Social Credit’s grande dame dies at 89
POLITICS: McCarthy saw her share of ups and downs during a long career but never lost her love of province
To her fans, Grace McCarthy was “Amazing Grace,” the indefatigable grande dame of Social Credit who revived the party following its defeat by the New Democrats in 1972.
She was never premier, but over three decades McCarthy personified Socred politics as much as the Bennetts of Kelowna and Bill Vander Zalm. McCarthy has died at age 89. Dubbed the “ultimate Socred,” McCarthy personified the party’s populist free enterprise religion through the ’70s and ’80s.
The first lady of Social Credit was the link that connected the party’s prophet, W.A.C. Bennett, to its final messiah, Vander Zalm.
While in cabinet, she was known for her limitless B.C. boosterism and relentlessly optimistic persona.
But her constant smile belied the tough political smarts and take-no-prisoners attitude that helped McCarthy and her party survive and prosper.
She embodied an old-fashioned yet-colourful femininity that made her stand out among the white males she served with.
When she was in charge of the tourism ministry, McCarthy promoted the successful “smile” and “super-natural British Columbia” campaigns. She was also a key early booster of Expo 86 and the Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre (now the Vancouver Convention Centre). She oversaw the building of the first SkyTrain line. She even put the lights on the Lions Gate Bridge.
Reporters who phoned McCarthy at home often heard her familiar voice reminding them on her answering machine message to “have a great British Columbia day.”
“Some people don’t realize they could have such a nice life if they weren’t so negative about everything,” she once said.
She was first elected to the provincial legislature in 1966; re-elected in 1969; defeated in 1972 when Dave Barrett’s NDP won; and re-elected in 1975, 1979, 1983 and 1986.
She ran unsuccessfully for the party leadership twice, finally becoming leader in 1993. But her timing was wrong. She had inherited a party that had been consigned to the political fringe.
Grace Mary Winterbottom was born on Oct. 14, 1927, in the east end of Vancouver and graduated from King Edward high school. Her father sold shoes, and her mother kept house. Today the SkyTrain thunders past her old home.
She worked part-time in a flower shop during high school and, armed with a $50 war bond, opened her own floral shop on East Hastings at age 17 in 1944.
Four years later she married Raymond McCarthy. Over the years she and her husband built the little shop into Grayce Florists, a thriving chain they sold in the mid-1970s. (Her sister came up with the ‘y’ in Grace, to make it “more fancy,” McCarthy later recalled.) She and her husband had two children.
The story of McCarthy’s rags-toriches business success symbolized the Socred gospel that McCarthy believed in and preached — that individuals could rise in society through their own efforts.
During the 1991 leadership race, McCarthy was asked by a reporter whether she thought average British Columbians could relate to her, considering that she lived in a white manor house on a Shaughnessy crescent.
“Well,” she said. “I think they would relate to me very well. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth, you know.”
W.A.C. Bennett personally recruited McCarthy and promoted her to minister without portfolio within three months of her election. She held the position for six years, handing out government cheques, promoting low-income housing and speaking up for the mentally handicapped and pensioners.
Her first election defeat came in 1972, when the NDP swept into power. Many pundits predicted Social Credit was finished. Bennett was gone and many felt the party couldn’t survive without him.
McCarthy disagreed and set out to prove the naysayers wrong.
She was elected party president in 1973. With former Socred cabinet minister Dan Campbell in tow, “Queen Grace” took to the road, squeezing hands throughout the province. She proclaimed Social Credit was involved in a “holy crusade” against socialism.
McCarthy’s crusade got results. When she took over as party president, the Socreds had 5,000 members. When the next election came around, it had 70,000.
In 1975, the Socreds returned to power under W.A.C.’s son, Bill, and McCarthy became minister of recreation and travel industry, provincial secretary and deputy premier.
A low point came in 1978 when McCarthy was accused of rigging boundaries of her Vancouver-Little Mountain electoral riding to include a Socred-dominated digit-shaped neighbourhood. Her foes alleged she had drafted the addition herself — a charge that she denied.
Soon after, McCarthy was ensnared in a controversy when it was revealed that her husband, a real estate investor, took 25 trips on government jets, 10 of them unaccompanied by his wife.
During the period of fiscal restraint in the early 1980s, McCarthy eliminated a program that provided money for handicapped people to work as volunteers. She became the subject of several protests during 1984 and 1985 over welfare cuts.
After Bill Bennett resigned as premier in 1986, McCarthy was one of several cabinet ministers who sought the leadership.
Her candidacy folded when Brian Smith edged ahead on the third ballot. She was dropped from the race and refused to back Smith, giving Vander Zalm the eventual victory.
Vander Zalm appointed her economic development minister in his first cabinet after the 1986 election.
She oversaw the sale of the valuable Expo lands to Hong Kong businessman Li Ka-shing for $150 million, a sum critics said was too low.
McCarthy resigned from cabinet in 1988, citing repeated interference by Vander Zalm in her ministry and power held by the premier’s principal secretary, David Poole, whom McCarthy disliked intensely.
After Vander Zalm was forced to resign over conflict-of-interest allegations, McCarthy again sought the leadership. She lost by a 60 votes to premier Rita Johnston in 1991.
Under Johnston, the Socreds lost badly in the 1991 election. After sitting out that campaign in apparent retirement from politics, McCarthy jumped back into the ring in 1993 to fight again for the party leadership.
McCarthy won the leadership, but Social Credit only had six seats in the legislature and had been replaced by the B.C. Liberals as the main centre-right alternative to the NDP.
Her last-ditch attempt to resurrect the Socreds was terminated by a byelection loss in Matsqui. She resigned as party leader a few months later and bid farewell to politics.
After her exit from politics, McCarthy found other outlets for her fabled energy. After her granddaughter was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, McCarthy helped establish the C.H.I.L.D. Foundation, raising funds for research to help children with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
McCarthy’s other highlights include: Officer of the Order of Canada; honorary doctor of laws from UBC and Simon Fraser University and B.C.’s Top 10 Citizens of the Century. There is even a Grace McCarthy Highway in Israel.
Her’s was a very public life of achievement and controversy.
She once said of her approach to life: “People who don’t take risks or who don’t take any steps forward — you don’t hear much about them.”