on Thunder Bay’s Knee-Jerk NIMBY Protestors:
There’s been an explosion of Not-In-My-Backyard protests in Thunder Bay in the last two years. Doesn’t anybody in this town support anything anymore?
First it was the waterfront development. Then there was the proposed location of the EMS building on Junot Avenue. More recently it has been the two proposed housing developments on the former John A. MacDonald School, and on a parcel of LU land next to the River Terrace subdivision. Lastly, the well-organized opposition to the proposed wind farm on a small portion of the Nor-Westers is the most vociferous.
I like to think I’m as environmentally conscious as anyone. When it wasn’t popular in the 1970s, as a politician, I fought against the poisoning of the English-Wabigoon River system by Reed Paper and the dumping of asbestos into Lake Superior by mining concerns south of the border; and I strongly supported the creation of Quetico as a wilderness park. These days, I have twenty-five trees on my urban property, over twenty shrubs and bushes, and a flower and vegetable garden. I’ve been trying to do my bit to protect green space and our environment all my life. But I think some Thunder Baynians should admit they’ve chosen to live in a city, not a wilderness park, nor an ecological reserve.
The latest generation of protestors have forgotten to consider not merely what is good for them or their narrow group, but what is good for our city and our society.
Let’s take those who are opposing the John A. MacDonald housing development. Basically they want to protect green space in their neighbourhood. I don’t blame them. But do they ever stop to think that their own homes have been built on what was green space until the 1950s? The shopping mall on River Street and the Grandview developments destroyed the Bush where I and my boyhood friends went skinny-dipping in McVicar Creek and cross-country skiing past Dragon Hill. We built forts and toboggan slides; we dug tunnels; we fought wars; and we worked trap lines throughout the wilderness between River Street and Wardrope Avenue. Now someone new wants to put mixed housing on land that has been zoned institutional, but the near-by residents consider it their personal green space. Today no one – except me and a few surviving friends – grieves over the lost deer, fox, weasels, rabbits, song birds, berry patches, and fishing holes of our childhood that the present human inhabitants destroyed.
The same could be applied in spades to those opposing Lakehead University’s sell-off of land to a developer at River Terrace. Sure, in an ideal world with unlimited tax dollars, the city and the university could preserve some bush and “hazard land” in the heart of the city. But, again, those protesting should consider the greater good of society.
In one case the Lakehead Board of Education and, in the other, Lakehead University both get revenue from the sale of property. Some people will get housing they can afford. In both cases the city gets additional tax revenue from new housing. Isn’t this kind of “infill” exactly what we need in our sprawling city? And yes, private developers are going to make money, but in our society that isn’t a crime.
But the loudest and best organized protestors are those opposing the proposed wind farm on Thunder Bay City-owned land in Neebing Township. Surely wind is one of the most benign forms of producing power. It’s a lot better than coal, and it’s even less damaging than hydro power (although, I admit, less reliable). The famous Dutch wind mills have shown that for years.
As a friend of mine asked “Aren’t these protestors the very same people who built their homes knowing full well that the Bowater pulp and paper mill was already spewing out the smell of prosperity over their neighbourhood?”
These residents are now opposing wind mills because they’re an environmental hazard? Give me a break. Environmentally, I would take twenty-two wind mills over a pulp mill any day. Did those who now are showing heartwarming concern for the bats, the peregrine falcons, and the other wildlife that might be affected by the wind mills give wildlife any thought when the ski hills, the Northwest Hockey Tournament Centre, the hotels, and their own homes were being built?
And are all these protestors, the same people who are going to be outraged when City Council finds it must raise taxes to provide the services we all demand because it has been frustrated in its attempts to find the needed additional sources of revenue that these projects would produce?
Let’s face it, when we live in a city there is going to be, inevitably, development. The City’s responsibility is to maximize and balance the social, economic, and ecological benefits for all its citizens – not cave in to the narrow self-interests of the few.
