HISTORY AT THE WHEEL
Mackenzie King’s driver tours Hill
Joe Bohémier turned 92 this week, young enough yet for a new and most excellent adventure.
On Thursday, he toured Parliament Hill with his MP (Rod Cannan), ate in the dining room and kept the fancy menu, attended question period, met Defence Minister Rob Nicholson and accepted a special pin, saw the bullet holes from October’s fatal shooting, sat in the room where the prime minister hid in a closet, visited the National War Memorial and stayed at the Château Laurier. And told stories galore. “This is exactly where I used to drop the prime minister off,” said Bohémier, standing in the outdoor alcove directly beneath the Centre Block, or “big clock,” as he calls it, and pointing to the asphalt.
Bohémier is retired and living in Kelowna, B.C., but 70 years ago he was prime minister Mackenzie King’s occasional driver, beginning in 1944.
We are keen, of course, to hear scenes from Driving Mr. Crazy, but Bohémier reports our kookiest prime minister, who seanced with his dead dog and departed mother, was not the chattiest passenger.
He used to pick up King at Laurier House in a big Chrysler with a window separating the front and back seats, which the PM liked to keep closed.
“We weren’t allowed to talk to him,” said Bohémier, who arrived in town with four of his seven children. “I would drop him off, and then I had nothing to do all day.”
One rainy day, he recalled, the corner of King’s overcoat was caught outside the closed car door. The PM had been a little sour that morning, so Bohémier decided to just leave it flapping in the breeze.
The Manitoba-born man was part of the Royal Canadian Army Service Corps, which was tasked with being the force’s transportation arm. He moved anything and everything, by car, jeep or truck.
He arrived in Ottawa with an envelope of old photographs, which he spread on a massive table in the Commonwealth Room, just off the main rotunda of the Centre Block.
In one of the photographs of him, at age 22 or 23, he is standing guard at the National War Memorial, only steps from where Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, only 24, was shot on Oct. 22.
“I cried when I heard about him,” Bohémier said.
He had several photos of Laurier House, where King lived for many of his 21 years as prime minister, a depot near Plouffe Park where he picked up paper, the Supreme Court building where he delivered underground, the Rideau Canal, the Lord Elgin and of his army buddies.
He remembers delivering bags of mail to King’s office, the U.S. Embassy, the French ambassador’s residence, to the Governor General’s. In 1944, King was caught up with the so-called Conscription Crisis, so Lord knows what the mail entailed.
“Ask me anything. I have it all here,” he said.
He also had a lifetime pass to Parliament Hill, dated from January 1945, which he carried in his wallet. While in Ottawa, he was based at Lansdowne Park, turned into an army depot, and he remembers a huge fire in 1944 that destroyed a machinery building.
Bohémier is an age-defying wonder. He walks with no hint of frailty — “don’t take a single pill,” he said — and remembers many of his Ottawa haunts, like his address (214) on The Driveway.
Money was tight. He remembers making about $1.25 a day in the army, with another $1.50 a day for room and board. He took a second job, moonlighting as a pin boy in a bowling alley.
“I was forced to do it. We didn’t have enough to live on.”
When the war was winding down, he signed up to fight in the Pacific but never made it.
He returned to Manitoba, worked in Vancouver for a stretch and eventually bought his father’s farm.
He is, too, full of charming openers. “I met this girl at a card party,” for instance: she would turn out to be his future wife, Beatrice. “I was married for 63 years and I got this medal.”
He points to his chest, a crowd of tourists rushing by outside the Library of Parliament, unaware of this living historical artifact nearby.
He farmed for close to 25 years, gradually acquired more farm property, sold crop insurance and, apparently, prospered. He retired to Kelowna in his mid50s.
He was absolutely beaming with the day’s events. “Today, it was the biggest day I’ve ever seen,” and off he walked, easterly down Wellington Street, in the day’s early twilight.