New Footings
With the PC Party in disarray everywhere except Ontario, Camp was in need of something else to occupy him and to pay the bills.
Dalton was adept at capturing complex social realities in easy to grasp images, which meant he might follow a number of different careers, such as journalism, speech writing, advertising, or authorship.
Because his instinct was to integrate rather than segregate, he saw no reason to exclude any of these possibilities. If he could blend political writing, election campaigning, and commercial advertising into a harmonious whole, say, he might even be able to construct a better version of New Brunswick’s smooth Liberal machine, whose effective campaign operation he admired, even as he despised its arrogance and double standards in conducting public business.
Camp’s desire to get something going was especially fueled by ambition to someday, somehow, rise in politics himself. He’d already watched politicians enough to know someone not born into power and privilege had to make his own way by establishing “a power base.” He needed a position that would give him income, influence, and independence, but rather than follow the traditional pattern of, say, Milton Gregg, who’d been decorated for bravery in war and become a university president before venturing into political life, Camp envisaged a swifter and more contemporary route suited to his own interests and temperament.
He might, for instance, earn enough money in one realm of writing, such as commercial journalism or advertising, to subsidize others that, at least for now, did not pay their way. If he could not get income from another a job with the PCs, he could work in one of the other fields and fight Grits pro bono.
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Though keen to write, Camp knew he’d not be able to fight Grits the way he really wanted if he was a journalist. Rising as a reporter would be hard anyway because the writing he favoured was “not reportorial but opinion informed by a sense of social justice.” That meant working as a columnist, something he was not yet positioned to be.
Sidestepping journalism cleared the way to a kindred trade: advertising.
When working for premier McNair in the 1948 election, Dalton had a rare opportunity to directly witness advertising men in elections. He’d first encountered the Walsh agency operatives in the premier’s office. Later in the campaign, spending a lot of time “in their improvised offices” of a hotel suite, he’d been fascinated watching Scott Faggans hover over his artist’s drawing board and Larry Jones hammer out copy on his portable typewriter. Dalton was mesmerized by their intriguing telephone conversations with the Toronto office, “conducted in the unintelligible idiom of their trade.”
It had been a revelation to discover how these advertising paladins, living a special life on the edge of power and creativity, not only worked a particular influence over voters, but even steered campaign strategy itself.
After those encounters, everything about advertising charmed Dalton. The adman’s special lingo, his entrées into diverse fields, exercise of power, the brilliant conversation at martini lunches, and artistic flare: all defined an adventurer’s calling that mixed ideas and action. Advertising might be his best path forward of all. He’d find work with a major agency and learn everything he could about the business, no longer by watching over the shoulders of Walsh agency men, but acting directly with responsibilities of his own.
In 1950, Camp landed a beginner’s job in Toronto as a junior copywriter at the prestigious J. Walter Thompson agency, one of the big international advertising houses. He and Linda moved into a recently built house, on a newly developed street. Joining their five-year-old daughter in this year of fresh beginnings was a second child, David.
Camp’s writing talent was soon being deployed, not to influence voters in elections or change people’s minds on public policy, but for the benefit of such JWT clients as Wrigley’s chewing gum, Labatt’s Breweries, and the Bank of Nova Scotia. It was valuable experience, he thought, learning about the wide-ranging activities of the firm’s many clients, discovering the range of advertising practices, and working in an intensely focused milieu where talent could rise.
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When the Camps relocated to Toronto, Dalton brought his zealous new political faith with him. Like a Baptist seeking a new congregation, Dalton sought out in Toronto a local partisan congregation of worn and weary PCs similar to those he’d known in New Brunswick’s Charlotte constituency, and discovered them huddled in Spadina riding.
Camp’s research convinced him this core city riding was the last Toronto seat a PC candidate would ever win. Even Hollywood-handsome George Hees, well-educated, a war veteran, and a strong athlete whose three seasons with the Toronto Argonauts included winning a Grey Cup, lost in Spadina and had to enter the Commons from a neighbouring riding. However, Dalton, with the sensibilities of a penitent putting on a prickly hair-shirt and smearing ashes onto his face, felt right in Spadina. To embrace the Tory faith, he’d go all the way.
Although legend portrayed the Conservatives as a party for the powerful and privileged, those were the very people Dalton had deliberately left behind when quitting the Liberals. Along Spadina’s hard streets lived cousins of men he’d seen standing in rubber boots huddling on New Brunswick’s windy street corners with no money, little employment, and few prospects. They were “disarming in their innocence of power, uncorrupted by arrogance or cynicism, endearing in their stoic perseverance, and uncomplicated in their loyalty to that mysterious meaning of conservatism.”
Camp had not left the Liberal Party to abandon his liberalism, but in fact to reclaim it. The PC Party’s contradictory name might confuse some, but Dalton discovered that as a Progressive Conservative, he could serve the people while remaining true to himself. “In politics,” as his new national leader George Drew put it, “nothing is sacred but the integrity of our own minds.”
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Dalton was not content to mingle only with defeat-numbed Conservatives in his local congregation, however, because he knew beating Grits demanded much more, and wanted to make it happen.
That summer he travelled to Ottawa and offered himself in higher service, too.
Exceedingly determined, Camp had requested an appointment with George Drew, disregarding how a leader is weary, and wary, of being importuned by an unceasing stream of supplicants for work. Those who considered Camp pushy did not understand the zealousness of his cause.
“I knew only that I had failed to help rally the party in New Brunswick,” said Camp of this initial encounter with Drew, “but the ego remained stubborn enough to persuade me that I could do something for the Tory Party, if only it would give me the opportunity.”