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.
Some time ago, back when the earth was cooling, yore scribbler was editor of the University of British Columbia campus newspaper. (It was calledÑthe pun on UBC allegedly attributed to Pierre BertonÐThe Ubyssey, as in Homer's The Odyssey.) Our aims were somewhat smaller. At the same time, the editor of the University of Manitoba paper was one Izzy Asper. It was called, imaginatively, The Manitoban. That typified the dullest province of all 10, still so dull that Premier Gary Doer's idea of fun is go down to the WalMart on Saturday night and try on gloves. But Izzy was never dull. Not in our inter-university bacchanalias, culminated in the night when we were dumping, from a Royal York window, beer cases filled with water on the innocents emerging from the streetcars that then still ran in front of the hotel. Never dull up to the day he suddenly died this week. Izzy found law so dull that one day he decided to become prime minister of Canada. So as a start, he would become leader of the Liberal Party of Manitoba, on the way to 24 Sussex Drive. Sadly, it did not work, he being demolished by the NDP and winning his own seat by just four votesÑthereby earning the nickname of Landslide Asper. He didn't like that, naturally, especially as he had proven his journalistic roots by writing for several years a tax column for the Globe and Mail's Report on Business. Restless as always, he turned to the new media favorite, TV, and emerged as the boss of Global, fuelled by American schlock. Most famous story of all was when he bought a New Zealand station and called in all the staff and asked what they were doing. The news chief avowed he would scoop everyone on the news. The drama lady promised the finest shows ever. Sports editor, the same. Izzy stunned the entourage by telling them they were all wrong: they were here to sell advertising! At the Calgary Winter Olympics I met his long-time mistress, a senior Canadian Pacific Airlines stewardess, who had just left him and moved to Vancouver. She had finally decided he would never divorce his wife and, she said, "He'll be dead in two years due to his smoking and drinking." Well, the Calgary Olympics were in 1988. My theory is that the scotch wiped out the nicotine. See 'Jovial' P.# Con't from P.# The last time I saw him was a year ago at the VIP room of an Empire Club lunch in the same Royal York. He was in good jovial form as usual, had lost a lot of weight, and looked great. His greatest ambition had been achieved. It was his lifetime dream to stick it in the nose of Toronto. He would prove you could do it all from Winnipeg. He got Canada's third TV network, and then the largest newspaper chain in the landÑeven though those in the know think Lord Almost snookered him on the deal. The point is that yore scribbler tried to prove, for 25 years in Vancouver, that you didn't have to move to the Big Smoke. And eventually gave in. Izzy didn't. To paraphrase Paul Anka and Frank Sinatra, he did it his way. X x x QUOTE OF THE SEASON Ontario Premier Ernie Eves, 48 hours before Election Day: "We are not toast." X x x The biggest puzzle in Canadian politics over the past 36 years has finally been solved. Why did the most intelligent man in our political system never become prime minister. Veteran journalist Geoffrey Stevens gives the answer in his biography of Dalton Camp, entitled The Player. Among other things (the lovers!), he details how in 1967, after knee-capping Dief the Chief, Camp as party president, went to Halifax to recruit Nova Scotia premier Bob Stanfield. Stanfield declined. Camp went to his second choice, Manitoba premier Duff Roblin. He, frightened by Dief, declined. Camp went back to Stanfield, who still backed off. Then the formidable Camp machine finally convinced the reluctant backroom boy that only he could do it. They drew up an entire leadership campaignÑadvertising, delegates, speeches, province-to-province strategy. Until they received a phone call. Stanfield had changed his mind once again. He would run. The Camp machine just changed the name at the top of the program. Which is why neither Stanfield, nor Roblin who jumped in late, ever became PM. Because they were ditherers. And why Camp never got to 24 Sussex. 10/14/2003