Reflections on Amalgamation – Part 1
On Jan 1, 2010, the fortieth birthday of the City of Thunder Bay passed by – totally unnoticed! Although the City was celebrating the running of the Olympic Torch Relay at the beginning of the year, why did we totally ignore Thunder Bay’s fortieth birthday? Does City Council and administration think we have nothing to celebrate?
I think we do.
I started thinking about this last fall when I received an unexpected letter from Darcy McKeough, wanting me to give him some idea of “the perceived results” of amalgamation. He was the man the opponents of amalgamation loved to hate – in their view, the provincial ogre who, as Minister of Municipal Affairs, ‘shoved amalgamation down our throats.’
When I was elected to the legislature I grew to like and respect McKeough. He worked incredibly hard and – much as I often disagreed with him politically – was talented, energetic, and principled.
Away back in 1956, when I left Port Arthur to go to university in B.C., I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of town. There was no university, no college, no regional hospital, no bookstore, no symphony, no professional theatre, no community auditorium. When I came back in 1962, these things did not yet exist, but many were on the horizon. By the mid-sixties, the university, the symphony and bookstores were realities; the college was on its way; the vibrant theatre community was heading towards a professional one; and the Lakehead Council for the Arts was leading the charge for a community auditorium. The two rival towns were beginning to grow naturally together.
Only the medical establishment, some leading businessmen, and some vocal politicians were still mired in the destructive rivalries of the past. I was one of those people who dared to live in Port Arthur, but work in Fort William! Although I supported amalgamation, I feared the premature imposition of it would rupture this natural growth towards unity. My guess at the time was that it would take until about 1975 for the atmosphere to be right.
The local drive towards amalgamation came from Port Arthur’s mayor, Saul Laskin, who had a vision of a modern unified city at the Lakehead. Regional governments and consolidated school boards were the flavour of the decade at Queen’s Park; so Laskin found a positive ally in the new young Minister of Municipal Affairs, Darcy McKeough – and vice versa After the Hardy Report – which was the basis for the amalgamation – was issued, McKeough and Laskin worked tirelessly to persuade a number of “opinion-setting” groups in the two cities that amalgamation was the route to the future. After one particularly difficult meeting, when they got into the privacy of the Ontario government car, Laskin said to McKeough, “Just make us do this.”*
So he did. I would argue that McKeough and Laskin were right, although their businessmen’s desire (and impatience) to get things done rushed the job.
Unfortunately, a number of occurrences in the first two terms of council got Thunder Bay off to a very rocky start.
1) Some Fort William aldermen led by Walter Assef and Mickey Henessey became a de facto populist opposition to the mayor.
2) The provincial Minister of Government Services, James Snow – at the urging of Jim Jessiman – the PC MPP for Fort William at the time – decided to put the Mini-Queen’s Park Building on James Street rather than at an inter-city location on (or near) the CLE grounds which Laskin wanted. Laskin hoped it would become the anchor for a new civic centre including a new city hall and all future federal and provincial government buildings. Snow’s decision torpedoed this exciting idea and exacerbated the Fort William vs. Port Arthur patronage rivalry that bedevils the placing of federal and provincial projects (like the current new Court House) to this day.
3) Worn down by the squabbling and a conflict-of-interest court case that turfed out four of his allies on council, Laskin decided not to run for a second term (”. . .the first three years took a toll on me,” he said, “I worked very hard. I began to feel it was changing my character and that’s one of the reasons I chose to quit politics.”**
4) Walter Assef was elected the second mayor of Thunder Bay. A more destructive and parochial man I have not met in all my years in politics. He wasn’t the Jolly Wally his supporters portrayed, but a bullying tyrant who once threatened an alderman who disagreed with him with, “If you don’t shut up, Smitty, I’m going to come down there and beat the sh-t out of you.”
5) The second council rezoned the intercity area along the banks of the McIntyre River (in spite of it being on a flood plain) for commercial development, thus allowing the present day shopping hub to develop – sucking the vitality out of the two historic downtowns.
Considering this shaky start, it’s a miracle Thunder Bay has survived at all. More in my next amalgamation column.
*Related to me by the civil servant driving the car.
