Horgan is now a premier attraction
John Horgan was in line at his local Shoppers Drug Mart recently when the woman in front of him abruptly recognized she was standing beside the province’s 36th premier.
“Oh, it’s John Horgan,” she exclaimed, so surprised that she lost her footing and started to tumble.
“She’s literally falling, and I caught her as she was going down and propped her back up,” Horgan said. “I helped her take her stuff back to the car.”
The next day he got an email from the woman’s son thanking him for catching his mom in the store.
The sudden spectacle that seems to unfold when he’s out in public has been just one of the many adjustments for John from Langford as he settles into the life of Premier Horgan.
“This renewed interest in things that I do is odd,” Horgan said in an interview with Postmedia News.
“That’s not something I had contemplated when I started this out.”
At a friend’s wedding in Campbell River, it was the house band at the Eagle’s Hall that spotted the premier and asked him to come on stage and sing a cover of Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl. Horgan, who said he “can’t carry a tune in a bucket,” called his adult son up on stage to do the singing instead. But someone tipped off the local media, and Horgan still made the news with a picture of him on stage introducing his son with the caption “the premier’s got pipes.”
Horgan’s new NDP government has set an aggressive pace in its first 30 days, bringing in changes that include a welfare hike, a new human rights commission, cancelling bridge tolls in Vancouver, the return of free adult basic education, a review of the Site C dam, legal challenges against the Kinder Morgan pipeline and a ban on grizzly bear trophy hunting.
There have been “some missteps, absolutely,” Horgan said, referencing criticism that a few announcements have been short on details. But, he said, “the pace with which we’re moving is quite extraordinary.”
The boost to Horgan’s profile has been extraordinary, too. Once dismissed as virtually unknown outside his Langford riding on Vancouver Island, the election campaign and subsequent confidence vote drama that toppled Liberal premier Christy Clark’s government has made Horgan almost a household name.
It’s been an adjustment for the relatively private 58-year-old. He used to drive to work at the legislature, spending his commute making calls to advisers on a hands-free headset. Now, his mandatory RCMP protective detail transports him almost anywhere in the province. He said he gets so caught up making small talk with the Mounties that he forgets to call anyone.
The police have even engaged the childproof locks inside the vehicle to prevent the new premier from hopping out before it’s stopped — which he’s done several times — and before police can check for any threats.
Horgan used to criticize Clark for the frequency of her photo ops. Now, he’s forced to pose for those cameras. Last Monday morning, his staff called him into the office early so he could be photographed viewing the solar eclipse. “I was very reluctant,” he said. But he came across some legislative library staff providing public demonstrations outside the building ’s front steps and joined in.
“I thought, OK, this I can get my head around, because someone is doing something and I’m observing it rather than me going over and saying, ‘Look at me, I’m looking at the sun.’ ”
Horgan’s hesitance has led to low-key media events. The press wasn’t alerted to his viewing of the eclipse — only a government photographer was called. When a couple of journalists stumbled across the event, Horgan flipped the concept on its head by insisting they try on his eclipse-viewing glasses while he took pictures of them. (Full disclosure: I was one of those journalists, and the premier took a good photo.)
A few weeks earlier, Horgan showed up for a Taekwondo Day ceremony on the steps of the legislature in which he punched through a board of wood. Great visuals — but the only person there was a local newspaper photographer who happened to be covering the ceremony when the premier arrived.
Horgan has visited wildfire communities three or four times now, but only once — accompanying Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — was there any fanfare. Horgan’s brother, a retired firefighter, urged him not to be the type of politician who showed up and disrupted the actual work with political picture-posing. So he hasn’t.
It’s clear Horgan intends to forge a different public relations path than Clark. It will be less polished, but arguably more authentic. In the waning years of her premiership, the main knock on Clark’s popularity was that she seemed too politically calculating, too fake, in everything she did.
Horgan is taking great pains to leave a different impression. Inside his new premier’s office in the legislature are reminders he’s also trying to stay grounded while in power. Against one wall rests his lacrosse stick, which he uses to toss around a squishy stress ball during the day while thinking.
On another wall is a Star Trek display — Horgan is a huge fan — with a picture of all the TV show captains and a plaque that reads “Captain Horgan 2017 — Live Long and Prosper.” Another picture below reads “Engage — Stardate 2017.07.18” representing the date he was sworn in as premier.
“I live here,” he said of the office, which contains far more personal mementoes than Clark’s, who preferred to work out of Vancouver. “I’m going to spend a lot of time here.”
So far, Horgan said he’s managed to find a balance with the new job, his personal life and his emerging public persona. It’s a difficult task being inside the premier’s bubble, with a thankless schedule, high stress and even higher public expectations.
“I’m very mindful that everything I do is going to have an impact, not just on me but on the whole operation,” he said. “I’m trying to be myself, continue to be myself.”