A genuine leader is not a seeker for consensus,
but a moulder of consensus.
— Martin Luther King, Jr., American Baptist minister
and civil rights leader, 1929–1968
For twenty-four years, with just one short interruption, I held elective office or was seeking election. That one brief interlude followed my narrow defeat in the 1984 federal election when my party was reduced to forty seats by the Mulroney steamroller.
Our election night wake in Marystown lasted into the wee hours, an opportunity to commiserate with friends and supporters, to show my appreciation for their loyalty and hard work and to reminisce about happier times. Then it was time to get behind the wheel for the four-hour trek to St. John’s airport and the early-morning flight to the nation’s capital to see family and wind down my Parliament Hill operation before my official eviction in ten days’ time.
The private sector comes calling
I was at my suburban Ottawa home before mid-morning. My wife, Miriam, handed me a business card, saying some guy named Ron Marsland wanted to talk to me. Unlike the crazy schedule that had ordered virtually my every waking moment during the past several years, my appointment calendar was now blank. I tracked Marsland down that very afternoon. His opening words to me were, it seemed for a moment, inauspicious: “I’m one of the people who hoped you would be defeated—but not for the reason you think.”
Ron proposed that we merge our skill sets in a consulting business. Less than twenty-four hours after the voters had told me my services were no longer required, I became Ron’s corporate partner. We would peddle productivity, his specialty, and government relations.
The next six months were a roller-coaster series of fits and starts as Ron and I hustled for a piece of the action. There were some successes. Canada Post and Honeywell engaged our services. Halifax businessman Harry Steele170 had me canvass the merits of acquiring a stable of weekly newspapers. My recommendations led to his purchase of thirteen Newfoundland weeklies, the launch of a St. John’s paper, and the hiring of crack journalist Michael Harris as its editor.
Back in the saddle
Then came news from the Rock. A Newfoundland provincial election had been called. Liberal Leader Leo Barry was on the phone asking me to be a candidate. So soon after my federal loss, I asked myself if a return to the hustings was a wise move. To help me decide, Marsland and I became instant polling gurus. I wrote the questions. He pumped the phone.
My in-house pollster soon had the evidence I needed. I was off and running. It would be my ninth campaign of one sort or another in less than twelve years. Barely seven months after my federal defeat, I was back in the Newfoundland House of Assembly. And, as in my first provincial incarnation, I was a member of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.171
The leader of the majority party, and thus the premier, was again Brian Peckford, wily, focused, and affable, and my friend, though the myopia of partisan politics had weakened the bond.
The pot calls the kettle black!
As the opposition Finance spokesman, I was speaking in the Address in Reply to the Speech from the Throne which outlines the administration’s legislative program for the just-convened House session. A government backbencher and erstwhile friend, having opted for partisanship over camaraderie, heckled me repeatedly. When you have the mic, interjections from the other side of the chamber are not a problem, indeed they can energize your delivery. The other guy is the one with the problem. His mic is off, pursuant to House protocol.
My adversary kept hurling taunts across the floor, referencing my troubles with RevCan two years earlier. His persistence gave my House Leader, Beaton Tulk172, an idea which might silence the noise from the far corner. Tulk held up something and gestured that I should give it to the heckler.
The reality was that my self-righteous taunter may have had a little baggage of his own. His ailing motel had recently burned to the ground in a mysterious fire. Corridor gossip informed us that the police were investigating. Arson was suspected. The scuttlebutt said that the owner, my heckler, wanted to collect the fire insurance.
As Tulk held his item aloft, I pretended to ignore him until I was sure his antics had the attention of the House and the public galleries. Then, in a mock scold, I said, “Beaton, put that lighter away or someone will want to torch this place, too!”
Immediate, dead silence from the far corner. It was the first time I saw a guy plead guilty without moving his lips. The non-verbal mea culpa easily trumped his earlier rantings. Like Marley in Dickens’s Christmas classic, my tormentor had forged the chain himself, link by link.
