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.
Banana Republic? One day, just before Pierre Trudeau took his celebrated late night walk in the snow outside 24 Sussex Drive, to decide he didn't want to be prime minister anymore, I received Ð as most all columnists do Ñ an anonymous phone call. The voice Ñ I still do not know who it was to this day Ñ said, "Watch out, Fotheringham, Paul Martin Jr. is going for the Liberal leadership." The voice hung up. I'm not sure I even knew at the time there was someone called Paul Martin Jr. (having known his Daddy well.) I checked him out Ñ Power Corp., Canada Steamship Lines Ñ and ran a blind item in my column suggesting a Paul Martin Jr. might be sniffing at leadership of the Grits. Weeks later I was walking out of the Ritz-Carlton in Montreal when a couple approached me. "You're Fotheringham?" the male enquired. I gave the standard answer: "Depends on whether you're gonna kick me or kiss me." "Brian Mulroney has warned me about you," he said. "He says you invent politicians, puff them up, blow them up like a large balloon, and then stick a pin in them." "Of course," I said. "That's how I make a living." "Come with me," he instructed. Dropped off his wife, took me up to his office Ñ this now being midnight Ñ opened a bottle of Scotch and Paul Martin and I became friends Ñ as much as this perilous role of journalism can allow a scribbler to become a semi-friend of a politician. He explained that he couldn't make up his mind Ñ having made a fortune obviously Ñ whether to go into politics or go to a dream of helping out the disaster of the African colonies the Empire had deserted. I thought at the time that a 40-something millionaire who couldn't make up his mind was not really an ideal politician. In my long study of that peculiar animal, the politician, the only thing I know is that Richard Nixon and Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney announced at age 17 to their high school mates that they planned to be president, or prime minister, and all achieved that goal. Someone who wondered between politics and saving the natives in Africa, I didn't quite understand. Always welcome with his hospitality on subsequent visits to his home in Montreal, I further puzzled on his quavering. So, I was further amused to see in the Globe and Mail, some fine digging by two of their Ottawa staff. Revealing how two young Liberal acolytes, Terrie O'Leary and David Herle, on reading that blind column item drove from Ottawa to Montreal to check out this mysterious candidate to make sure he was not "a political dud." And the two are now the major stick-handlers of the future prime minister. See 'Quebec' P.# Con't from P.# The reason J. Chretien hates P. Martin, beside the fact that he, 18th of 19 children born in the Quebec bush, only nine of them surviving infancy, is that he fought his way up through 40 years in Parliament while the Montreal millionaire floated into the cabinet. I once asked Martin, in a long interview in his office, how old he was when he became Ñ after spending a university summer as an oil-rigger in Alberta and becoming connected with Power Corp's Maurice Strong Ñ a millionaire. He looked at the ceiling, and said, "Oh, I think about 30." The reason the PM detests him is he thinks Martin is so indecisive as to be weak. Which led to the arcane occasion when Martin, driving back to Ottawa from his Quebec farm, learned on his car radio he had been fired as finance minister. Ever the consummate politician with perfect memory, Martin knows my son was once involved with Young Liberals in Vancouver. Every time I see him, he enquires, "How's Brady?" We all know we are going to become the laughing stock of the world when, on Nov. 15, the Grit machinery having been hijacked by Martin, will anoint him Liberal leader at the party convention in Toronto. While the wily Chretien maintains he is sticking around until Feb. 2004. We will have two prime ministers Ñ looking like a banana republic. The last time I saw Martin was at a swish Ottawa evening. I asked him when we are going to sit down again for a long, thoughtful interview. He said, "Allan, for you, anytime." That was before the famous I quit/you're fired weekend on the car radio. Since then, I've talked to his hired flacks to solidify the previous promise. The result: complete silence. P.S. to Paul (Brady is now in Seoul, South Korea, on a year's contract teaching English and writing a book.) Hope he's gonna tell the truth.