** Quoted from Peter Raffo, Municipal Political Culture and Conflict of Interest at the Lakehead, 1969-72, The Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society, Papers and Records, vol XXVI, 1998. A “must read” for anyone wanting to understand Thunder Bay’s politics.
A War Worth Fighting
If there is any war worth fighting in this world, surely it is the war against poverty.
Why does Stephen Harper demand that developed nations eliminate poverty for mothers and children in the third world when he does nothing to eliminate such poverty in his own country? Why did Stephen Harper’s Conservative government match dollar for dollar every donation made to Haiti, but does not match our donations to homeless shelters and food banks in Canada? Why do we respond so generously to poverty when it occurs overseas and yet refuse to see it in our own backyard?
Is it because to deal with poverty in Canada is to admit our own failure as a society? Are we afraid to recognize that poverty exists on our doorsteps, because if we did, we might see the need to sacrifice some of our own comfort; we might realize the need to pay more taxes to help the poor?
Make no mistake, poverty is all too prevalent, not just overseas, but right here in our own country.
Some will argue that during these tough economic times, we can’t afford to tackle poverty. We must wait until things get better.
But it is precisely now that the need is greatest. As a recent Senate Committee Report entitled In From the Margins points out: “Poverty expands healthcare costs, policing burdens, and [it decreases] educational outcomes. This, in turn, decreases productivity, life spans, economic expansion, and social progress, all of which takes place at a huge cost to taxpayers.”
In short poverty is not only bad for the poor, it’s lousy for the rest of us.
If a country like Brazil – which had a basket case economy a mere ten years ago – can pull 10% of its total population out of poverty while rebuilding its economy, surely Canada can make a similar effort. Increasing benefits to the poor is not only morally right, it makes good economic sense for the rest of us. The poor can’t afford to save. They spend their money immediately so that it circulates right back into the economy, benefiting shopkeepers, landlords, manufacturers, workers, and investors.
Increased spending by the poor would directly stimulate our economy.
Greed and self-interest are not our dominating motivating forces. At their heart’s core, most people do want to wage that war against poverty that our politicians only seem to talk about. How else do you explain the enormous outpouring of sympathy and aid for the people affected by the Asian Tsunami of 2004, or for the people of Haiti today? Unless you believe in the goodness of humanity, you cannot explain it. Nor can you explain the enormous dedication and generosity of those volunteers – some of whom put in virtually full-time hours – delivering Meals on Wheels, or organizing and helping out at food banks, soup kitchens, and homeless shelters.
We must no longer ignore the poverty in our own land; the poverty that sees – in our own city – over one tenth of our kids go to school hungry every day; that accepts an unemployment rate of 10%; that tries to hide the people living on the streets and alleyways of Thunder Bay; that sees desperate former mill workers embarrassed, lining up at food banks; that has Shelter House at 90% capacity – sheltering not only single men and women, but far, far too many families. We must not allow our politicians to ignore the tragic fact that some aboriginal communities in Northwestern Ontario live in third world conditions with totally inadequate infrastructure – just like Haiti before the earthquake.
This is the shameful reality of our time. It need not be so. Poverty is a terrible, dehumanizing thing. We should not tolerate it. We should not allow our politicians to tolerate it. We should rage against it. We should force our political leaders to eradicate it. Or at least try.
And let us remember that above all, most poor people are simply that – poor – through no fault of their own. Many are children. Many are women. Many are an increasing number of families who have fallen through the ever widening gaps in our social and educational systems. Most are victims of the current man-made global recession.
Here are three modest suggestions to start the war on Canadian poverty.
The next federal budget should 1) cancel tax credits to all those phoney conventions held outside of Canada so many businessmen, professionals, academics, and some trade union leaders can take holidays at taxpayers’ expense; 2) tax at 100% the top 20% of the income of all those (both private and public sector) CEOs and CFOs who get more than 20 times the average salary of their employees, and 3) match dollar for dollar every donation we give to the food banks and the homeless shelters in Canada – just as the Harper government did for donations to Haiti. This money should then go directly to wage the war against poverty in Canada.