Quebec, QC, 1987. As Newfoundland Leader of the Opposition, I paid a courtesy call on Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa. (Author photo)
Changing of the guard
The Leader of the Opposition, Leo Barry, was a former Conservative Energy minister who had rowed out with Premier Peckford over policy issues and crossed the floor, joined the Liberals, and, soon after, became their leader. Despite his early success in growing Liberal strength in the House from four to fifteen members in the 1985 general election, he soon got into trouble with his caucus. What he lacked, according to his fellow Liberal MHAs, were a willingness to listen, the common touch, and the ability to be in two places at the same time. He was in Boston when his caucus felt he should have been minding the shop in St. John’s. In truth, though, the Boston trip was merely the proverbial straw. Barry had lost the confidence of his parliamentary team. Indeed, all fourteen members of his caucus signed a letter demanding a leadership convention.
To this day, I believe the caucus did the right thing in the circumstances, and not because I succeeded Barry as Leader of the Opposition. The caucus decision to ask me to step into the role came as a surprise. Undoubtedly, an element in its choice was the fact, well-known to my colleagues, that I hoped to return to the federal arena at the first opportunity and, therefore, didn’t aspire to the leadership of the provincial party.
Celebrating Canada and Joey
I assumed the leadership of the Official Opposition on March 25, 1987. The anniversary of Newfoundland’s joining Canada was just six days away. I was appalled to learn that nothing had been planned to mark the occasion. It was no surprise that the Conservative government had chosen to ignore the milestone, since any celebration would inevitably remind voters of the central role played by their nemesis and punching bag, Joey Smallwood, in bringing about Confederation. It was disconcerting, however, to realize that the Liberal Party was also taking a pass. The reason may well have been that Leo Barry had himself been a Tory just three years earlier and harboured a visceral dislike for anything connected to Smallwood.
The former premier had suffered a debilitating stroke in 1984, leaving him partially paralyzed and unable to speak. The volatile, verbose talking machine had become mute Joey, surely the cruellest oxymoron of all, certainly for him and his dwindling band of admirers, acolytes, and defenders. For his detractors, critics, and professional hate-mongers, it was a providential reprieve, an answer to prayer that the megaphone that walked like a man had been silenced at last.
An eleventh-hour attempt to organize an event to fete our thirty-eight years as Canadians was worth a try. And I knew the two people who could make it happen. I met with Mrs. Liberal herself, Joan Cook173, and Steve Neary, who had served in Smallwood’s last cabinet, and we set the wheels in motion for a mammoth celebration. Liberals and other rank-and-file Newfoundlanders swelled the St. John’s Holiday Inn ballroom to make merry, reminisce, and get a little face time with the guest of honour, Joey. It was his first public appearance since his stroke, and he did not disappoint. Standing at the podium, tears rolling down his cheeks, he responded to the sustained applause of 700 proud Canadians by flashing a thumbs-up, waving his hand, and mouthing repeated thank yous. Though age and illness had taken their physical toll, his mind and his personality were as responsive as ever.
The district Liberal association in Goose Bay, Labrador, staged a fundraising roast with me as the roastee. The usual cast of characters lined up to take their best shot. As well, the organizers had arranged for a mystery roaster. Imagine my surprise and initial skepticism when a teenager was paraded on stage. Sixteen-year-old Seamus O’Regan brought down the house with his witticisms, one-liners, and twists of the knife. His intervention was easily the highlight of the evening.
St, John’s, 2017. With long-time friends, former premier of Newfoundland and Labrador Kathy Dunderdale and Seamus O’Regan, Canada’s minister of Veterans Affairs. (Author photo)
Roast organizers have not been the only ones to recognize O’Regan’s skill set and potential. At age ten, O’Regan was a regional correspondent for CBC. In 1999, Maclean’s magazine named him as one of 100 Young Canadians to Watch in the twenty-first century. Following stints as a political staffer on Parliament Hill and speechwriter for Premier Brian Tobin, he co-hosted CTV’s Canada AM for ten years before becoming a correspondent for CTV National News. Currently, O’Regan is the MP for St. John’s South–Mount Pearl, having successfully contested the 2015 federal election. And in August 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invited him to join the cabinet as Newfoundland and Labrador’s representative in the federal cabinet and minister of Veterans Affairs.
When Clyde Wells became leader of the Liberal Party, some of my caucus colleagues were apprehensive that his adversarial role in my tax prosecution would make for a rocky transition. Wells would succeed to the position I held, Leader of the Opposition, as soon as he won election to the House of Assembly. My friends need not have worried. From the moment he declared his leadership candidacy, Wells was always upfront, indeed cordial, in his dealings with me. I actively campaigned for him, at his request, during his successful by-election campaign which allowed him to take his seat in the House.
