8. Top Job, Lake Included, The Road Years

I can’t imagine wanting to run the affairs of any other country. We have so much going for us. And yes, while we have challenges, our problems are a walk in a national park compared to those of most countries.

When American presidents serve, they age dramatically, almost overnight. On any given day, the prime minister of Canada seems well rested.

Also, the job of prime minister of Canada comes with Harrington Lake, a stunning country estate in the Gatineau Hills in Quebec, a scant forty-five-minute drive from Parliament Hill. If you love Canada and you love a lake, this is about as good as it gets. Also, it’s not just any lake; it’s completely private. The only constituents nearby are loons, ducks and pike. And by loons, I mean those of the freshwater variety, not the type that make up a prime minister’s voter base.

The estate has been wowing world leaders for a very long time. They simply don’t make them like this anymore. If Elton John woke up tomorrow and ordered his people to go buy him the best Canadian cottage ever? Sure, he would end up with something spectacular, but not as nice as Harrington Lake.

The amazing thing is that Canadians don’t really hear about Harrington. It’s obviously on the public record, but prime ministers are very hush-hush about the place.

It has long been a dream of mine to spend a weekend at Harrington Lake. Ideally, there would be no prime minister present. In my dream someone just throws me the keys and tells me to make myself at home and check the date on the milk before drinking.

The only non–political staffer I know who has spent time at Harrington Lake is Jann Arden. She was there as a guest of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his wife, Laureen. The Harpers rarely allowed Harrington Lake to be photographed because it is just too damn nice. You can’t help but look like a lord of the manor with that house in the background. But once the gates are closed, it’s 100 percent private. A prime minister can really let their hair down and be their true self.

For example, when Jann was there, the Harpers were serving schnapps that contained real gold flakes. They were literally drinking gold. I found this hard to believe but I googled it, and yes, it’s a real thing. It’s some concoction from Switzerland called Goldschläger—a schnapps flavoured with hints of honey, cinnamon and ostentation. It’s the kind of aperitif a landlord would drink after a long day of evicting widows. It’s not something you would see being served at the Conservative Party’s annual stampede hoedown.

The Harpers worked like pit ponies to come across as a Tim Hortons–loving hockey family who wouldn’t know a soup spoon from a spittoon, but at Harrington Lake they were drinking gold with Juno winners.

But it’s not just the Tories who love the lake. In 2016 Justin Trudeau was the newly elected Liberal prime minister of Canada. He must have had a lot on his mind.

The CBC hired me that year to host New Year’s Eve on Parliament Hill. It was set to be a big show, the kickoff for the Canada 150 celebrations marking 150 years since Confederation. Just before Christmas of that year, Johnny, Don and I travelled to Ottawa to shoot a holiday greeting with the PM that could be rolled into the live broadcast from Parliament Hill. When we arrived, a staffer greeted us and said the PM would be available shortly but was “hard at work” and needed some time.

Fair enough, I thought, he is the prime minister. God knows what he might be dealing with. Also, I could see into the office, and there was Trudeau, at his desk, sleeves rolled up, a look of consternation on his face. Occasionally he would put pen to paper, write something down, review it and look concerned again.

Fifteen minutes later Trudeau put the pen down and pushed his notes off to the side of his desk. Outside his office we said our hellos and agreed we would shoot the piece in another half-hour. “Feel free,” he said, “to make yourself at home. You can move the desk, do whatever you need to do for the camera.”

Certainly, there was a different vibe in this PMO than Stephen Harper’s, where if you moved a chair, they were liable to pistol-whip you.

We moved the desk around to suit our shoot and got to work on our script. I had my notes printed out, and I did what I always do: lay the pages out side by side on a flat surface so I can run through them in my head. We also laid out fifteen recipe cards with trivia questions written on them. Part of this gag was going to involve my playing Trivial Pursuit with the PM. We needed to figure out the order of the questions.

What followed was a pleasant shoot with the prime minister, in which he proved, without cheating, to be very good at Canadian Trivial Pursuit. The piece ended with him wishing the country a very happy new year. Piece of cake.

We didn’t know it at the time, but he couldn’t attend New Year’s Eve live on the Hill because it was going to be cold and snowy and he had planned to spend the evening violating the federal Conflict of Interest Act on the Aga Khan’s private island.

