The senator’s first car
As a new father, he made practical choices for his first vehicle
As he prepares to duke it out with Justin Trudeau in a charity boxing match tonight, Patrick Brazeau remembers his 2000 Dodge Caravan,
Will he float like a butterfly and sting like a bee?
Conservative Sen. Patrick Brazeau says after months of training, he’s ready to go. “I’m just anxious to hear the bell ring.”
With a second-degree black belt in karate, the 37-year-old, ex-canadian Forces naval reservist is the 3to-1 odds-on favourite to win tonight’s “Thrilla on the Hilla” charity boxing match (as it’s been dubbed) against Liberal MP Justin Trudeau.
Ottawa may be renowned for political punches and partisan jabs where blood on the floor is usually of a more proverbial nature. But with $3,000 ringside tables and $250 single seats quickly snatched up, the sold-out fight is the hottest event in town.
And it’s all for a good cause, with proceeds benefiting the Fight for the Cure cancer charity.
Regardless of the outcome, Brazeau, currently Canada’s youngest sitting senator, is on a roll.
First elected as national chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples in 2006 (he is a member of the Indian reserve community of Kitigan Zibi near Maniwaki, Que.), he says he bought his first set of wheels in 2000.
“I was expecting my first daughter at the time and so decided to buy the (Dodge) Caravan so we could have a lot of space, because I used to travel quite a bit from Ottawa back to my home community.”
Brazeau admits he might have had an exaggerated sense of the amount of space a young family requires, but with an abundance of toys and suitcases and other child-related accessories, he notes the roomy van always ended up packed full.
Buying the vehicle new when he was 25, Brazeau paid around $25,000, which he financed.
Prior to the Caravan, he relied on loaners from his dad: a Chevrolet Sprint and a Pontiac Sunfire.
Though he describes his upbringing as typical, he says that because he grew up just outside the reserve boundaries in Maniwaki, he drew criticism from reserve aboriginals for being “not Indian enough” and from non-aboriginal townspeople for being “too Indian.” “That’s essentially what made me get interested in politics — to try to change the culture in any way that I could,” he says. A senator since 2008, Brazeau has worked to reform Canada’s aborigi- nal affairs. He serves as deputy chair of the senate committee on human rights and is a member of the senate committee on aboriginal peoples. Travelling a fair bit in his Caravan while in his 20s, Brazeau recalls his first road trip shortly after his daughter’s birth. He participated in a forum on indigenous peoples at the United Nations in New York, and he says the van made the haul a breeze. “It was pretty cool — it was obviously a long trip and I had to make many stops along the way because my little daughter needed some stretch time, so it was a long trip. But in the end there was enough space, and a lot of good tunes playing, and it was quite nice to drive into New York City because I had never been before.” A van may not be the romantic driving experience a young guy yearns for. A less practical, though more glamorous purchase would come years later. “I always feel that I’m probably going to die around the age of 60,” the senator explains matter-offactly, “so I got my mid-life crisis at around the age of 30 and bought myself a two-seat convertible sports car (a Porsche Boxster), that was a 1998 model.” But Brazeau didn’t hang onto the used car for long before trading it for a Porsche Cayenne, which again he bought used. Funny and direct, the father of four comes across as determined (he’d already gotten in a five-kilometre run before our morning interview and would hit the gym later for a workout). He credits his stint in the armed forces with helping focus his life.
“Before I joined the forces I became a little lazy, let’s just say, in college. I’m a fairly bright person but I became lazy and that sort of bit me in the behind for a little while, so when I decided to join the forces it certainly set me back on the track and certainly gave me the opportunity to set priorities.”
Brazeau says after he came out of the forces, he finished college (he has a diploma in social sciences from Heritage College) and entered law school.
But it was his mother Huguette’s battle with lung cancer that affected him profoundly. “My mom died in 2004. She was diagnosed in 2003 so she had less than a year after she got diagnosed and that wasn’t easy, obviously. When she was sick, I did spend a lot of time with her in the hospital and I was even there when she passed away. So even though she lost her battle with cancer, I try and contribute anything that I can to continue the fight in her good name and any others who are stricken with this horrible disease.
“You know, I saw somebody essentially on a hospital bed pleading for mercy with her God because she, she . . . she had a rough time. And seeing your mom, or any parent, or anybody, go through that stuff, you know you kind of sit back and think yes, this is a boxing match. Certainly (tonight) in the back of my mind I’ll be thinking about my mom quite a bit.”
Donations can be made online at fightforthecure.ca, regardless of political stripe.