Near Grand Bruit, NL, 1993. Premier Clyde Wells and I visited the Hope Brook mine. (Author photo)
During the handover of opposition leadership responsibilities, Wells invited me to his home for debriefings, and once he took over, he involved me as a key member of his team. Indeed, we briefly shared the leader’s office until alternate office arrangements were made for me. When Wells led the party in the 1989 provincial election, I campaigned for several of his candidates.
The Tories had been in power for fifteen years when Wells assumed the Liberal leadership. The provincial economy was on the ropes. A once-vibrant fishery struggled as cod stocks were on the brink of collapse. The jobless rate was skyrocketing. Provincial coffers were all but bare. Premier Peckford decided it was time for a Hail Mary and badly fumbled the ball. He knew better. After all, how often had he railed against the very strategy he now embraced, Joey Smallwood’s quick-fix approach to economic diversification?
The provincial government partnered with a Calgary businessman to establish a giant greenhouse facility in Mount Pearl near St. John’s. Philip Sprung, the late Alberta entrepreneur, would use his hydroponics process to grow cucumbers to supply local consumers and the export market while Newfoundland would get some jobs. That, we were told, was the plan. Things didn’t quite work out that way, however. The project, dubbed by CBC as “Premier Peckford’s pickled palace,” was cursed from the start with construction snafus, cost overruns, and production delays.
The real problem, though, was the absence of a sound business case. The first cucumbers grown at the new facility cost $1.08 a cuke to grow at a time when a consumer could buy the same item for a quarter in Boston174. Overall, the 800,000 cucumbers produced at the greenhouse cost Newfoundland taxpayers $27.50 each.175
Two years after the project was launched with great fanfare and the promise of 150 permanent jobs, the Sprung greenhouse, having burned through $22 million in taxpayer dollars, went into receivership.
Provincial politics had been a tough slog for my party. Liberals, for twenty-three years the party of government, had been reduced to a corporal’s guard in 1972 and, with the exception of the 1975 election, had not come close to regaining power. By 1988, the Tories had been in government for sixteen years. The baggage of power and an increasingly arrogant posture of entitlement were beginning to take their toll.
Our new leader, Clyde Wells, was orchestrating a disciplined, effective opposition in the House and making significant strides with the electorate. Indeed, just months into his leadership, we scored a by-election victory in the Tory heartland, winning a metropolitan St. John’s seat, Gerry Ottenheimer’s176 old bailiwick. My great friend and future premier, Beaton Tulk, managed the campaign, and I headed the poll organization. For the first time in thirteen years, the Liberals had a real chance at forming the provincial government.
But my political heart was in Ottawa. The countdown to the 1988 federal general election had begun, and I was determined to once again be the Liberal standard-bearer in Burin–St. George’s.
Newfoundlanders went to the polls in a provincial election in 1989. Clyde Wells and his reinvigorated team squared off against the newly minted premier, my good friend Tom Rideout177, who had succeeded Peckford.
Wells led the Liberals to a resounding victory, winning thirty-one seats to the Tories’ twenty-one. Two weeks later, he took the oath as the province’s fifth premier since the union of Newfoundland and Canada.
The current premier, Dwight Ball, is Newfoundland and Labrador’s thirty-second178 head of government throughout its several stages as colony, quasi-independent country, dominion, and province. The first, Phillip Francis Little, assumed office in 1855.
170 Retired Navy admiral, entrepreneur, last chairman of Canadian Airlines
171 This formal title for the Official Opposition dates back to 1826 at Westminster and usually refers to the second-largest party in the legislature.
172 Educator, MHA, minister, premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, 2000–01
173 Senator, 1998–2009; Joan, a dynamic, focused political activist, played a pivotal and much-appreciated role in my first electoral campaign.
174 www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/politics/sprung-greenhouse.php
175 Failures and Fiascos: Atlantic Canada’s Biggest Boondoggles, Dan Soucoup, Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 2013
176 Member of the House of Assembly (MHA), Leader of the Opposition, minister, Speaker, senator
177 Educator, MHA (Liberal, then Conservative), minister, premier
178 Including the three men who served as Chair of the Commission of Government (1934–49)