by Noah Richler
THERE ARE SAFE SEATS AND ONES TO HAVE FUN IN.
I am the stage manager, fundraiser and producer of the musical 100 Times Better, written by Terry Wall, a bard of Irish-Montreal stock who works at the Canmore Radio Shack. 100 Times Better celebrates the centenary of this former mining town and small sleeper community east of Banff National Park on the Trans-Canada Highway. Wall is in-your-face and brilliant and a trickster, but also lyrical and romantic. He’s a talented nutcase. We become fast friends. One of the characters played by Terry, who stands over six feet tall, is Gaetan Feuille D’érable, an Albertan francophone separatist who sings,
It’s da Wes’, build a wall around it
It’s the best, help preserve it
And I’ll bet Ev’ryone can help
Tell your relative’ to put OFF coming out
To da Wes’, oh they wan’ it
It’s da East, those Centralistes!
They Want our Heritage Fund
TO SPEND ON U.I.C.
…which is what EI (Employment Insurance) used to be called. The following autumn, after the show came and went, a piece of Canmore folklore, Terry drove in the school bus he’d adorned with his stage character Gaetan Feuille D’érable’s pink maple leaf livery to Vancouver Quadra to run against the Liberal Party leader John Turner as an independent candidate. It was Canada’s thirty-third general election. Brian Mulroney’s Conservatives won 211 of 282 seats, still a record, and the Liberals’ tally dipped to 40. Turner won Vancouver Quadra, a safe Liberal seat ever since, with 21,794 votes; Gaetan Feuille D’érable, representing the Party for the Commonwealth of Canada, earned 20, slightly fewer votes than there were members of his singing troupe but who’s counting? Later, he became a councillor for Canmore. His last political act was to stand and sing the new “Democracy Song” he’d written for fellow palliative care cancer patients in a Calgary hospital as news of Rachel Notley’s provincial NDP victory came in before midnight on May 5, 2015. Terry died eleven weeks later.
4. MONTREAL, 1983, AGED TWENTY-THREE:
STAYING IN POWER IS THE PREOCCUPATION.
Soon to be a classics and archaeology graduate from McGill, I have applied for a Rhodes Scholarship and undergo an interview at the Mount Royal Club on Sherbrooke Street. Jeanne Sauvé, Speaker of the House and the governor general designate, is in the chair. Several other members of a Liberal government that will lose to Brian Mulroney and his record majority are on the committee. That won’t happen until the following September, but already they seem to know what’s coming at them. I am asked about Operation Opera, Israel’s 1981 bombing of an Iraqi nuclear reactor and how this will affect electoral outcomes. But I have just finished the English writer Margaret Drabble’s novel The Realms of Gold, in which a historian, an archaeologist and a geologist offer differing views of events shaped by the scales of time their professions demand. “An archaeologist,” I declare, “is compelled by empire more than the rise and fall of governments.” I am very impressed by my answer—as impressed as my jury is not. Sauvé and the Liberal members of the panel look at me stone-faced and I realize that I have blown it. My father asks me how it went but is not distressed when I say not well at all. “We’re not the prize-winning type,” he says.
5. OXFORD, ENGLAND, 1984, AGED TWENTY-FOUR:
A SENSE OF SELF-IMPORTANCE IS KEY.
I get to Oxford anyway, though on my own steam. Once there, I am invited to socials by the successful Canadian Rhodes Scholars. I am baffled at colleagues whose kind I knew back home suddenly dressing in tuxedos and toting delicate glasses of sherry in hockey-playing hands that previously held brown stubbies. Often there is not an Englishman in the room, as they’re not much interested in being members of the British North America Society. The Canadians are busily playing pretend to each other and talk openly about their future careers “on the Hill.” I drink a lot, it’s all I can do, and at one of the last such meetings I can abide, a dinner at the graduate residence, Holywell Manor, a group of Canadians in the M.Phil programs developed specifically to garner cash from North Americans not content with the initials B.A. are discussing a prospective trip to Israel. I’d worked in the Negev for a time and say, jestingly, that maybe I’ll come along. There is a long, awkward silence. “I don’t think that can happen,” says one, not sure quite how to cope with un-credentialled, on-the-make me. “You see,” he says, “we’ll be talking to people.” The group of eminent Canadian Rhodes Scholars travels, yet somehow the crisis in Israel and Palestine remains unsolved.
