The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Well, you see, here we are, several hundred strong, celebrating the 64th anniversary of the greatest man of the last century becoming prime minister of Great Britain. This would be the Albany Club on Toronto's King Street, spiritual home of whatever Tories are left, and a gathering of the International Churchill Society, Canada. The menu is smoked salmon followed by braised Cornish Hen followed by Poached Pear in Red Wine. The wine, by the way, flowed like glue. Which would not have amused the great man, who once said, "I have taken more out of Scotch than Scotch has ever taken out of me." The greatest person of the 20th century, as we know, never graduated from Oxford, never graduated from Cambridge, had trouble at Harrow because he hated math. Despite this dreadful handicap, he wrote more than 50 books, painted with such talent that his work was displayed by the Royal Academy, having been submitted under an assumed name, received the Nobel Prize for Literature and was a bricklayer of some skill. This scribbler used to live around the corner from him, at Ennismore Gardens in Kensington, while working on Fleet Street. When he finally ended his second term as prime minister at 81, on his birthday each year the tabloid photogs would rush to his home and I would follow them and watch as the greatest man in our lifetime came to the window, bleary-eyed, and waved for the cameras. He once said, in the Commons at Westminster, of Ramsay MacDonald, Britain's first Labour PM: "I remember, when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum's Circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibition on the program which I most desired to see was one described as the 'Boneless Wonder'. My parents judged that spectacle would be too revolting and demoralizing for my young eyes, and I have waited 50 years to see the 'Boneless Wonder' on the Treasury Bench." Churchill fought in the Boer War and covered the Spanish-American War in Cuba as a reporter. In Calgary, he once wrote to his wife that he was thinking of retiring from politics and taking up a career in the Canadian West. After being elected a Conservative MP in 1900, he crossed the floor in 1906 to the Liberal benches. In 1924 he returned to the Tories. "Anyone can rat," he explained. "It takes something to re-rat." J.V. Clyne, then Chief Justice of the British Columbia Supreme Court, once told this scribbler of his experience with Churchill, who between the wars had no money and existed on speaking tours of North America. Clyne, as a young lawyer, was sent down to the Vancouver CPR terminal to greet the star guest. Alas, it was Prohibition days in Canada and Churchill wanted a pre-speech drink. Clyne explained the problem. Churchill explained his problem Ñ he was headed up atop Grouse Mountain with his easel to paint one of the world's most beautiful harbour. No tickee, no washee. The panicked young lawyer found a bootlegger and struggled up the mountain through the bush. Churchill, hearing the noise, never raised his eye from his easel. "Got the whiskey?" he inquired. Speech went ahead. The speaker at the Albany Club missed the best Churchill story of all. One day he was in the men's loo at Westminster. Labour leader Clement Attlee walked in and Churchill hurriedly buttoned himself up and prepared to leave. Attlee said, "Winston, I didn't know you were so modest." Churchill replied, "It's not that, Clem. It's just I thought if you ever saw something so large and running freely, you'd want to nationalize it." X X X AND ANOTHER THING Caligula, the Roman emperor (12-41) is famed for appointing his horse a pro-consul. This is always cited as the most cynical act in known politics. It has now been surpassed by the Paul Martin government. The embarrassing fandango of bribing Winnipeg Mayor Glen Murray Ñ previously an NDP supporter and now destined for a Martin cabinet Ñ beats anything unveiled in the Adscam scandal. To facilitate the bribe, the Martoonies have bribed John Harvard, a mediocre backbench Liberal MP (and previously mediocre Winnipeg media figure) to give up his seat to Murray in return for becoming Manitoba's new Lieutenant-Governor. And this is Martin's proclaimed "democratic deficit?" One wants to weep.
