MASTER POLITICIAN
Claude Bennett dead at 83
There was no one who could work a room like former Ontario Tory cabinet minister Claude Bennett.
He loved it and the crowd loved him back.
Bennett could glad-hand like no one else as he schmoozed throughout a crowd, remembering everyone’s name and often the names of their family members. “How’s your mom,” he’d asked, and he wasn’t bluffing. He knew the mom.
Sadly, Bennett died Friday from heart issues that he’d battled for years. He was 83. A deeply religious man, he was still walking several hours a day as recently as Thursday.
He leaves behind two children, son Winston and daughter Natalie. Their mother, Deborah, had already passed.
“He was my idol from a very young age,” said Winston Bennett, a Toronto resident. “I don’t think there was a better role model out there, and his character was evident in how he treated anyone he met, regardless of political stripe.”
Natalie was speaking with her father on the phone Thursday night when Bennett had a cardiac attack. She was able to phone 911 and also to contact Winston, who was able to get to Ottawa to be with his father when he passed on Friday.
Bennett was a mentor to many politicians in Ottawa.
“He was very instrumental in helping me get elected (to city council), and I spent a lot of time with his family,” said Michael McSweeney, a former councillor and now president of the Cement Association of Canada.
Bennett was born in Ottawa, served as an alderman and city controller in Ottawa from 1961 to 1969, having first been elected to council in 1960. He was then acting mayor from 1970 to 1972. He was also elected to the Ontario legislature in the 1971 provincial election and served in cabinet in a number of portfolios. He stayed as part of the Conservative government through the remaining tenure of Bill Davis’s tenure as premier and then under Frank Miller.
Among his many other accomplishments, Bennett also served as chairman of the board for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, was president of the Commonwealth Games Association of Canada and as chair of the Ottawa Transition Board and Ottawa Airport Authority.
Tragically, Bennett’s brother, Thom, lost his wife on Thursday.
Mayor Jim Watson, who knew Bennett for decades in both municipal and provincial political circles, said Saturday he used to joke that Bennett reminded him of television celebrity Dick Clark.
“He never aged,” Watson said. Former Ottawa city clerk Pierre Pagé, who worked with Bennett during the amalgamation of the region’s different municipalities, described Bennett as “one of the nicest guys I’ve ever worked for, always respectful and, in any discussions, he always made sure you always had input, and he had such a sense of humour.”
Former regional councillor Andy Haydon admitted the two didn’t always see eye-to-eye, but said he always had respect for Bennett.
“How can you not be a fan of Claude, not because he was a Conservative, but because he was Claude Bennett?” Haydon asked.
With files from Wayne Cuddington.