Chapter 34

Campaigning against Bill Davis

Well before John Robarts announced his retirement as Ontario’s premier in December 1970, triggering battle for the securest Tory crown in Canada, the most significant event in the race to replace him, a bizarre twist on the poisoned relationship between John Diefenbaker and Dalton Camp, was already over.

It was clear William G. Davis, leadership heir apparent, only awaited his coronation as King Billy. The Tory establishment felt comfortable with Bill. His deep blue Tory credentials, his record atop Ontario’s burgeoning and costly education empire, even his seasoning in national politics as policy chairman at the Montmorency Conference and Maple Leaf Gardens leadership convention, assured continuance of a Progressive Conservative regime unbroken since 1943.

In fact, Robarts was so sure Davis would succeed him he’d gruffly tell people, near the end of his premiership, “Don’t talk to me about it. See Davis. He’s going to be premier.” The education minister’s undeclared campaign was top-heavy with supporters.

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All the same, some Conservatives thrashing out political scenarios at the Albany Club concluded that if the provincial Tories just yawned and continued as before, if the convention was merely a predictable elevation of the MPP from Brampton, the PCs would not excite media attention or attract voter interest. The essential rejuvenation in party ranks that a hotly contested convention invariably generates would simply not occur.

A hard-fought contest was desirable, if only to shake up Davis and spark more political energy in him and the party.

But who would serve as a challenger? It had to be someone liked and respected but who, in the end, would not beat Davis. Several candidates were already sniffing around, but none fitted the criteria this Albany Club cabal desired.

As soon as talk began circulating of Robarts stepping down, Camp contacted Clare Westcott, who’d become Davis’s executive assistant after Bob Macaulay retired from Cabinet, about a role for himself in the leadership race. “Dalton wanted to support Davis,” stated Westcott.

Camp kept calling, but to his annoyance, got nowhere. “I’m not sure what he thought,” shrugged Westcott. “Dalton wanted to get into the action. He was phoning me, wanting to see Davis, and I was phoning back, saying, ‘No.’”

Davis had erected a protective wall of silence around the leadership question. Robarts and he had become close, politically and personally. Loyal and courteous, Davis firmly instructed Westcott, “I am not going to meet anybody or do anything, or even say anything, until John Robarts officially resigns.”

That had not yet happened.

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Downtown at the Albany Club, meanwhile, it took a couple more lunches before the Tory firecrackers agreed on Charles MacNaughton as their challenger of choice.

Charlie represented small-town and rural Ontario. He was popular in caucus, feisty yet fun as a speaker, representative of bedrock Tory Ontario values. Experienced in business, he was a successful seed merchant; he had also served as one of Les Frost’s Tory appointees to the newly created Ontario Water Resources Commission in the 1950s. After election to the legislature, he became highways minister and cut ribbons to officially open better bridges and new highways all over Ontario, broadening his support among gratified Progressive Conservative MPPs in the process. He was so loyal to Robarts that he’d never, in the end-game, upset the premier’s plan to have Davis replace him, they believed.

The cabal of political engineers convened a dinner meeting at the Albany Club, in one of the large private upstairs rooms, and invited Charlie. He looked around at some of the party’s best-known faces, many of them his influential friends, and was overwhelmed. When he responded to their request that he agree to them laying leadership race groundwork, for when the time came that he might run, the choked-up Cabinet minister told them he’d seriously consider it. By the time he left the club, Charlie had begun envisaging himself as premier.

November’s days passed. MacNaughton was increasingly charmed by the fantasy, even though, as he told his son John, “the issues a premier must deal with are beyond the scope of my experience.” The Tories importuning Charlie to run realized more pressure was needed. Their invitation-only lunch at the Albany Club drew an even larger number of ranking Conservatives, almost twice as many as before. Their putative candidate again listened to impassioned pitches. Money would not be a problem.

Later that same day, after work, his son John went to the Frost Building at Queen’s Park to see what his father had decided, hoping he’d run.

“They were very persuasive,” Charles told him. “If I don’t decisively take myself out of the race right away, with all these good people who want me to run and my own foolish thoughts starting to make it seem like a good thing to do, I’m about one day away from saying yes.”