A few hours later, as we were driving to the airport, I pulled my script out of my briefcase and was about to put it in the van’s garbage when something caught my eye. The words Office of the Prime Minister were at the top of a single sheet of paper. Below that was a handwritten list. Clearly, I had scooped this off the desk when I cleared it off before we shot.

Oh my god, I thought. I’ve gone and purloined something from the prime minister’s office. I might have been in possession of state secrets. I might have been holding in my hands a document outlining the Trudeau government’s priorities.

Well, it turns out it did contain priorities, but not the government’s so much as his own.

HARRINGTON

Fireplace

Back Stairs

Sauna

Boats

Water’s edge

Geese

Exterior

WiFi/Comms

And then, in very large, all-capital letters:

BEES!

Harrington Lake, its sauna, its boats, its geese and bees were rarely far from any prime minister’s heart or mind. Politics is all about priorities.

I do not mean to suggest the job of prime minister is only desirable because of the cottage. Far from it. But sticking with a real estate theme, if countries were properties listed for sale, Canada would be about as desirable as they come.

As far as “location, location, location” goes, we cannot be beat. We have three oceans, a vast Arctic and a peaceful border with the neighbours. The neighbours did go a little cray-cray for a while, but as I write this their medication seems to be balanced.

Even when I don’t fancy a prime minister, I certainly have great respect for the office. That I have been able to ask every living prime minister how they felt about the job has been a singular thrill for me.

And while I have few qualifications, I am confident in my ability to determine whether or not a person has a sense of humour, whether they are truly self-deprecating or simply a two-faced monster.

I’ve met them all, and if there is any takeaway from this book, I can honestly say that Joe Clark, John Turner, Brian Mulroney, Kim Campbell, Jean Chrétien, Paul Martin, Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau are all monsters. Terrible monsters.

Truthfully, every prime minister I have met has been fascinating in their own way—they are all historic, we haven’t had that many of them, and each came with their own baggage and inherent weirdness.

Politics is not an occupation for the normal person, and becoming the leader of a major political party is not something that can happen to you by accident. It takes hard work and mad skills—the exception being Justin Trudeau, who only had to remain upright. His becoming prime minister was predetermined the moment he was born on Christmas Day 1971.

In many ways Trudeau is like the Harry Potter of Canada’s natural governing party. Powerful forces inside the Liberal Laurentian elite, forces we muggles could never understand, used magic and Quebec to give him the keys to the prime minister’s office. No amount of blackface or condensation could stop that from happening.

But when the Mercer Report started in 2004, Justin Trudeau was not a political figure of any note. He was a private citizen wandering around, dropping hints that he might just have to run the country someday.

To be fair to the man, it’s a big decision to embark on a meteoric rise. You must consider the impact it will have on those around you, and in Justin’s case, his snowboarding time.

I had crossed paths with Justin socially over the years and had always found him nice enough. He struck me as a tad odd, but, I thought, how could he not be? He was as close as we have to royalty. His birth was front-page news.

As a young man visiting Jamaica, I was amazed to see that not only was Justin vacationing there at the same time I was, but that his every move was being documented in the newspapers. And Jamaica at the time was very used to A-list Hollywood stars hanging around on its beaches. Nevertheless, day after day his abs were above the fold.

It was a beautiful July night and I was in the backyard of a house in Rosedale—one of Toronto’s toniest neighbourhoods.

I was not alone. The event was called “Barenaked in Rosedale,” and it was a fundraiser featuring, as you may have guessed, the Barenaked Ladies.

I had been to a few fundraisers in my life, but nothing this exclusive. Walking through the backyard where the event was being held was surreal. I didn’t know why I had been invited, but I was thrilled to be there. This was before I learned that at some fundraising events organizers try to paper the room—or in this case the yard—with “celebrities.” And that was certainly the case on this night. Before I knew it I was standing at a small table draped in blue silk, enjoying both the company of a Grammy Award winner and my second aged Ontario cheddar tart with caramelized onions.

It was all for a good cause, of course, but I remember having no idea what the cause actually was. The backyard pool seemed to hold some clues. Inflatable lifebuoys were bobbing around in the water, and each one of them had a stick with a sign attached to it. Each sign bore a single word—Diversity, Strength, Community, Teamwork, Empowerment, Hope. It was a salute to virtue signalling, and so it was no surprise that the guest speaker was celebrated private citizen Justin Trudeau.