6. BERLIN, 1994, AGED THIRTY-FOUR:
BEING TRUE TO ONESELF IS A LOUSY CAREER CHOICE.
A BBC Radio documentary maker, I am representing my employer—and England—at the Prix Futura, an international competition held, disconcertingly, at the Haus des Rundfunks, in which Joseph Goebbels housed the Nazi Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and the network that disseminated it. A curiosity of Europe’s eminent and multilingual radio competition is that anyone whose work is entered is also a de facto member of the jury. The contestants are from many European countries but also Australia, Canada, Japan and the United States, and the deliberations last for three days. The Serbian steps up and begins with “I just want to say one thing!” and then speaks for forty excruciating, hectoring minutes. The Parisian holds a man-purse and, ignoring the lingua franca of English, perorates in French before his pretty interpreter—he is the only contestant with one—stands and translates. (At the bar, of course, the Frenchman speaks English freely.) The man I am watching with the most interest, though, is the American contestant, Gregory Whitehead. When he steps up, it is to say only praiseworthy things—a policy of expedient kindness that he will pursue categorically and charmingly for the whole of the proceedings. He will even find nice things to say about a two-hour Swiss radio documentary on being deaf that is surely well intentioned but punishingly dull. It occurs to me that there is a lesson here about the strategic choice to be made between seeking to be liked and speaking one’s mind—one, I see in retrospect, to be especially instructive vis-à-vis social media. But who knew what a tweet was, back in 1994? The Norwegian’s show comes up, is on par with the Swiss, and it is my turn to speak. “It is heartwarming,” I say, “that in at least one country of the world public radio can count on folk with nothing better to do than to gather around the wireless….” When my show is debated, no surprise, it is excoriated. Even the French and Germans have united in its condemnation, while the American stays seated. I also learn that historical ties matter; ever friends to Canada, the Dutch take me out and get me very drunk to prove the point.
7. TORONTO, 2012, AGED FIFTY-ONE:
SUCCESS IN POLITICS AFFECTS LIVES.
After Canada’s forty-first federal election, I meet with one of the NDP’s winners at a coffee shop in Toronto. We’ve known each other for decades, and when the bill for our meagre breakfast arrives, I move to pick it up but my friend, now a parliamentarian, stops me. “Sorry,” he says. “Can’t do that. It’s against the rules.” I am stunned that he imagines he could be done in for the favours an eight-dollar tab might bring. I’ve not seen this sort of adjustment since the fella I used to do heroin with thought he could lie to me. I decide that if politics is changing old friends’ conduct in this way, then I want nothing to do with it.
8. OTTAWA, 2012, AGED FIFTY-TWO:
THE MEDIA ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS.
Twenty-six years after trading exam answers for Habs tickets in what remains the best-ever season of any NHL team (132 points, 8 losses in 80 games, 387 goals scored and just 171 against, a sweep of Boston in the Stanley Cup Final), I learn that the quid pro quo comes to naught if the quo you’re trading for demands extracurricular effort. The quid are drinks and oysters at Ottawa’s Metropolitan Brasserie, occasional hangout of politicians and journalists rather than the more expensive bar of the Château Laurier, up the steps and one street over. The quo is maybe a review or just a mention but at least looking at my new book, an overtly political one, and t
alking about it—a little brokering on behalf of a colleague. But I overestimate the interest of my Ottawa press corps pals, who drink the booze and eat the oysters anyway, some five hundred dollars leading to zero coverage from the thirsty bunch. Uplifting (not), but the lesson is media cannot be bought, damn it—or at least not with the paltry payola that was Noah’s Happy Hour. I try not to nurse a grudge along with my whiskey, but I am a writer and Old Testament and this is hard. Heller has emailed suggestions for the appointment of the EPC and “Strategic Direction” Committees, and the barebones list of a campaign team with names of members he thought might fill the posts of:
1. Campaign Manager
2. Canvass Organizer/Deputy Manager
3. Phone Bank Organizer
4. Outreach, Media and Press Scheduler
5. Social Media
6. Data/Analytics
7. Sign Captain
8. Official Agent/CFO
9. Volunteer/Canvasser Recruitment Organizer
10. Events Organizer
11. Videographer
12. Election Day Organizer
13. Office Manager
“Hope this helps you get a grasp on what is involved.”