“Now, you can’t stay long,” he continued, moving John toward the door of his top floor minister’s office. “I’ve asked Bill Davis to come over. I’ve got to tell him I am not running, because, if I don’t take myself out of play, the next time they ask I’ll not be able to say no.”

Ontario’s treasurer was as desperate as he was determined.

The next day, Bill Davis, having no official campaign, announced that Hon. Charles S. MacNaughton would chair it.

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Dalton was irate.

He tracked down Westcott at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and insisted he be pulled from a top-level, do-not-disturb meeting. As Davis’s executive assistant put it, “He was quite angry.”

Camp wanted to support Bill Davis because the MPP from Brampton had supported him in the 1965 general election by trying to persuade him to run in Peel, where he’d almost certainly have won a seat in the Commons, and had supported him in the 1966 quest for a review of John Diefenbaker’s leadership. Even more, Dalton believed Bill the best prospect for premier.

For years, moreover, Camp had been longing to get involved in Ontario provincial politics. Now his best chance for doing so had just been foreclosed. A leadership campaign Davis would not even discuss in private had a public chairman, self-appointed Charlie MacNaughton, who had been ardent and influential on the pro-Dief side in the Tory Party’s acid test of leadership review. Westcott succinctly stated Davis’s dilemma: Camp and MacNaughton “hated each other over a dispute going back to the ousting of Diefenbaker.”

“Dalton thought that Davis did not want him, had been refusing to even speak with him because he’d been trying to line up Charlie MacNaughton. That was not true. Davis would have loved to have had both,” Westcott said.

Supporting Bill had been Charlie’s bold expedient to thwart his own growing temptation to run for premier. What could Davis do but agree?

But MacNaughton’s head-over-heart move had sidelined and profoundly frustrated Camp.

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In early December, Robarts arrived at a suite of private rooms in the Albany Club to confer over drinks and dinner with four of his political cronies. In the room next door, executive members of Ontario’s PC Party were holding a dinner meeting. After a time, the door between the rooms opened and Robarts joined the top-level PC Party gathering. He announced to party president Alan Eagleson and the rest of the provincial PC executive that he’d be asking them to call a leadership convention.

Many wondered how the Tories could manage without Robarts. “We needed someone of his stature to win,” said Ross DeGeer, now a member of the provincial executive. Regardless of his “stature,” the premier knew he must not face another election. For him to retain his dignity and the Progressive Conservatives their lock on Ontario’s government, it was time to depart. Bob Teeter’s poll showed he could not win again. Others would seek his mantle, such as his ministers Darcy McKeough, Bert Lawrence, Bob Welch, and Allan Lawrence. But Robarts was sure the prize was destined for Bill Davis.

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All this time Norman Atkins and the Spades were busy contemplating Ontario’s political scene, knowing Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party would soon be choosing a new leader who’d automatically be premier.

The Spades met, explained DeGeer, “to come to some determination as to whom we were going to support.” After quite a bit of discussion, they decided by a show of hands to support Davis. It was not unanimous. A number felt Allan Lawrence presented a better face and was more electable. Chad Bark was designated to contact Clare Westcott with an offer of significant campaign support.

When the Spades regrouped a few days later, Bark reported that their offer had been rebuffed. “The silence in the room was deafening,” said DeGeer. “We could have all found a way to help.”

Bill Davis felt awkward, ever after. He would spread fog over the reason the blue machine had been rejected. “Two or three people came to see me…. They either came to see me or got the message to me that they wanted to support me in the campaign. I either told them or got word to them that I was not starting any campaign while Mr. Robarts was still there.” That stunningly ambiguous “recollection” was a convenient shield for a harder truth.

The Davis insiders were becoming wary of the risk that their candidate was already looking like too much of a shoe in. Besides, his organizers were convinced they had victory locked up, and neither needed the help of newcomers nor wanted to share with others the power they would have once Davis became premier.

