The good guy in the green hat
Former minister, senator known for his straight talk, down-to-earth manner
Eugene Whelan was the good guy in the green hat.
The former senator, agriculture minister and Liberal Essex MP — who became famous for his straight talk, iconic green Stetson and befriending Mikhail Gorbachev at the height of the Cold War — died Tuesday at home in Amherstburg of complications following a stroke last summer. He was 88.
“He was just a great man,” said close family friend Kirk Walstedt, who also worked for Whelan when he was minister of agriculture.
“He was a very grassroots type of individual. He was very down to earth and everyone respected him, right from the top on down. Everyone could identify with him.”
Whelan was born July 11, 1924, in an Anderdon Township log house.
His father, a farmer and municipal politician, died when he was six, and the family lost the farm and struggled to weather the Great Depression.
At 16, Whelan quit school. “My marks were no hell, and I was lippy,” he told journalist Walter Stewart for a 1974 Maclean’s magazine profile. “In one class, the teacher made me sit at the front so he could hit me with a ruler without having to get up.”
He spent some time as a tool-and-die maker before returning to farming. He got his start in township politics at age 21. He was elected in 1962 in the riding of Essex South, and served continuously in the House of Commons until he retired in 1984.
Whelan waited 10 years before being appointed to cabinet, although he made no secret of his desire to be agriculture minister. Stewart wrote that in 1965, while standing in a line at a Liberal function, Whelan loudly complained that his wife “doesn’t understand (prime minister Lester) Pearson’s cabinet shuffle. She doesn’t understand why he’s got some of those guys where he’s got them.”
Suddenly Whelan heard Pearson’s voice over his shoulder. “And where does she want you, Gene?” the prime minister asked. Whelan grinned and said, “Home.”
After Pierre Trudeau gave Whelan the agriculture job, he became the Liberals’ “guy in rural and smalltown Canada,” said John Comisso, who served as an aide to the thenagricultural minister in the mid1970s. “Gene spoke the language of farmers.”
“He was a fascinating character, he was unique,” Comisso said. “He had this rustic exterior, came across as this folksy guy, but he was incredibly intelligent.”
As a cabinet minister, he helped successive Liberal governments usher in medicare and repatriate the Constitution. He also played an instrumental role in developing Canada’s agricultural supply-management system.
During his career, Whelan met Queen Elizabeth, helped Canada beat U.S. president Richard Nixon to the punch in “opening up” China, and played a catalyzing role in the fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of the Cold War.
At the height of the Cold War, he befriended a man who would soon become leader of the U.S.S.R., Mikhail Gorbachev.
It was during a tour of Canada that Gorbachev, then-Soviet secretary of agriculture, took in 1983.
Gorbachev visited Whelan’s Amherstburg home, along with Soviet ambassador Aleksandr Yakovlev, to talk about farming issues. Seven years later, Gorbachev was president of the Soviet Union.
It was that visit with Whelan, and a discussion between Yakovlev and Gorbachev in his Amherstburg backyard, that planted the seeds of a strategy setting Russia on the course toward democracy.
“Nobody was more perceptive and in tune politically,” said Comisso, who is also a former Ontario executive for the federal Liberals.
Comisso said he marvelled at the respect shown Whelan by political leaders of other countries keen to uncover the secrets of Canada’s agricultural success.
“It’s a great loss — Gene was the best representative of farmers this country ever had — without question,” he said.
Whelan was keenly aware that he was one of Canada’s best-known politicians.
In fact, when he ran for the Liberal leadership in 1984, he declared, “I don’t think there is any politician that is as well known in the world as I am.”
Liberal delegates weren’t swayed: Whelan finished last in a field of seven candidates.
After receiving just 84 votes on the first ballot, Whelan supported Jean Chrétien, who ended up losing to John Turner.
Turner tossed Whelan out of cabinet shortly afterward but appointed him ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome.
That patronage appointment — along with many others by Turner — ultimately played a major role in the Liberal party’s loss to Brian Mulroney’s Conservatives in the 1984 election. Mulroney later rescinded the appointment, and Whelan became an agricultural consultant.
“I was fired by two prime ministers,” Whelan said in 1985, reflecting on what he called the worst year of his life as a public figure.
Whelan served as president of the World Food Council from 1983 to ’ 85.
One of his three daughters, Susan, was elected to the Commons in her father’s old riding in 1993.
In 1996, Whelan was appointed by Chrétien, his former cabinet colleague, to the Senate.
Whelan helped put Windsor “on the map,” said Joyce Zuk, former city councillor and longtime Liberal.
Whelan leaves his wife, Elizabeth, and three daughters: Terry, Susan and Cathy.
His funeral was to be in Windsor on Saturday.