Don Boudria goes “back to the kitchen”
“I was a high school dropout,” Boudria said smiling, during an interview at the Embrun Tim Horton’s. “I later went back to school and got a university degree.”
In late October 1966, a 17-year old Don Boudria showed up for an interview for a busboy job at the Parliament Hill restaurant. His aunt Alice worked in the restaurant and she called in a favour with the maître d’ for the interview, then she called her nephew. Not to scold him for dropping out of high school but to tell him to show up for the interview.
“If you’re going to work anywhere, you’re going to work on Parliament Hill,” she told me, chuckled Boudria. “If you work hard, maybe you can work your way up,” she added. “Boy, that was an understatement.”
Boudria didn’t get the restaurant busboy position like his aunt wanted.
That would have meant a chance at some nice tips from the senior staff or ministers who dined there. Instead, he got assigned to the cafeteria. Same hours and more-or-less the same pay.
Just not much chance of any tips. Il y a une cinquantaine d’années, Don Boudria, qui avait abandonné ses études secondaires, a obtenu son premier emploi à temps plein en tant qu’aide-serveur à la cafétéria du Parlement. Devenu l’une des éminences grises du Parti libéral après une vingtaine d’années en tant que député, l’ancien ministre dans le cabinet Chrétien est retourné à son ancien lieu de travail pour souligner dignement cet anniversaire avec famille et amis.
It was while he was bussing tables that Boudria started to think he could aspire to greater things.
He admits his fellow cafeteria workers were less than optimistic about the chances of his dreams coming true.
“Some day I’ll be one of them, I would say, and I’d point at the MPs,” Boudria recalled. “They (cafeteria staff ) would smile or maybe just shrug. But it says something about this great country we live in, that you can have
those kind of dreams and a hope to achieve them. To this day I am still the only House of Commons employee ever to be elected to office.”
“I was a high school dropout,” Boudria said smiling, during an interview at the Embrun Tim Horton’s. “I later went back to school and got a university degree.”
Fifty years later, including about two decades as MP for Glengarry-PrescottRussell and a former minister in the Chrétien Liberal cabinet, Boudria is a respected expolitician, with his political and personal memoirs published, and focused now on doing a bit of consulting work and enjoying his retirement.
He went back to Parliament Hill on Oct. 24, the anniversary of his busboy job interview, for a special anniversary cocktail gathering with family and friends and also Geoff Regan, current Speaker of the House of Commons, followed by supper in the Parliament Hill Restaurant.
If he could go back in time just long enough for a quick visit the day before his younger self began working on The Hill, Boudria knows what advice he would give himself then.
“I’ve given this advice already to my children and grandchildren,” he added. “I don’t regret the career path that I had. But I wouldn’t want anyone to have to do it the way I did it. In other words: Stay in school! Do not defy the odds that way. It worked for me, but that was thanks to lots of luck.”