Politics in Ontario has become deadly serious,
and it has had to turn the clock back two decades to find a few
laughs. These came when former premier William Davis spoke to the
recent Progressive Conservative convention. News media have never
stopped marvelling at his sense of humour, as if it was something
from another planet.
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| name="valign" top > ERIC DOWD |
Davis, supposedly paying tribute to defeated
premier Ernie Eves, began to a standing ovation from Tories happy
to remember times they were winners. He beamed that he would
reconsider his retirement if balloting had not closed.
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Eves is renowned for his slicked-back hair and
expensive suits, but Davis said he was not going to refer to hair
and pointed to his own, thinning and gray.
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He said he would not mention suits because after
he was chosen leader, Alan Eagleson, then party president, told
him, “Davis, you have got to get a new wardrobe.”
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Davis had been noted for brown and dark blue
suits off the rack, but suddenly emerged in custom-made pinstripes
of all hues.
Davis chuckled he often flew close to Eves’s
riding on his way to his cottage in an Ontario Provincial Police
helicopter, “always on government business, of course, carrying all
my studies of the issues facing Ontario.”
Davis, 75, said a reporter asked if he hoped to
see old friends and he replied, “At my age you don’t call anyone
old friends – they are friends of long standing.”
He noticed a grandson of former premier Tom
Kennedy. He recalled when Kennedy was agriculture minister and
there was a heavy rain, he would announce that was a $3 million
rain for the farmers of Ontario.
“How Tom Kennedy could calculate how many inches
of rain meant how many millions of dollars for farmers I never
knew,” Davis said. “He was the only minister of agriculture who had
that capacity.”
Davis said he recruited Eves to run for MPP
because he was respected locally, although “not the world’s
greatest lawyer…” He added, “a lot of people said I wasn’t the
world’s greatest lawyer. That’s why I went into politics.”
He claimed his cabinet was divided when it
designated Eves a Queen’s Counsel, “but I voted for you. I have
discovered when you are premier, yours is the only vote that
counts.”
Davis left them laughing saying Eves won one
riding election and the only person who didn’t support him was his
former track coach and a university football friend of Davis. “he
obviously hit his head too often, because he ran as a Liberal
candidate.”
None of this is dazzling wit, but Ontario
politics has been starved for humour.
The Liberals have not had a moment’s joy since
being elected to government because they are unable to pay for, and
broke, promises.
The Conservatives are reminded daily it will be
tough to escape a record of misusing millions, and the New
Democrats have not seen any sign voters even consider them for
government.
Usually one party is up and others down, but all
are down and they cannot see much to joke about.
Eric Dowd is a veteran member of the Queen’s
Park press gallery.