Both those reasons were normal, but the exceptional reason for Atkins and his team being rejected was Dalton’s enduring toxicity. Across Ontario, many PCs harboured distaste for how Diefenbaker had, in their eyes, been brought down by Camp. On top of all that was the intense dislike of Camp by Ontario’s treasurer, Charlie MacNaughton, chairman of the “Davis For Leader” campaign.

“I don’t think Charlie could organize himself out of a phone booth,” opined Westcott, “but to have his name associated with you as campaign chair meant you would get half the caucus.” Embracing Atkins, and with him the aura of Camp, would lead to the highly damaging public departure of Charles S. MacNaughton.

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Norman was stunned.

Other Spades were angry and humiliated by their stinging rebuff. They loved campaigns so much they did not want to miss out on a good one. They were Ontarians and this race was about their own province and its political future. They knew constant involvement in elections was necessary to stay current with latest methods. There was always a fresh angle in the struggle for power, so they had to stay in the game to remain players. Being sidelined would damage the team’s reputation, after its now legendary accomplishment at Maple Leaf Gardens in 1967.

A couple of days later, Paul Weed called Atkins and DeGeer, suggesting lunch. “Look, we can at best be marginal helpers in a Davis campaign,” Weed explained over their meal, “or we can have our own campaign. We can find a candidate and play a pretty important role in this race.”

“We don’t have to look very hard,” replied DeGeer, after a brief pause. “Al Lawrence is a fellow some of us already think would make a better leader.”

Lawrence was not only a Toronto MPP they frequently encountered but also a fellow director of the Albany Club. When the Spades first met at Guthrie’s home to settle on the leadership, several had expressed clear preference for him.

Weed proposed that, rather than sitting on the sidelines, the blue machine continue to hone its skills, have some fun, and teach a lesson to the smug bastards around Davis who’d ungraciously turned them down.

In Ottawa, when Brian Armstrong heard that his fellow Spades seemed to be agreeing on Allan Lawrence as their candidate of second choice, he found the news “really disturbing” and left immediately for Toronto.

Atkins and Weed met with Armstrong, trying to decide on the best course for the Spades. They listened while Brian laid out his concerns. First, he thought Davis was going to win, and would be a good premier, so what benefit could come from being part of the group to oppose him for the leadership? Second, Armstrong looked ahead and believed Dalton would likely want to be a candidate in the next federal election. Even if the party did not win, he hoped and believed Dalton would get elected. “That will position him to run for the leadership of the party,” explained Brian. Atkins was paying solemn, close attention. “If that is the future we want for Dalton, why would we want to alienate the entire Ontario organization by fighting against the guy who is likely to become premier?”

Weed, as hardball a player as politics could produce, had devoted his tough talents to Camp’s ascendancy. He responded to Armstrong, “You know, all the other arguments don’t really cut it. But your argument about Dalton and his future does.”

Norman demurred. He said he’d think about it. He knew Dalton’s life was changing. The man who’d wanted to be prime minister was now disinclined to contest the next election. Camp’s estrangement from Stanfield, who was being cool to him in hopes of warming relations with Diefenbaker’s faction, had diminished his ardour for being a candidate.

“That is the only reason Norman persisted with Allan Lawrence,” said Armstrong, looking back. Atkins did indeed think about it further, but remained undeterred. A few days later, he confirmed with the Spades his decision to back Lawrence, Ontario’s minister of mines and northern development.

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Alan Eagleson, Ontario Progressive Conservative Party president, set in motion steps for a provincial leadership convention. The race began a couple of weeks later, on December 21, with Bill Davis officially declaring his candidacy. He was so far in the lead it was impossible even to count by how many lengths. His romp would be an easy contest between the Brampton MPP and “the rest.”

As minister of education and minister of colleges and universities, he’d criss-crossed Ontario for a decade, opening new schools, addressing gatherings of educators, and building his network of Tory supporters in every riding. A feature of Davis’s campaign was a map of Ontario, with flag-pins on all the places Bill had visited as minister. Except for a few remote moose pastures, the entire province was plugged with pins, a visual message saying nobody knew Ontario like Bill Davis.