I had no grasp at all, of course, though I did have the beginnings of a bunch for 5, 10 and 11. Item 1, campaign manager, was the most important job to be filled, that much I did know, and if I was feeling anxious, it was because I’d no idea where to look. I was not part of a long-established political circle. I did not have the contacts. I did not know the name of a single person with the experience of such a job. I was in the peculiar position of needing to hire my own boss but without knowing what qualifications that person should have.
“Ask Penny what she thinks,” said Sarah. “You’re going to need to learn to let go if your campaign is to be at all effective.”
“Better to ride the horse than to pull it,” said Doug.
And if I needed to raise money—which Heller was already on at me about—it was not only to make the campaign viable but also to be able to craft it to my liking. The less money there was, the less choice I’d have about staff and strategies and the more off-the-shelf the whole campaign would be. Money bought freedom—freedom from the template. Such a mundane lesson, really.
—
Sarah arranged for us to see a member of her publishing board whose wife, like mine, was singular and a dynamo. Michael Tamblyn was the CEO of a major tablet developer marketing its Canadian product internationally. He liked to write speeches, identify problems and solve them, and had a particular affinity for Excel spreadsheets. His partner, Laura Watts, a past national director of the Canadian Centre for Elder Law and internationally recognized expert in matters of law reform and issues related to aging, liked to laugh and to project information onto a screen—the kitchen wall would do. She liked action, even if this meant press-ganging friends of hers or staff of Michael’s into my incipient adventure. At The Ace, a bistro diner on Roncesvalles where we celebrated afterwards, it occurred to me that even the owner needed to keep Laura’s attention on the menu or he might have ended up a part of my team with no idea of how he’d been roped into it. It was very affecting. The evening was the first of several moments in which I’d see the party I had chosen was less important than my having put myself forward; Michael and Laura were helping me because they were my friends, not because I was NDP or Liberal or Conservative, and because the privilege of a freely contested election was never to be taken for granted, even in Canada. They were contributing, as so many other friends and then strangers would come to do, to this most basic of democratic acts being replicated in hundreds of campaigns across the country led by businesspeople, lawyers and career politicians, but also by artists, carpenters, doctors, educators, farmers, health care providers, journalists, mechanics, soldiers and students; by Aboriginals, Asians, blacks, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Sikhs, Muslims and Tamils—this but a portion of the country’s participating, peaceable diversity and a consensus worth upholding. Elections mattered. It was really very moving, enough so that, sitting in Michael and Laura’s kitchen, I felt a wash of sentiment coming over me. And it was getting in the way of my having a proper grasp of the PowerPoint SWOT chart Michael had conjured up in a matter of minutes. For the other truth was that this was a very competitive pair and they relished the contest of politics—its tactics and strategies.
“What’s a SWOT?” I asked.
“Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats,” said Laura.
Barely was I coming to terms with that bit of homework before Michael projected a map of the St. Paul’s riding (subsequently adjusted to become Toronto—St. Paul’s), and then a list showing the paltry 27 of 257 individual polls that, in 2011, the NDP had won. Michael typed in new formulae, quickly recalibrating the numbers to identify very exactly the NDP margins of victory or loss in every one of the riding’s polls.
“You can see now where your strengths are,” said Michael.