Our poor deserve no less. So do we.
In Defence of the Public Sector
I get really ticked off every time I hear another of those mindless attacks on the public sector by the media, the private sector, and right wing politicians.
The public sector provides real and necessary services such as health care, education, fire and police protection, safe water, roads, and much much more. And jobs. Real, decent, well-paying jobs.
It was not the private sector that created the magnificent St. Lawrence Seaway, it was government. Canadian federal and provincial governments and the American government joined together to create a transportation route that rivaled the Suez and Panama canals. As a result Thunder Bay became one of the greatest ports in the world.
It was the public sector that created Lakehead University and Confederation College, institutions that gave our children as good an opportunity at post secondary education as those in Southern Ontario. It was the public sector that built up the thriving health care sector – our regional hospital, our cancer care facilities, and the growing St. Joseph’s Health Care Group.
Right now the public sector is sustaining the economy of Northwestern Ontario. Without Lakehead University, Confederation College, the Regional Health Sciences Centre, the Regional Cancer Clinic, our school boards, our municipal governments, the nonprofit St. Joseph’s Care Group, and the federal and provincial offices located here, we would have a third world economy with few jobs worth talking about.
We still do have private sector employers in the Shipyards, the grain elevators, Bombardier, the construction industry, the retail industry, and our expanding hi-tech industry. But alone, they could not sustain us.
Let’s look at the false assumptions that underlie the attacks on the public service:
1) The smaller the public sector, the better. If Lakehead University, our schools boards, our health care sector, our federal, provincial, and municipal governments were all smaller, we would have fewer friends, neighbours, doctors, teachers, nurses, firemen, and garbage collectors all earning decent incomes and paying taxes. As well, we would have far fewer necessary services for our children.
2) The public sector is wasteful and inefficient – unlike the private sector. It’s true that every year the federal and provincial auditors-general issue reports that detail some waste in public spending. But isn’t it good that taxpayers have such officials to make sure our money is spent wisely – and when it isn’t, to force the offenders to correct their practices.
It’s too bad we don’t have auditors-general to detail the waste and extravagance in the private sector.
Is there anyone who doesn’t believe that the recent troubles of Abitibi-Bowater, the Buchanan forestry empire, General Motors, and Nortel occurred because of greed, waste, overspending, excessive profit-taking, poor investments and bad planning? The vaunted efficiency of the unregulated private sector in these cases failed miserably. If we had an auditor-general of private businesses issuing public reports then the obvious waste and mismanagement which occurred in these cases could have been avoided. And the employees of these companies may have had their wages and pension plans protected.
But these are the few exceptions, we are told. Let’s remember these “few exceptions” almost destroyed the manufacturing sector of Ontario, and has, for now, destroyed the forestry economy of more than a dozen communities in Northern Ontario!
And, does anyone seriously think the private for-profit sector could run the St. Joseph’s Care Group with as much business smarts and compassion as is presently done?
3) Public sector employees are overpaid. Every year, the provincial government publishes the names of all those in the public service who earn a gross salary of over $100,000. Every year, the press trumpets this “extravagance.” But we would have a fair comparison between the private and the public sector only if we published the names of everyone who gets more than $100,000. But that would be an invasion of privacy, the private businesses scream. Why is publishing the income of those in the private sector an invasion of privacy, but it isn’t when it’s done to public sector employees? Some fifteen years ago, I was on the Board of Directors of the then employee-owned Provincial Papers. I was astounded to learn that – to be competitive – that small forestry company of 500 employees and one plant had to pay its CEO almost $300,000. In comparison, a Director of Education in our region responsible for over forty-three plants (schools, maintenance and administrations buildings), more than twice as many employees, and 17,493 students had a salary only one third of that!
As we have seen all too forcefully, decisions taken in the private sector – like the closing of the Kenora and Red Rock mills – can have an enormous public impact, not only on the employees, but on the whole community. So, when you hear someone arguing that the public sector should be more like the private sector, ask them if they want to cut our overcrowded regional hospital to one quarter of its present size or to close down Lakehead University entirely. That’s what the private sector did. It shut down three-quarters of the forestry industry in Thunder Bay and all of pulp and paper industry in Red Rock.