When Charles MacNaughton hosted a dinner for PC MPPs at Sutton Place Hotel, a couple of blocks east of Queen’s Park, they all came over, many pledging fealty to Davis on the spot. Ministers not themselves in the running anxiously crowded to support Davis, joining the throng of backbenchers coming forward to openly declare their faith in the presence of others.

Davis himself later acknowledged that he would have been seen as “the establishment candidate because of the large number of people from Cabinet and caucus” supporting him. The leadership, observed DeGeer, “was his to lose, which made everybody in the Davis campaign so nervous about not making a mistake that it had a paralyzing effect.”

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The Spades held meetings in Ross DeGeer’s boardroom at St. Lawrence Securities, away from the Albany Club’s eyes and ears, “busily putting an organ-ization together, at least in our minds, if not yet as an organizational chart.”

Within a couple of days, Atkins, DeGeer, Weed, and several other Spades met Allan Lawrence in the same boardroom and proposed that, if he’d run for the leadership, they’d provide a powerful vehicle to carry him toward the finish line. “Al was very appealing because he was young and attractive,” explained DeGeer, summarizing a common Spade view of their candidate. “He spoke with conviction and looked the ideal leader.”

They met a second time with Lawrence a couple of days later.

“Well,” he announced crisply, “I have decided I am not going to do it.”

The Spades were stunned, again. This was their second rejection.

It took time, special efforts of persuasion, and back channels to influence the reluctant candidate. Paul Weed’s conversations with Moira Lawrence, Allan’s politically savvy wife, helped turn the tide. Ultimately, Allan agreed that, “on further reflection,” he really should become Ontario’s premier.

The Spades had their campaign, at last. Atkins chaired the organization, DeGeer was campaign manager, and together they finalized the detailed organization, worked the phones, and pulled together a tightly disciplined operation. DeGeer invited his flotilla of colleagues from the Board of Trade to meet Lawrence, ask questions, test his mettle, and make up their own minds individually about signing on. Most did, and “became integral to the success.”

They set up the Lawrence campaign headquarters in the Westbury Hotel near Maple Leaf Gardens, site of the Ontario PC convention, where they’d pulled off an unpredicted victory for Stanfield in 1967 and would now try to perform similar magic for Lawrence. DeGeer got a penthouse apartment not far from the Westbury where he and Norman “camped out for what seemed like months. It was a full time job.”

With the vote slated for February, they worked through the holiday season. Atkins wanted to prove he was best, teach the Davis organizers a lesson about smug complacency, apply the top methods from his repertoire to further refine them through fresh battle, and prove to Dalton he could fly solo. With all that motivation, Norman plotted one of his most brilliant campaigns.

His slogan for Allan’s campaign was “Winning is Only the Beginning,” which made clear a big future lay ahead. Winning the leadership would only be the start of what the Ontario PCs would do in revamping their party and refreshing its programs. Winning meant the start of an exciting new era, together with Premier Allan Lawrence, in Ontario’s growth. It was a campaign energized by implicit promise.

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For the first time, Dalton and Norman diverged on political choices.

Atkins’s decision to back Lawrence was made without Camp’s support, at least initially. Camp, who could withdraw into himself and not share thinking with others, especially when depressed, had not told his brother-in-law he’d be backing Bill Davis. Dalton’s thinking ran along the same line as Brian Armstrong’s.

Dalton would not play a public role in his support, and was clearly no part of the official Davis campaign organization, but he intended to go to the convention and vote for Bill, unless something happened.

Something did. A few Davis supporters, seeing Atkins supporting Lawrence, reasonably figured, given the nexus between the blue machine brothers-in-law, that Dalton must be supporting their rival, too. The Davis backrooms plotted how to turn this “news” to their advantage by winning over the Diefenbaker wing of the party across Ontario rural ridings and small towns.

In developing this strategy, a member of the Davis team, prudently wanting to be sure of the core fact, called Camp’s residence in the evening on some pretext. Finding neither of the parents at home, he spoke with one of the Camp children. The child answered the caller’s question about whether it was true his father was supporting Allan Lawrence. When Dalton discovered this and ascertained the caller was with Davis’s campaign, “it so incensed him,” said Armstrong, “that he was no longer prepared to support Davis at the convention.”

