A return to civilian life for Harper
Former PM must adapt to many changes, including the loss of his security team.
It was in the late 1990s when an elderly man first dropped in at Montreal’s famous Boustan restaurant and ordered a chicken sandwich.
Boustan was halfway between the man’s house and his office, so he started making it a regular stop for late lunches while walking home.
One time, the sister of the owner drove him home. Another time, a Boustan delivery driver got lost in a downtown residential neighbourhood and knocked on a door for directions, only to have it answered by the familiar regular, who let him use the phone.
Boustan founder Imad Smaidi, known locally as Mr. Boustan, is from Lebanon, a country where a political leader would only appear in public with “20 cars in the front, 20 cars in the back and security,” he says.
Thus, he hadn’t immediately realized that the lawyer with drawn features who came in to eat alone was Pierre Elliott Trudeau. As Smaidi said of their first meeting, “it was an old man I did not recognize.”
And so it will soon be for Stephen Harper. He will lose his RCMP detail, start driving his own car and answering his own door. Eventually, somebody’s going to spot him in line at a Calgary takeout restaurant. Inevitably, a cab driver will look at him in the rear-view mirror and say, “Weren’t you on TV?”
In the United States, the U.K. and almost every other major Western federation, former leaders never fully exit the bubble of security and eminence that envelops them upon inauguration. In Canada, however, ex-prime ministers face the unusual prospect of being dumped back into anonymous civilian life.
“It was back to normal, you know what I mean?” said John Turner, Canada’s 17th prime minister, speaking by phone from his Toronto home.
“Although, more people recognized me than did before.”
Joe Clark has had telemarketers call and ask for “Mr. R.T. Hon.,” a garbling of the abbreviation for “Right Honourable.”
Kim Campbell rides the LRT to a job at Edmonton’s University of Alberta, and was once lugging her groceries out of a Save-On-Foods when a stranger told her “you look just like Kim Campbell.”
During the 2011 federal election, Paul Martin made an appearance in Vancouver South to stump for his former health minister, Ujjal Dosanjh.
For about 15 minutes, he approached several nervouslooking pedestrians who had immigrated after 2006 and who had to be assured that the sixfoot-one man grabbing their hand used to lead Canada.
Dosanjh, who is also a former premier of B.C., is familiar with the feeling. “People will say ‘I know you from somewhere,’ ” he said. “I usually tell them very quietly.”
As one of the world’s wealthiest former heads of a democratic government, Martin is still able to retain a prime ministerial standard of living. And as the architect of federal debt reduction in the 1990s, he remains a sought- after international speaker.
Nevertheless, a source close to the ex-PM said it is not out of the ordinary to see Martin walking or driving alone in a Canadian city. (Although Martin’s driving abilities make the latter inadvisable, he added.)
On Nov. 4, Harper instantly transformed from the all-powerful head of the executive branch into a regular Calgary MP.
At the exact moment when Justin Trudeau was sworn in as prime minister, Harper lost his familiar entourage of prime ministerial security. In their place was a detail of VIP security; Mounties who typically spend their time protecting visiting dignitaries. Harper is still being protected for now, but RCMP Protective Services are evaluating how much longer they’ll be needed.
He has shown up to work at Parliament and chatted with a few former underlings in the weeks since, but otherwise he’s avoided caucus meetings and generally stuck around Calgary.
A source close to the Harper family said the newly departed PM has had more outings with his family and is likely planning a trip where he can spend a few days being anonymous in a foreign country.
“It is a relief not to be recognized,” said the source.
In her autobiography, Time and Chance, Kim Campbell described using her sudden return to civilian life as a chance to cash in a five-day stay at a California spa.
She and a friend had won the trip at a silent auction in 1992, just before Campbell was thrust into one of the most intense political roller-coasters in Canadian history.
“We had all but given up on being able to use it as 1993 unfolded, but now we could go,” she wrote.
The other spa- goers didn’t appear to notice that Canada’s recently defeated prime minister was in their midst — aside from the Canadian who happened to spot Campbell during a stopover in Chicago. “The next time you run for election just lie through your teeth!” he told her.
Turner was prime minister for 79 days in 1984 and led the Liberals through two federal elections. But immediately after stepping down from politics in 1993, he said he was riding the Toronto subway and walking alone to appointments.
“I had no security, nor was I challenged … I didn’t even have much security when I was prime minister, for God’s sake,” he said.
Since 1958, U.S. presidents have all been guaranteed lifetime Secret Service details after leaving office. Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy is protected by as many as 25 agents, according to French media reports.
But unescorted outings remain the norm among Canada’s former heads of government. Jean Chretien, one of the few prime ministers to have survived an assassination attempt during a break-in in 1995, can frequently be spotted attending dental appointments or walking to lunch appointments without security.
And so far, it’s worked, with the only notable exception occurring in 2007, when Joe Clark was assaulted while he was walking to an event in Montreal.
An unknown man asked “are you Joe Clark, the former prime minister?” and then hit the former Conservative leader in the face, bloodying his nose.
Les MacPherson, now a columnist at the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, was a reporter at Saskatchewan’s Prince Albert Daily Herald during the last years of another Prairie prime minister, John Diefenbaker.
Although Diefenbaker’s premiership ended in 1963 and he became an outcast of his own party, he remained an MP until his death in 1979. For Prince Albert residents in the late 1970s, it became a quarterly occurrence to see Diefenbaker striding along the sidewalk, storming into barbershops and dropping into the Herald to say hello.
“He wouldn’t knock; you’d just see him in the window … and he’d stay as long as you wanted to talk to him,” said MacPherson, noting that the elder prime minister performed a spot-on Joe Clark impression.
Turner, incidentally, has also been on the receiving end of a civilian encounter with a former prime minister. In 1965, Turner was a freshly elected Liberal when, on a Barbados vacation, he saved a man from drowning. His name was John Diefenbaker.
A generation later, Turner was regularly fielding “hellos” and quick chats on the Toronto subway. Someone would say “are you John Turner?” and he would reply “yes, I am indeed, who are you?”
“Of course, the younger the person is, the less likely he is to know who I am,” he said.
The day will eventually come when Harper will have to remind a foreign gathering or an audience of born-in-2008 university students that he was prime minister of Canada once.
Says a friend of Harper, when that moment comes the ex-Conservative leader will greet it with “both relief and bemusement.”
He wouldn’tknock; you’d just see him in the window …and he’ d stay as long as you wanted to talk to him.
LES MACPHERSON SASKATOON STAR-PHOENIX, ON THE POST-PM JOHN DIEFENBAKER