Reflections on the Long Gun Registry and the Montreal Massacre:
Twenty years ago last month, Marc Lapine walked into the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal with a long gun and killed fourteen young women. CBC’s As It Happens marked the anniversary of the Montreal massacre by carrying two of the most moving interviews I’ve ever heard in my life – one with one of the survivors, and one with Marc Lapine’s mother. Both women displayed a largeness of spirit, a generous forgiveness, and an intellectual toughness that brought tears to my eyes.
Barely a month earlier, the House of Commons voted to abolish the long gun registry. I was ashamed that my Canadian parliament – an institution I treasure – caved in to the loud protests of gun enthusiasts who think Canada should merely be a junior partner of the gun-toting United States. I was ashamed that several members of my own party – along with a number of Liberals – joined the Conservatives to support this private members’ bill driven by the politics of division. Let’s be clear. Abolishing the gun registry does NOT improve our justice system. Abolishing the gun registry is NOT good public policy. Abolishing the gun registry does NOT save a lot of money.
Look, I’m a Northern Ontario boy whose boyhood home faced miles of boreal forest. Although I now engage in more leisurely pursuits, I’ve fished, I’ve snowshoed, I’ve cross-country skied, I’ve trapped (illegally), I’ve slept in uninsulated shacks with only a wood stove for comfort during minus 25 weather. And I’ve hunted. In short, I’ve done all the things that outdoorsmen claim are vital to our traditional way of life.
But I just don’t get it. I don’t get why anyone objects to registering a gun. What’s so hard about filling in a form? Registering a gun is less difficult and less costly than getting a passport.
My father – who taught me to shoot at age twelve – told me guns were created with just one thing in mind. “Guns are meant to kill. So, if you aim one at someone or something, make sure you want to kill it. Or him.” I’ve never forgotten. I know that 99% of all long guns are used to kill other animals, not human beings. But they are used to kill. And some are used to kill people – more often than not, women and children.
Does registering a gun guarantee that it won’t be used for violent purposes? Of course not. But in ten years of gun control the use of long guns in domestic murders has plummeted. Why? Two reasons: Simply having to get two people to vouch for you, and having your wife, spouse, or common-law partner notified that you’ve purchased a gun and want to register it makes some impulsive potential purchasers think twice. More importantly, in situations where police are alerted to domestic violence, now they may learn ahead of time if guns are present. Therefore they can proceed with more care and caution. Where domestic violence has occurred they have the right to remove the firearms from the home, thus taking away the easiest means of domestic murder. That’s why, for all its flaws, the Canadian Chiefs of Police and the Canadian Police Association support the gun registry. In 2007 alone they used it 2.5 million times.
I admit that the Liberals did a very poor job of implementing gun control, and that the gun registry probably cost more than it should. But cancelling it now will not save Canadians one red cent of the money already spent. And scrapping the gun registry now would save the future taxpayer merely 1/10,000th of 1 per cent of the total federal budget.
Sixty-two per cent of all domestic murders are committed with long guns. Oh, I know the cry, “Guns don’t kill people, people do.” I admit cars and baseball bats can be used to kill people too. But they aren’t specifically designed to kill. Guns are.
I need to register and licence a car. I need to register and licence a dog. I need to register my children and pay for their birth certificates. Why shouldn’t someone need to register a gun?
No gun law will prevent all tragedies. The present law may not be perfect but it has curbed considerable violence against some women, children, and other men. I don’t want that protection taken away from them. Or me. The law may need to be improved, but scrapping the gun registry is not the way to do it.
Tommy Douglas once warned Canadians, “You need to be constantly on guard to protect medicare. If you don’t, they will surely try to take it away from you.” We know medicare is imperfect, but Canadians don’t want anyone taking it away.
For me, the same is true of the gun control legislation passed in the 1990s. I believe that most Canadians thought that if any good came out of the Montreal massacre at all, it was this reasonable, if imperfect, control on the distribution and use of guns.