Dalton’s resumption of his accustomed presence with the other Spades served the Atkins-run Lawrence campaign well because, like his brother-in-law, Dalton now had a score to settle. He began to help Norman and the campaign team assembled for Lawrence, most importantly writing a powerhouse speech the candidate would deliver with stellar force at the convention, in contrast to Bill Davis’s lacklustre address.

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“You can’t really understand the significance of Norman’s role and the Lawrence campaign,” said DeGeer, “without some sense of the organization and the people supporting Bill Davis. The leadership campaign being run for him was a disaster. It was, from its beginnings, a mismanaged mess. They were lovely people, but their idea of campaigning was just too casual and lacked creativity. It was hopelessly outdated.”

DeGeer, choosing a military metaphor, described the Davis campaign organizers as “wanting to fight the war using the old rules — make two lines to shoot at each other. Well, sorry, we were into guerilla warfare, a different kind of campaign.”

Lawrence was critical of establishment ways. He portrayed Bill Davis as the candidate of the party establishment. An articulate urbanite, Allan expressed a confident future for Progressive Conservatism as a relevant and contemporary political philosophy. In contrast, Bill Davis played to the party’s rural and small-town base by pointedly emphasizing he was not from Toronto but the town of Brampton. Lawrence was the reform candidate. Atkins positioned him as the one taking the party forward, in contrast to “status quo” Bill Davis.

Much of Lawrence’s support came from northern Ontario, where people felt Queen’s Park remote. Northerners were disaffected with the party’s southern orientation, typified by how Robarts had named a Torontonian his minister of mines and northern affairs, even if Lawrence “had some connection and was able to persuade them he understood some of their issues.” At least he wasn’t “the establishment,” which is how they saw Davis.

Allan had slim pickings in caucus, with most elected Tories elbowing ahead in the lineup behind Davis. The only Cabinet minister supporting him was the health minister, Tom Wells, a friend since their days together in the YPC; the lone private member, Eglinton MPP Leonard Reilly, was territorially entwined with the Camp-Atkins Eglinton Mafia.

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The first lap of a leadership race extends from the announcement there will be a convention to choose a new leader, through the build-up phase of travelling to meet delegates, distributing campaign information, advancing policies, and making plans for the second lap, which begins when everyone arrives at the convention itself.

In telling respects, Lawrence’s challenge to Davis in 1970 bore close resemblance to the Stanfield leadership campaign three years earlier. Atkins, with no reason to depart from that winning formula, followed the same strategy for Allan: dominate convention week, and dominate Maple Leaf Gardens for the vote.

The Camp agency designed a visually bold logo for the Lawrence campaign, consisting of three basic forms (a circle, a square, and a triangle) in three solid basic colours (red, yellow, blue) that was unmistakable, bold, and simple. It also wrote and produced all the materials necessary to create the impression of a winner. The Royal York was the convention hotel. “We had that place covered with signs before the others even arrived,” beamed DeGeer. “We had every location.” No matter where a television camera pointed or a voting delegate looked, “the Lawrence logo and the Lawrence campaign was front and centre.”

Atkins and DeGeer assembled a special operations unit of on-site advance men to ensure the Lawrence campaign “dominated events taking place at the hotel, dominated sessions in the breakout rooms.” These operatives, connected by walkie-talkies, were on the lookout for television crews hunting for delegates in the hotel, and “made sure that our delegates were the ones being interviewed. We did not get 100 percent of the interviews, but at least 75 percent.” Every newscast reported on Allan Lawrence and the strong impression he was creating.

Atkins was an enthusiastic believer in the necessity of a campaign tune. When he and DeGeer agreed they “wanted something different,” Ross signed up a lively and loud West Indian band, fronted by Dick Smith, while Norman got music and words written for “Winning is Only the Beginning,” probably the catchiest campaign song in Canadian history.

