For Dalton McGuinty, Family Day is a political masterstroke, and a personal heartache
When McGuinty’s government brought in the holiday in 2008, not everyone appreciated it. But this year it’s likely to be felt more deeply at his home, with the recent death of his mother
“It seems most of the forces in life pull us apart. Family Day is about giving us time together.” DALTON MCGUINTY
A statutory holiday on the third Monday of February, to break up the long, wintry slog from New Year’s to Easter, was almost a throwaway line in the Ontario Liberal campaign platform for the 2007 election.
Then-premier Dalton McGuinty said it was intended to provide some relief from the hectic, just-in-time lifestyle of jobs, commuting, and all the activities of child-rearing that so many families were leading.
“I wanted a day for families to be together,” he told the Star last week. “It seems most of the forces in life pull us apart. Family Day is about giving us time together.”
It was not entirely coincidental that such thoughts were on his mind.
By 2007, McGuinty had lost his own father, the namesake and predecessor as MPP for Ottawa South who died sud- denly at just 63 while shovelling snow. His own four children were almost grown.
“I remember holding my own kids in my arms when they were born,” he told the Star.
“It seems all I did was blink and they had grown up and left our home. We can’t get those times back. “That’s what makes them so precious.” Ten years on, the man whose government gave Ontario Family Day in 2008 is facing his first with a heart-sized absence in his own.
Elizabeth McGuinty, matriarch of a formidable clan of Ottawa politicians, lawyers and educators, mother of the former premier, died Feb. 3 at 88.
At her funeral last week, Betty McGuinty was eulogized by her eldest son, who in government frequently quoted his mother’s life-earned wisdom.
“She lived a full, rich, happy life because she chose that life,” he told mourners.
“From her humble beginnings as a little girl sharing a bed with two sisters in a cold, tar-paper home, she didn’t wait for good things to happen. She made good things happen. For her and those around her.”
The former premier told the Star that, on his wedding day, his mother gave him the best advice he ever received on marriage, or any relationship of value.
“Whatever happens, keep talking.”
After the Ontario Liberals won that election in 2007, McGuinty settled in for his second majority term and the holiday was inaugurated in 2008, he found that not everyone overflowed with gratitude.
From the right, critics noted the province’s economic challenges, the shrinking growth projections and declining productivity.
The Progressive Conservatives, bitter at having blown the election the previous year, demanded to know if McGuinty had considered the economic implications of a new holiday “before justifying it on what are apparently political grounds?”
He pointed, in reply, to then-Conservative Alberta, where such a holiday had been established in 1990. He noted that Ontario — with nine statutory holidays a year after Family Day — still had fewer than did the notoriously workaholic and vacation-averse citizens of the United States.
Besides, if the PCs were against it, he taunted, “they should say so.” No one did, of course. Then or since. In fact, a Family Day holiday in February has since been adopted in Saskatchewan and British Colum- bia. This year, New Brunswick becomes the fifth province in the Family Day club.
(Manitoba celebrates Louis Riel Day, and Prince Edward Island marks “Islander Day” on the same date. Also in Atlantic Canada, there is Nova Scotia Heritage Day. Federally, though not a statutory holiday, it is regarded as National Heritage Day.)
Still, there were plenty of snags to work out and offended sensibilities to soothe those first few years in Ontario.
Many workers — including federal employees in the province — weren’t covered by the new provincial law and had to scramble to find child care as they toiled as usual while their kids had the day off school.
Court cases already booked for that February Monday had to be rescheduled. Municipalities and businesses continued to grumble about the millions of dollars in extra costs or lost productivity.
But in the decade and two elections since, no Ontario party has campaigned on Family Day’s repeal. And with the holiday so rooted by now, none but a fool ever would.
Looking back, it could be that Dalton McGuinty left no more fitting legacy to Ontario than that holiday. He was the very definition of a family man, one of 10 kids, husband to his high school sweetheart, father of four.
“My own parents never said it — their sacrifice and devotion to each other and to us taught me — that it didn’t really matter what I did in life, my own family would be my greatest achievement.”
This Family Day, the former premier’s clan will likely both need and feel the holiday more deeply, the loss of the force of nature that was Betty McGuinty.
“Our mother was curious, adventurous and daring throughout her life,” McGuinty said in his eulogy.
“When she was 45, Betty took up water-skiing and horseback riding. In her 70s, she travelled to Africa, where she rode an ostrich, to the Middle East, where she rode camels and sand-dune buggies, and in Alaska, where she went white-water rafting.”
She had been born in Timmins, Ont., in 1929 at the outset of the Great Depression, slept three to a bed with her sisters and learned early both the gift and reward of honest work.
She moved to Ottawa for nursing school, became an airline stewardess, met Dalton McGuinty Sr. and married him in 1953.
“Together, my parents did their life’s most challenging and most important work: they raised their family,” the former premier said in his eulogy.
He described the kind of love that lucky families know.
He told of that sort of woman who is so often a family’s indomitable centre.
He illustrated, through his mother’s life, the values — the love and selflessness, the nurturing and teaching, the setting of standards and expectations — that any Family Day worthy of the name is meant to celebrate.
“I met a lot of smart people along the way,” he told the Star. “But nobody was as wise as my mother.”