Roche stays busy at 91: `Every day is important to me'
Prolific Edmonton author's latest work discusses options for peace in Biden era
If you were ever looking for a phone a friend on a game show, Doug Roche would be the man — my neighbour, the smartest person in the room.
He is 91 years old and looks 75. He has some heart issues but he gets around nicely on knees that have been rebuilt over the past four or five years. His mind is razor sharp and he continues to write books, now up to 22 — most on the subject of disarmament, often inside a larger construct: his self-published latest, Peace Prospects in the Biden Era, available on Amazon.
Roche, who once got nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, has the Order of Canada and was awarded a papal medal from Pope John II, continues to write treatises about once a month for the must-read Hill Times in Ottawa, as well. That's where he started as a newspaperman.
“I'm grateful I have my health … If you have that, you at least have a shot,” says Roche, who had a stent inserted into his heart a while back.
“Every day is important to me. I'm content,” said Roche, married twice, with his wife of 42 years Eva dying in 1995, and then Patricia, in 2017.
He is up at 6 a.m. watching the news, reading his morning papers, getting down to writing. He took 31/2 months for his current book, five to six hours of writing a day.
“Biden will bring a sense of co-operation to the office, a reaching out,” said Roche, who met the president-elect once in 2001 when both were senators and, as he jokingly says, “I know a lot more prime ministers.”
“Our world has a triple emergency: climate change, nuclear weapons proliferation and coronavirus. Each has a profound influence on our lives. We have to co-operate to survive. We need to pull down the emissions, pull back the nuclear weapons and have a vaccine. It's so much common sense.”
His first book about the Second Vatican Council was in 1968, after he came here to take up a job offered by the founding editor of the Western Catholic Reporter three years before.
The undefeated Progressive Conservative MP for 12 years, later Canadian ambassador for disarmament, senator and university professor, is a voracious reader. He once had 6,000 books before downsizing to 1,000 — biographies, history, politics and two shelves of books about nuclear weapons.
“I don't spend money on common vices,” laughed Roche.
He also has a couple of books by Roger Angell, maybe the greatest baseball essayist ever, a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine for almost 75 years. “Angell just turned 100,” said Roche, who loves the Toronto Blue Jays.
When asked how he became a Conservative MP for Edmonton Strathcona, he shrugs. Serendipity, really. He got a phone call out of the blue in 1972, asking if he would like to have lunch with party leader Robert Stanfield.
“I went to the Hotel Macdonald thinking there was a luncheon for about 100 people, and found out the lunch was in his room, with Stanfield and (later PM) Joe Clark. Stanfield asked if I would run,” said Roche.
He's never slowed down, flying to Ottawa, many trips around the world.
“I have a card with Air Canada that says I have over two million miles,” he said.
The United Nations has been a second home because of his disarmament advocacy.
“It's the only place in the world where nations come together to sort out their problems, to see how we can live on this planet. It's an inspiring place. I've been going there for 50 years,” he said.
There's disagreement between countries, especially Russia and U.S.A., of course. But sometimes a thaw in the Cold War.
“When I was ambassador I was at a dinner party and the Russian and U.S. ambassadors got talking about their grandchildren,” said Roche. “They both complimented each other on their lovely grandkids when they took pictures out of their wallet. They were all smiles but next day they were at their respective desks, pounding away.”
He has been interested in nuclear disarmament since he went to Japan in the '70s as a young parliamentarian and saw the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“I was horror-stricken with what I saw,” he said. “It was the defining moment of my life.”
We have to co-operate to survive. We need to pull down the emissions, pull back the nuclear weapons and have a vaccine. It's so much common sense.