“The convention itself went very well for us,” said DeGeer. Atkins had it organized into a number of components, with a team responsible for the floor demonstration, other people tracking delegates, and DeGeer and his team running candidate liaison. Lawrence supporters working the Gardens floor were easily spotted by one another, all of them decked out in bright green jackets, each connecting by mobile phones.

Alan Eagleson boasted that the convention was going to be “fast and smooth, because we have voting machines.” When one voting machine broke down, however, that disabled the whole set-up. The convention entered a freeze-frame state of suspended drama while party officials printed paper ballots. Hours passed as time stood still. As the extended, agonizing delay stretched into the night, the mood shifted. Delegates got word from those who’d ventured outside onto College Street that “a bloody great snowstorm” was raging. Some left, others hunkered deeper into the Garden’s surrealistic cocoon.

“What we’re trying to do here,” repeated Atkins to all his campaign organ-izers, “is keep our people together. Lock them in so they don’t go and get on the train.” Sheila Willis, a key member of the Eglinton Mafia, realized, “We need to chant.” She got it organized and going, up in the stands. “This is what we are going to do, chant: ‘Allan Lawrence, Allan Lawrence, Allan, Allan, Allan Lawrence!’ It just rocked the place.”

Norman Atkins and Allan Lawrence dazzled Ontario’s Tory political establishment with a surprising 1971 Ontario PC leadership campaign that, if just twenty-three votes had switched, would have made him premier instead of Bill Davis. Watching on with cigar, at a garden party for Lawrence campaign supporters the following spring, is Spade Brian Armstrong and Moira Lawrence, Allan’s politically astute wife.

“That chanting built momentum,” recalled DeGeer, “whereas others had a Dixieland band and straw boater hats right out of the 1950s American-style conventions.”

Bill Davis, knowing his rudderless campaign was adrift, could only hope the dead weight of his ship would drift him safely into harbour. Anyone observing him becoming quietly traumatized, standing stoically in the seats amidst his becalmed supporters in Maple Leaf Gardens, waiting and watching his promising political future melt away, would understand that he was vowing, if somehow he did manage to survive, to make big changes.

By night’s end, Davis eked out a meagre forty-four-vote win over late-starting challenger Lawrence.

For the blue machine, losing was only the beginning.

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If some freelancing PC strategists at the Albany Club had not craved an exciting convention and sought out Charlie MacNaughton as their candidate, if MacNaughton had not impulsively taken himself out of play by forcing himself on Bill Davis as campaign chairman, if John Diefenbaker’s refusal to step down had not caused Dalton Camp to launch a leadership review that made him so hated by many Tories, if the Atkins-Camp organization had not been driven to orchestrate a rival campaign to challenge Bill Davis, and if a galvanized Davis had not resolved to replace his amateur organizers with the superior blue machine, then Canadian political history in Ontario in the 1970s and nationally in the 1980s would have been unrecognizable from what transpired.

The first step in the transformation that did take place was Bill Davis’s resolve to tie his future to the Camp-Atkins blue machine.

After almost forfeiting his long-sought prize because his rival had better organizers than he’d spent years acquiring, Davis was now rightly wary of the looming provincial election he’d soon have to call. If he could all but lose a sure bet within his own party, the risk of Liberals pulling off an upset with the general public was genuine. Would he be the Tory premier to ignominiously flame out and end Ontario’s PC dynasty?

Davis and Roy McMurtry, who’d first become friends when playing football together at University of Toronto, had remained on good terms. Roy, one of the Spades, was also close to Camp and Atkins. This already made him a trusted go-between, but his standing was even further improved by the fact that back surgery had painfully sidelined McMurtry during the leadership race, making him something of a “neutral.” Though incapacitated, he’d relentlessly kept in constant contact with his friends on both sides by telephone during the race, and the rival campaigns had each named McMurtry one of their special six delegates at large. Was there a more ideal person to broker the meeting Bill Davis wanted and the blue machine needed?

The outcome at the Gardens boiled down to Allan Lawrence getting a lot of votes because of his organization, Bill Davis a lot of votes despite his organization. As Westcott explained, “We had a lot of guys like Charlie MacNaughton and others who meant well but really did not have a refined approach to conducting a leadership campaign, which Dalton and Norman did. Davis had leadership skill, and Dalton and Norman organization talent.” Westcott, pleased to hear what McMurtry was proposing, described it as “sort of a ‘Let’s bury the hatchet in the back of the Liberals, not in each other’ type of meeting.”