And to his credit, Trudeau was a celebrity. Among the private citizens, the civilians with all the money, the ones who were expected to bid vast amounts in the silent wine auction, he was the one they wanted to meet. When he entered the garden fashionably late, the gold medallists, recording artists, Grammy and Juno Award winners, bestselling authors and certainly the TV monkeys like me paled in comparison.

He moved through the room as if he owned the place and we were his invited guests. And people were far more eager to shake his hand than anyone else’s. It was a smorgasbord of selfies and infatuated ladies. Poor fellow, I thought. He won’t get to eat any tarts at all.

It was a great night. The Barenaked Ladies were then—still are—hitmakers like nobody else. And that combination of Steven Page and Ed Robertson onstage together, harmonizing, is something to behold. Throw in Randy Bachman, the Philosopher Kings and Leslie Feist, and it was an astounding lineup in the most intimate of settings.

The master of ceremonies for the evening was Canada AM host Seamus O’Regan—and he introduced his dear friend Justin Trudeau to great applause. They hugged onstage and Seamus whispered into his ear, “These early mornings are killing me. I have to be in makeup in four hours. When can I be a cabinet minister?”

“Have patience,” Trudeau responded. And then, switching sides to hug it out again, he added, “I’ll be spending the winter at Whistler. I’ll think about it then.”

“Yes, sensei,” Seamus responded, and then they bowed towards each another as if one of them was the Dalai Lama and the other was the host of a morning show. In that room, the gesture did not seem out of place.

It was a very good speech. Trudeau did a fine job of congratulating us all for coming, praised the organizers for their hard work and the owners of the home for the use of their garden. He mentioned that he was dedicating his life to serving Canada, and he managed to say every single word that was floating in the swimming pool at least half a dozen times.

There was certainly a buzz around him. And not only because of his celebrity-by-birth status. The political lay of the land had just changed dramatically. Paul Martin had just lost a general election, and that was decidedly not supposed to happen. Stephen Harper’s Conservatives had just formed a minority government. The Liberal Party was for all intents and purposes rudderless. Martin was supposed to be around forever; now he was licking his wounds in the private sector. The Liberals were not used to being out of power, and there was a certain desperation in the air.

People were looking for a silver bullet, and in a party of tired old warhorses Justin Trudeau was certainly shiny and new. Trudeau was certainly enjoying the speculation around his future. All eyes were on him.

Much later that night, after a second encore from Barenaked Ladies and too many glasses of bubbles, I was returning from a visit to the world’s nicest porta-potty (it had hardwood floors!!) when I heard a pssst coming from behind a tree. I looked and saw Justin Trudeau hiding behind some bushes. He waved me over, indicating that he wanted me to join him. He lifted a branch and revealed a tiny private clearing inside.

I know of only two reasons why a man might ask another man to join him in the bushes. Hopefully, this was neither of those. I discreetly wandered over and joined him in the brambles.

Turns out he was simply taking a break from selfies and wanted to make small talk. “How is the TV show doing?” he asked. “How are you?” And then he gazed directly into my eyes and asked, “Are you really happy?” This is exactly the kind of thing I have no capacity to handle. “Wow,” I said. “Am I happy? That’s a loaded question. I thought you called me in here to ask me to join you in serving Canada.” A not-so-clever crack acknowledging all the attention he was getting.

He suddenly turned even more serious. He continued to look me directly in the eyes even more intensely. It was very unnerving. Then he placed his hand on my shoulder, squeezed it in a paternal manner and said, “No. When the time comes, if I ever have to ask you to step up and serve Canada, I will call you from my secret phone in Ottawa.”

So it turns out there’s a third reason a man might invite another man into the bushes: for an awkward encounter in which he reveals he is so delusional he believes he is destined to be prime minister.

But at the time, all I thought was, “Wow, this dude is nuts. And apparently, he has a Batphone.”

Of course, I was the delusional one. Nine years later he became prime minister. And during his tenure in Ottawa, that call from the secret phone never came.

Although, just a few months after Barenaked in Rosedale, Gerald and I crossed paths with Justin again, this time fully clothed with President Clinton. It was one of the fanciest dos I have ever had the privilege of attending free of charge.