But, now parliament is trying to take away this protection from all Canadians. For trying to do so, I’m ashamed of my parliament. And my country.
A Large NDP Sign on South High Street!
A constituency election campaign is like urban warfare. It is fought neighbourhood by neighbourhood, street by street, block by block, house by house. But while urban warfare features soldiers with guns and grenades, a constituency election involves door-to-door canvassers, leaflets – and lawn signs.
In 1981, the Conservatives targeted Port Arthur as a constituency they could win. After a margin of 4,618 votes in 1975, I had hung onto the seat by a mere 339 votes in the 1977 election.
Premier Bill Davis visited the riding three times during the campaign. The Conservatives poured money, outside organizers, and especially saturation advertising into the campaign for their likeable candidate, Al Laakonen. You couldn’t listen to ten minutes of commercial radio without hearing their very catchy campaign jingle, Ontario-oh! Is there any place you’d rather be? It cleverly echoed much of the taxpayer-paid advertising from government ministries and agencies for the previous two years.
We couldn’t match the Conservative media buy or the status of the premier. All we had were my record, dedicated door-to-door workers, and a campaign budget of $30,000.
And our sign campaign.
Signs are crucial both psychologically and physically. They reinforce name recognition. Well-placed signs grab the eye and burn the candidate’s name into the voter’s consciousness. A lawn sign clearly on an individual’s property identifies a person who is willing to stick out his neck out to say, “I’m voting for Jim Foulds.” A good sign campaign creates the impression of winning – thus boosting the morale of the candidate, the campaign team, and supporters. Signs get people talking. There’s a constant competition to get signs up on main streets and in “enemy territory.”
With ten days to go in the 1981 campaign, my home phone rang at eight o’clock in the morning. I was awake, but groggy from inadequate sleep. I’d been up late at an all-candidates’ meeting the previous evening.
“It’s Duncan Cameron, Jim.”
“Who?” I tried to shake the cobwebs out of my head.
“Duncan Cameron. Our kids car pool together to French Immersion class. I live just around the corner on South High Street. I want one of your big signs.”
(In 1981, a big sign was big – 4ft x 8ft., not the piddly 2½ ft. x 4ft. ones in use today.)
My brain was foggy, but my political instincts kicked into high gear. A big sign on a main thoroughfare and in enemy territory!
In the peculiar geography that is Port Arthur, Duncan Cameron and I lived a mere two blocks apart, but our homes were in vastly different real estate zones. Although my house had a spectacular view of the Sleeping Giant, it’s nestled amongst student housing and multi-family units on the edge of the downtown core. Duncan’s house was in one of the two most coveted residential blocks in the city. I had the view, he had the address. And South High Street had a high volume of traffic. In short, it was an unbelievably good sign location. The CCF/NDP had never had a sign in those two prime blocks.
“Sorry, Duncan, I didn’t quite catch that.”
In the background, his wife was pleading, “Can’t we just have a small sign?”
“I want a sign. One of yours. A big one.”
I was astounded. Duncan Cameron was a very decent well-known dentist. He came from a staunchly Conservative family and he lived in a staunchly Conservative poll where I was lucky to get fourteen votes.
“Those beggars are trying to buy this seat. I don’t like that. I just heard that damnable jingle of theirs on the radio for the umpteenth time and it’s driving me nuts. I want one of your big signs, dammit! “
“Right,” I said. “I’ll get my sign crew to see if we have any left. A guy called Peter Stevenson will be in touch with you. And thanks, thanks a lot.”
The campaign was beginning to look a whole lot better.
Pete Stevenson was my key sign guy. He seemed dubious. “Sounds good, Jim, but I better check it out after work to see if it’s worth our last big sign.”
To me it was a no-brainer, but Pete was in charge of signs. His judgment was final. A candidate has enough to do without second-guessing the people he trusts.
That night after duly surveying the location, a working class mechanic and a middle class dentist sealed the deal over a drink of fine liqueur. I think Pete even managed to persuade Duncan that we were doing him the favour by letting him have our very last big sign.