After the campaign, added DeGeer, the party’s new leader “knew he had to find a way to heal the rift that inevitably results from such a battle, and did not have a lot of time to do it.”

The phone lines bridged Hugh Macaulay and McMurtry, McMurtry and Norman Atkins. Bill Davis wanted a meeting between the key players from Lawrence’s campaign and members of his inner circle. The Albany Club, too much in the lens of high-placed Tories, was not a suitable venue. The National Club, at the corner of King and Bay Streets, was just as convenient but politically detached. McMurtry asked DeGeer to have one of his partners book dinner under his name in a private room. Nobody could know about this secret, top-level meeting Ontario’s new premier was having with rival combatants for power in the province.

At the appointed time and place came Bill Davis, Hugh Macaulay, Clare Westcott, Roy McMurtry, Dalton Camp, Norman Atkins, Paul Weed, Bill Saunderson, and Ross DeGeer. Allan Lawrence was not invited. It was the organization, not the candidate who fronted it, that was the prize.

“It wasn’t as easy as it may sound,” said Westcott, to turn up for a dinner with men who for many weeks had been arch-rivals for the power to govern Canada’s keystone province. “After a leadership campaign, feelings are pretty hard within the party, often more volatile than between parties.”

“What Mr. Davis wanted out of the meeting,” said DeGeer, “was to bring our group, and Norman Atkins in particular, into the mainstream preparations for an election. This was an incredibly important, and courageous, thing for him to do.”

Such fusion was a high-risk challenge for Ontario PCs; there were very real divisions within the party, exemplified by the intense animosity of Charlie MacNaughton toward Camp. “There were a lot of old-fashioned Tories who did not like Camp and the knifing of Diefenbaker stuff,” said Westcott. “Except Davis was smart enough to recognize a deep need in his political organization for something far better than what had existed in Ontario before, and that is how it got started.”

Atkins and Weed were surprised to find Davis conciliatory, expecting the victor to reward those who supported him and punish those who had not. But the premier had been awed by their talent and wanted to work with them going forward. Discreet and even-tempered when interacting with others, Davis seldom revealed his feelings, and this night displayed no hint of belligerence. At the dinner, this man who’d almost forfeited the premiership made a most pacifacatory speech.

Afterward, as the conclave disbanded, Bill Davis, Norman Atkins, and Roy McMurtry headed north to Sutton Place Hotel, took the elevator to the top floor bar, and, over drinks, kept talking so Davis and Atkins could “get to know each other and see if they were comfortable with one another,” said DeGeer. The career of each was riding on the promise and pitfalls of their politically awkward relationship.

In discussing political issues, Ontario’s premier for some reason revealed that he had never agreed with proclamation of the War Measures Act, despite Robarts’s support of it. That crystallized their connection in Norman’s mind. Even though not given to the policy side of politics, Atkins had absorbed from Camp, McMurtry, Nurgitz, and other blue machinists their strong opposition to use of such draconian powers against the FLQ when Criminal Code provisions sufficed. This common cause about a transcending issue was another bonding agent, but McMurtry already knew the much bigger pull for Norman was the fact Bill Davis was premier of Ontario.

Davis succeeded in recruiting the entire blue machine: Norman Atkins, Dalton Camp, Ross DeGeer, Paul Weed, Bill Saunderson, the rest of the Spades, and their extended legion of devoted political players. Many organizers who’d ridden with Davis to the top of the party and government would be sidelined. That, DeGeer rightly noted, was “very, very difficult to do. Davis and Macaulay, to their everlasting credit, just were ruthless in establishing a new team and new, more relevant faces to the party organization.”

Within days, Davis asked Atkins to be Ontario Progressive Conservative campaign manager.

Norman had been vindicated. Dalton’s long quest to get into Ontario Tory campaigns had finally been accomplished, by proxy.