Allan J.: The last great East Coast champion

He was the greatest living Nova Scotian politician for more than a half century. Now he’s the greatest Nova Scotian politician.

And there are none on the horizon to match him. Arguably, Allan J. MacEachen was Nova Scotia’s finest contribution to the public life of the nation.

And it isn’t much of an argument. Some might make a case for Robert Stanfield, considered by many the best prime minister Canada never had. Others could include Alexa McDonough in the conversation, but she would put an end to that herself.

MacEachen was a national force for more than 30 years, and the Maritimes, Nova Scotia and his beloved Cape Breton home basked in his reflected glow and prospered from his devotion and attention. From wharves to lighthouses, coal mines, and too much more to name, Allan J. delivered.

As his political career set, so too did Nova Scotia’s place in the national public square.

McEachen’s national legacy and accomplishments — medicare, minimum wage and on it goes — are chronicled fully elsewhere. We will not mourn his passing, but lament that there will not be another.

Allan J. moved though the world with an elegant ease. Call his name or catch his twinkling eye, and he would stop and engage you with equal parts mirth and mystery.

He was the master parliamentarian before great parliamentarians became an endangered species. His wrath could excoriate opponents, his wit rendered them incoherent.

He engineered the parliamentary defeat of the short-lived PC government of Joe Clark, leading to the 1980 election and the return of a Liberal majority. “Welcome to the 1980s,” the triumphant Pierre Trudeau famously said that February election night.

Without McEachen’s political genius, Trudeau would have retired as planned, and Canada would be a different place for missing those four turbulent years that culminated in 1984, with a Canadian constitution and Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

He was a candidate for the leadership of the national Liberal party when it chose Pierre Trudeau, and became part of the prime minister’s small circle of closest and most trusted advisors.

He was instrumental in bringing former Ontario NDP premier Bob Rae to the Liberal Party and, if the party had listened to MacEachen as it should, Rae would have succeeded Paul Martin as leader.

What might have been pales by comparison to what was. Allan J. MacEachen understood Atlantic Canada, its strengths, its weaknesses and its disadvantages. He knew that people living in Canada’s poorest provinces could and would help themselves, but that they deserved a fair chance to make that happen. He was unwavering in his determination to deliver on that chance.

The idea of addressing regional disparities across the nation has fallen out of favour. We don’t even hear the language anymore. MacEachen worked a lifetime to level a playing field tilted sharply in favour of the centre of the country.

He had retired to near seclusion when Stephen Harper uttered the words about a “culture of defeatism” in Atlantic Canada. A younger McEachen would have rhetorically wiped the floors of Parliament with the neo-con Canadian Alliance leader.

Where are our provincial and regional champions since McEachen left government in 1984, and finally the Senate in 1995? A few have tried, with some success, but Nova Scotia’s, and Atlantic Canada’s, star on the national scene has never shone as brightly again.

Maybe it was the change of times as much as the change of personalities. None of the governments that followed Trudeau’s was as devoted to equality in opportunity and government services.

In 1972, Bob Stanfield came within three seats of the prime minister’s office. He was an outstanding premier of Nova Scotia and formidably leader of the federal opposition. Alexa McDonough was the first woman to lead a major political party in Canada, built that party into a force in Nova Scotia, and lead the national NDP toward its historic 2012 breakthrough under Jack Layton.

But from 1963, when Allan MacEachen joined Lester Pearson’s cabinet, until 1995 when we left the Senate, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, the Maritimes and Atlantic Canada had a relentless defender in the halls of national power.

He was missed even before he finally and truly left.