So this is what politicos do, I thought: they scramble the numbers, they churn the data, they make lists. Now it was Laura’s turn:
THINGS TO MAP OUT
• religious communities
• ethnic communities
• long-term care facilities/seniors facilities
• gated communities
• demography
• poll-by-poll returns
CONSTITUENCIES
• Holy Blossom Temple
• Unitarian Church
• Private schools (BSS/UCC/St. Clements/York/Greenwood/De La Salle)
• Oakwood/Northwood/North Toronto
• Rathnelly/Trains
The formidable wealth of the riding was apparent. It was there in the list of private schools, some of the most exclusive in the country; and in the Holy Blossom synagogue, its reform congregation the most powerful in the city (and that included, in its number, the former provincial NDP and then federal Liberal Party leader Bob Rae, and the CPC minister of finance Joe Oliver); it was there in districts such as Rathnelly and gated communities such as historic Wychwood Park, with its arts and crafts architecture; though, also, north of St. Clair, in the Lower Village Gate condominiums offering “gatehouse security” as attractive as you’d find on a Middle Eastern U.S. embassy compound. Would these “communities” of the rich and the anxious even let me in, I wondered?
We left and at midnight, Laura emailed a PS: “Consider downloading the free app Viber. Great messaging service and doesn’t keep any messages. You know, for the cautious.”
—
As soon as the prospect of my nomination was plausible, I’d contacted Stephen Lewis, Ontario NDP leader from 1971 to 1978. Lewis was Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations from 1984 to 1988, the UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS from 2001 to 2006 and, afterwards, the co-director of AIDS-Free World, the international advocacy organization founded in 2007. I’d called him—one of the most impassioned and able orators in the country and immensely popular for that reason on university campuses—out of the blue, and somewhat hesitantly, to ask if he’d speak at the riding association’s meeting planned for the end of the month. Lewis had been a delightfully eloquent thorn in Stephen Harper’s side, and he and his wife—the former journalist and author Michele Landsberg—were principals in that core of “Dipper” activists I’d been told several times would be a source of strength in the riding. I’d interviewed Lewis when, in 2005, he’d delivered the CBC Massey Lecture “Race Against Time, Searching for Hope in AIDS-Ravaged Africa,” but still I was astonished when he’d said, “Yes, absolutely”—and then, playfully (a master of words, he is also beholden to them), that he was at my “call and beck.” I was so excited I did a little dance in the street.
“What happened?” asked Sarah, alarmed. Sarah, who cannot dance with me without suppressing giggles at my unorthodox form, was walking ahead of me with Doug on the hot July afternoon. The pair of them laughed outright when I explained my spontaneous jig of victory.
It felt like a
coup and an auspicious start. Lewis wanted me to know he and Landsberg had been signatories to a public letter that, prior to the 2014 provincial election, accused Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath of running to the right of the Liberals in an attempt to win Conservative votes and coercing supporters “to vote against their principles” (unsuccessfully, it turned out, Kathleen Wynne and the Liberals having gone on to win an unexpected majority) but also that he’d do anything the party asked.
“Holy Shit!” wrote Pratt when I told him my news. “I’d probably just give him my wallet.” Get Lewis to do the fundraising ask, he importuned.
Part of me wondered how it was the party had not done the obvious and arranged for Lewis to speak at Mulcair’s and the party’s rallies already, but I chose instead to feel relief I had not kicked up some wasp’s nest of internecine party differences. Most of all, I was elated that a man so important to the political left and such a champion of pressing international causes was speaking on behalf of a neophyte.
“F’in huge,” emailed Heller. “Worth more than a ‘little dance.’ ”
“You’re entirely free to let people know I’ll be speaking at the nomination,” wrote Lewis. “Given the current polling data for Toronto, I genuinely feel that St. Paul’s is a seat we can win.”
—
Ten days later, I had lunch with Lewis at Mashu Mashu, a Middle Eastern restaurant in Forest Hill Village. He was brimming with determination, optimism and knowledge of campaigns to which I was not yet privy.
“What’s really important is we make no assumptions about where your vote is coming from,” said Lewis. “Let the Conservative do whatever she is doing and you’ll take advantage of the trend. Nobody’s saying a vote for the NDP is wasted anymore.”
Lewis smiled. That excited him.