Getting that one simple strategic sign location proved to be a pivotal moment in the campaign. It caused a sensation. Our forces were elated. Duncan took a lot of heat from his Conservative relatives, friends, and colleagues. Twenty-eight years later my respect for his public act of private courage remains undiminished. Those small but vitally important statements of independence and principle by the Duncan Camerons of this world were the stuff that made my career in politics worthwhile.
Remembering Doug Fisher
Doug Fisher’s recent death forcefully reminded me that a boy from the bush of Northwestern Ontario (and proud of it!) could have a huge impact on the national scene. The CCF/NDP MP for Port Arthur from 1957 to 1965, he also convincingly demonstrated that politicians could maintain their integrity.
However, although we intellectually understood his reasons, he broke the hearts of many of his local supporters, when he retired after eight years and four elections to become a full time journalist for a right-wing paper – which ironically paid more than being an MP at the time. Doug, with a growing family to support, felt he needed the increased income. As well, the travel back and forth on the train (a day’s journey each way) to spend a day and a half in his riding on weekends was tough both on Doug and his young family. Serving a constituency the size of France was no picnic. There comes a time when the burden simply becomes too great.
He was a giant of a man, both physically and politically. His defeat of C. D. Howe, the Liberals’ Minister of Everything, was the stuff of legends. C. D. contributed to his own defeat with his infamous comment during the 1956/57 Pipeline Debate, “What’s a Million?” But Doug capitalised on Howe’s apparent arrogance. A million was a hell of a lot of money to the voters of Port Arthur Riding. (My dad, for example, earned less than $3,000 a year.)
Fisher had three great gifts as a politician. He was physically imposing. He was intelligent. He kept in touch with his constituents.
I only met him a few times after he left politics for journalism. Once, shortly after I was elected to the Ontario Legislature in 1971, he gave me the most reassuring advice a rookie MPP could receive. “Just remember, Jim, the league down here ain’t that great.” About twenty years later, after I had retired from politics myself, I happened to meet him outside Safeways on Court Street. We chatted briefly about the one thing we both really missed about politics – the indescribable bond that grows between an elected representative and his constituents when they respect each other. “It was the one thing I could never convey to my colleagues in the Press Gallery,” he told me. I last met Doug some ten years ago when a mutual friend, Dusty Miller, hosted a small dinner party for us. It was the first time Doug met my wife, Judy. Afterwards, referring to Judy, he told Dusty, “I like that feisty woman!” Judy and I both took it as a great compliment.
Doug’s unique genius in 1957 was to combine two apparently incompatible technologies – the blackboard and television. It’s hard to imagine in this age of the fifteen second sound bite, but Doug used television to “teach” the voters of Port Arthur about federal politics. In fifteen minute and half hour TV segments, illustrating on an old fashioned blackboard he outlined the complexities of parliament and issues such Canada’s first gas pipeline and the federal budget – right after the six o’clock news. The voters of Port Arthur were mesmerised.
Some time after Howe’s defeat, Fisher and Howe accidentally met. C. D. actually thanked Doug for defeating him! “I never realized how pleasant life can be outside of politics.”
Doug’s other great strength as a politician was that he was able to mobilize people to work for him. He had a dedicated base of CCF members. But he was able to expand that base and inspire them to work tirelessly not only during campaigns but also in between elections. I remember as a young teacher setting off right after school with another supporter to drive Doug to Nakina for a public meeting. We all took our turns driving and sleeping so Fisher could speak at the meeting, then turn around immediately afterwards to arrive back in town at three in the morning. I showed up at school the next day on time, and Fisher was on the campaign trail equally early – preparing for one of his TV broadcasts.