When former president Bill Clinton turned sixty, his charity, the Clinton Foundation, pulled out all the stops. I don’t know if a living person had celebrated their birthday in a bigger or splashier manner. The Clinton Foundation called on Denise Donlon to produce a birthday celebration for Clinton in Toronto. It would be a fundraiser for the foundation’s work in Africa, particularly pertaining to HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment.

Denise is a legendary figure in Canadian broadcasting. She was general manager of MuchMusic in its heyday, before she left to run Sony Music and then CBC Radio’s English-language services. She’s a business executive, author, television producer, public speaker and member of the Order of Canada. And in her youth she was tour manager for the hair-metal band Whitesnake.

She put together a mind-boggling lineup. Kevin Spacey, at the time one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, was the master of ceremonies. Music was by James Taylor, Jon Bon Jovi and Sarah McLachlan. Comedy legend Billy Crystal would be appearing, and Paul Shaffer was the musical director.

We didn’t plan on attending because tables started at twenty-five thousand dollars and topped out at two hundred thousand. But on the very day of the gala, Gerald got a call from Denise asking if we wanted a pair of tickets. She had two seats in the sold-out house that needed filling. It was very kind of her; she could have filled those seats with literally anyone. We were in. We donned black suits and headed on down to the Canadian Room of the Royal York Hotel to fete a former president.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much money in one room. Every bigwig in the country seemed to be in attendance. Gerald was seated next to Canadian film legend Norman Jewison. I was next to former Ontario premier Mike Harris. Denise has a wicked sense of humour.

The music was incredible and the auction for charity was like nothing I had ever seen. The items on offer weren’t four passes to Canada’s Wonderland or dinner and some Leafs tickets. This was a whole other level. Up for grabs was a private dinner for ten with Bill Clinton at Nobu in New York—private jet included. Then there was a trip to London, England, and to Africa with the former president, also on a private jet. There were also pickup basketball games with Michael Jordan; dinner with Barbra Streisand; a hangout with Bono in Hawaii; numerous getaways to various Caribbean luxury estates; a piano that belonged to Diana Krall and Elvis Costello; and some of the best salmon fishing in the world at the Long Harbour Lodge in Newfoundland and Labrador.

In one night, in one room, they raised twenty-one million dollars for the Clinton Foundation.

Neither Gerald nor I bid on any items, but we didn’t go home empty-handed. The memories were special—moments you never forget. Namely, Gerald took a leak between Jon Bon Jovi and the famous American political strategist James Carville, a.k.a. the Ragin’ Cajun, and I hung out with an ex-Conservative premier.

Denise did press me into service for a little while; I was the “voice of God” on the microphone introducing Spacey and Crystal. That was more than fine with me. It brought me backstage, where I chatted with Paul Shaffer and Clarence Clemons. The famed saxophone player with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band was there as a surprise; he would play “Happy Birthday” for Clinton.

Later, there was a small reception where we bumped into Justin, this time accompanied by his wife, Sophie Grégoire. This was the first time we’d met Sophie, and she was a treat. We were making small talk when we noticed an even smaller, perhaps even more exclusive reception happening in yet another room. A who’s who of prominent Canadians—the sort of people you don’t usually see lining up—were waiting their turn to get in. “What’s in there?” Sophie asked.

Justin looked at their tickets and said, “That’s a VIP reception with Clinton. You get your picture taken with him. We don’t have that ticket.”

Sophie looked at us, and then back at the line, and said, “I’m going to sneak in.”

“Of course I can,” she said. “I used to sneak into the adult movies all the time when I was fourteen. It’s easy; just look like you’re supposed to be there.”

And with that she wandered over and, as if by magic, seamlessly merged into the line.

Trudeau is the only prime minister I knew socially before he entered politics. Aside from the time in the bushes, we would on occasion cross paths on the speakers’ circuit. I think once we had a beer in a hotel bar. Later on, when he began to publicly toy with the notion of running the country, both he and Sophie were guests on the show. He had not been elected yet, but he had become a legitimate public figure. They were my tour guides at the Quebec Winter Carnival, and she killed. As did he.

It was on that day that I thought for the very first time, This guy might actually be able to beat Stephen Harper. Which, of course, he famously did. Big time.

But by the time Trudeau took office as prime minister, I wasn’t as keen to hang with PMs on TV. Times had changed. Or maybe I had. Either way, we never called the PMO looking for a date.