Staying thirsty for a challenge is Couillard’s impulse
Reviving Liberal fortunes to test him
Credit Martin Patriquin, Maclean’s magazine’s Montreal correspondent, with pointing out a certain resemblance between Philippe Couillard and “the Most Interesting Man in the World.”
The latter is the modern Renaissance Man, skilled, worldly and sure of himself, and he can be found in a well-known, tongue-in-cheek advertising campaign for an imported beer, Dos Equis.
And judging by a revealing profile of the new Liberal leader by Alec Castonguay in the current L’actualité magazine, the resemblance is more than physical.
We already knew that Couillard is a brain surgeon by profession, that he advised the government of Saudi Arabia and served on Canada’s intelligence oversight committee.
We also knew, thanks to a photo of him with the notorious Dr. Arthur Porter leaked during the recent Quebec Liberal leadership campaign, that he is an avid fisherman.
And he’s a fan of Monty Python who recites lines from some of the British surreal-comedy group’s sketches.
Now we learn from Castonguay’s profile that Couillard has dual citizenship; his mother is French — and a former sovereignist sympathizer after she moved to Quebec, while his late father was a staunch Liberal.
He has been a history buff since childhood, when at age 12 he asked his parents for books on ancient times for Christmas.
His marks at the private Collège Stanislas in Outremont were so good that he was allowed to take more difficult courses, such as ancient Greek.
To express an idea in an interview with Castonguay, he paused to look up the right phrase in Latin.
He likes the sound of the phrases in the classics of French literature that he still remembers from school.
During a sound check before one of the Liberal leadership debates, instead of repeating the usual “one-two,” he recited some lines from the 17th-century tragedy Athalie by playwright Jean Racine.
He entered medical school at the Université de Montréal at age 17, two years younger than the rest of his class. He graduated at only 22, but thought he was too young to practise, so he pursued a sixyear specialty in neurosurgery — “to occupy myself.”
He has read extensively on Napoleon and his era, and for a lecture to a history club that he had joined as a pastime while he was working in Saudi Arabia, he became an expert on the guillotine.
In Saudi Arabia, he read on Islam, learned Arabic and let his beard grow — inspiring a rumour that he had converted, which wasn’t true.
The new Liberal leader is a loner who, when he was a minister, was wary of befriending even other members of his party because they might have hidden agendas.
He abhors aggressiveness and personal attacks.
Even though he’s methodical in making decisions, he sometimes second-guesses himself afterward.
Fly fishing for salmon has become his favourite pastime, because of its difficulty.
“It’s not catching the fish that is most important,” he told Castonguay. “It’s the surroundings, the forest. And the high degree of difficulty. I tend to lose interest in something I do well. With fly fishing, you can always improve. Perfection does not exist.”
It’s a good thing the new Liberal leader likes a challenge, considering the new details about the condition of his party in Castonguay’s article. The Liberals began the leadership campaign last fall with only 41,000 members, and added only 7,000 more.
At the start of the cam- paign, in some ridings, there was no Liberal association.
In nearly one-third of the province’s 75 ridings, the party had fewer than 200 members; and in about 10 of those, fewer than 100.
And across the province, there were only about 2,000 youth members.
Couillard may be the most interesting man in Quebec politics. But there’s one detail we don’t know about him.
Which beer he prefers.