I don’t want to imply I was a key CCF/Fisher operative in those days. I wasn’t. The supporters who deserve most of the credit are people like his wife, Barbara, Tom and Dusty Miller, Ron and Jeanne Wilmot, Rhoda and Jerry McKay, the Merkleys, the Deachmans, the Seamans, The Robinsons, Norm Richards, Peter Hennessy, and countless others – especially in the outlying district towns – whose names I’ve forgotten. It really was grassroots politics at its best. God, it was exhilarating. For all of us, winning with Fisher and the CCF/NDP was both inspiring and fun. Doug’s victories proved Fred Robinson’s CCF provincial wins in the forties weren’t flukes; he paved the way for Jack Stokes and me in the sixties, seventies, and eighties.
Thanks, Doug, wherever you are!
Some time ago I encountered Dalton Camp in an airport in Antigua. After serving as president of the federal Progressive Conservatives, working as a key advisor to Bill Davis, chairing the Royal Commission that modernized the Ontario legislature in the 1970s, and briefly, serving Brian Mulroney, he wound up writing a column for the Toronto Star. When I complimented him on the columns, he smiled in reply, “When nobody takes your advice anymore, it’s time to become a columnist.”
So, here I am.
Normally I wouldn’t comment on municipal politics as my son, Andrew, is presently on City Council. But I found two recent Council decisions particularly disturbing. By and large, this Council is functioning better than almost any one I can remember. (I will swear an oath that I have not consulted with Andrew in any way about this column.) Nevertheless, two of Council’s recent decisions are worrying.
The first wrong-headed decision by the majority of city council was to place the new EMS response building on a site that will cost the taxpayers at least three hundred thousand dollars more than necessary, will provide poorer response times and service to approximately 10,000 people, and take longer to build. Why? Because the loud NIMBY voices of some in the neighbourhood objected to using a parcel of fully serviced unused green space (not parkland) sandwiched between a fire hall and parkland. Go figure.
The second disappointment was Council’s refusal to approve of fluoridation in Thunder Bay’s drinking water. In spite of the overwhelming proven scientific benefits to the health and welfare of all citizens – and especially to disadvantaged children – the majority of council preferred to listen to the scare mongers (including some scientists and environmentalists) who dulled their senses with repetitive deputations and who bombarded them with emails – many from out of town. What can we make of those irrational pleas about preserving the pristine nature of Lake Superior water? If it’s so pristine, why do we have a state-of-the-art water treatment centre at Bare Point? Has everyone forgotten about The Blob sealed near the old Northern Wood Preservers plant, the dubious holding ponds of our defunct paper mills, the spray used to kill sea lamprey, not to mention the garbage thrown overboard by freighters, cruise ships and yachts? Don’t we already filter our “pure” Lake Superior water and treat it with the “poisonous” chemical, chlorine?
Yes, if used in wildly excessive amounts, fluoride can turn into a poison. So can potassium – if I eat a thousand bananas a day!
In both these cases the majority of city council bowed to the tyranny of a noisy minority who triumphed over the welfare of the majority of Thunder Bay’s citizens.
Every politician should be forced regularly to read Edmund Burke’s Address to the Electors of Bristol on the duty of the elected representative. In 1774, he said: “[His constituent’s] wishes ought to have great weight him. . . . It his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all . . . to prefer their interest to their own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you . . . . These he does not derive form your pleasure – no, nor from any law or Constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry (i.e. hard work) only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”
I would put it this way. It is the duty of the elected representative not merely to reflect our views, but to bring us to an understanding of issues that bring out our better selves. As voters, we need to think of ourselves not merely as tax-paying individuals but also as citizens who have a responsibility to society.
Now, a brief comment on the federal scene. The majority of Canadians as well as Canada’s media commentators have shouted a resounding, “no” to another election this fall.” Isn’t it just a bit ironic that we don’t want to vote here,. But Canada, the U.S., and our NATO allies are inflicting a terrible war on Afghanistan to force Afghanis to vote in an electoral democracy rather than continue with their traditional tribal society? Do I detect just a touch of hypocrisy here?
But the present political behaviour that alarms me the most are the mindless attacks on Barrack Obama’s modest attempts to bring health care reform to the United States. More about that and why we in Canada should be concerned about gun-toting crowds in town hall meetings on health care in the next column.
Don’t just have good day, have a good month!