TIME CAPSULE OFFERS REMINDER OF PEOPLE BEHIND OUR POLITICS
Asking politicians their candid thoughts can be revealing, writes Arthur Milnes.
Arthur Milnes and his wife, Alison, embarked upon a special project to mark Canada’s sesquicentennial year: A time capsule. But rather than filling it with things from around their home in Kingston, the pair have reached out far and wide to people, places and institutions with any connection to this country. The responses, whether from small towns or celebrities, have been overwhelming. This is the latest in a series of columns on his Canada 150 time capsule by Arthur Milnes.
Growing up in Scarborough in the 1970s and 1980s, I rarely heard my late parents discuss politics and politicians without doing it so with a genuine respect — regardless of party — for those who embarked upon public service.
Dad was a history teacher in Scarborough high schools, and he often invoked great names, such as Tommy Douglas, Wilfrid Laurier, Sir John A., Lyndon Johnson and others.
My mom, Connie, not so much. With two exceptions, Jimmy Carter and Paul Martin Sr. On Carter, mom would always say to her son — me — that “Jimmy Carter is a good and decent man.”
And on Martin Sr., you see, mom had worked as a young nurse in a polio ward for kids in Toronto in the 1950s and was forever scarred by the experience. And she knew — at least she told me quite often — that Canada’s then-minister of health under Mr. St. Laurent so long ago, had advanced the Salk vaccine.
Which brings me to my own approach to politics, both as a journalist from 1993 and 2005, and today, when Alison and I decided to write to every MP, senator, premier and a lot of Canadian mayors, to ask them send messages for our Time Capsule.
And in reading the messages from today’s crop of political leaders in the Confederation that this year has turned 150, I know my late parents would be so proud of this bunch, regardless of party, who flooded our mailbox and inbox with messages.
A final glimpse of my parent’s approach to politics that were so embedded in me — I guess? — that these occurred during my own career as a reporter.
With the encouragement of a great editor — the greatest I have ever worked with, in fact, then or now — at the Whig-Standard, Claude Scilley, I always asked visiting national and political leaders a simple question when I got to interview them.
Both Claude and I knew it was pointless to ask them the standard questions of the day, as the “big” papers had already done that.
Claude and I liked, for our readers (for ourselves?), to do something different that, in some ways, only a small media market paper can get away with.
So I’d always ask politicians the following: “Who is your inspirational political leader from history?”
Then-deputy prime minister John Manley told me about William Wilberforce — whom, to be frank, I had not until then — I’m embarrassed to say — heard of.
Jim Flaherty, you know, the hard-bitten, heartless champion of Mike Harris’s Common Sense Revolution? He told me about how inspired he was as a young university student to hear Bobby Kennedy — the Democrat, probably “left-leaning” by today’s simplistic standards — at Princeton in 1968.
And then came future Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty to Kingston in the run-up to the election that saw him, in fact, become Ontario’s premier. So I popped him the question. “Wilfrid Laurier and Pierre Trudeau,” McGuinty said, then waxing on, happily, as my tape recorder rolled.
Then they took him to his bus and a funny thing happened.
Surrounded by a mob of reporters and supporters he started to go up the steps into his bus to head to the next stop that day, then probably five more before he went to sleep in some crummy hotel.
But he paused on the last step and looked over at me. Then he turned around and walked back to me. I was standing perhaps 15 metres away.
“Arthur,” he said, “can I change my answer?”
“Why, sir?” I replied, “It was fine.”
“Well, I didn’t mention my dad,” he said, “and if my mom reads this, she’ll be disappointed.”
“Mr. McGuinty,” I said, “consider it done; I’ll lead with Dalton McGuinty Sr. and then go into Trudeau and Laurier.”
He smiled and then off he went back to the bus and was gone.
Perhaps I compromised my journalism standards and ethics, but I don’t really care. I’d do it again in a second today if I was still a reporter. I wish more would.
But I say that noting there are still many in the press who do.
Methinks Mom and Dad would have enjoyed reading the messages our current leaders sent for our Time Capsule for 150.
Their 51-year-old son sure did.