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.
All the trauma, all the drama, over this strange election is whether a boy from the flat prairie can make it past the Manitoba border and win the hearts of those vital Ontario voters Ñ who control one-third of Canada's ballots. What no one notes is that for half a century now, 50 per cent of our prime ministers have come from that supposedly-dreaded Western Canada sumphole. Four from Western Canada. Four from Central Canada. The fact that three of the four didn't last very long is one thing. But the neglected fact is that Canadian voters as a whole trusted the four enough to put them in 24 Sussex Drive. That's exactly what the ever-fitful, ever-changeable Ontario voters Ñ who will decide this election on Monday Ñ are trying to figure out. Is the new boy too new, too untested and not reliable? But Stephen Harper has had four who have gone before him, and at least won the big prize. At one side of the Berlin wall at the Manitoba border: John Diefenbaker, Joe Clark, Kim Campbell, John Turner Ñ product of the University of British Columbia and ran from a Vancouver riding when he became PM. On the other side of the allegedly-impregnable wall: Lester Pearson, Pierre Trudeau, Jean Chretien, Paul Martin Ñ Pearson the only one not a Quebec lawyer. (In fact, if you go back a bit further, to Alberta's R.B. Bennett Ñ followed by Mackenzie King and Louis St. Laurent Ñ it would show Western Canada with five of the last 11 prime ministers. Not a bad show for a sparsely-populated region up against the millions decorating Ontario and Quebec.) One fateful morning early in 1980, Prime Minister Joe Clark had has usual staff meeting with his senior Ñ and some junior Ñ aides. He was about to close the routine gathering with a casual query asking if anyone else had anything to bring up. "Yes," said Nancy Jamieson, a pretty blonde who was all of 25, "you're going to lose the vote tonight." That would be the vote of non-confidence (moved by a NDP MP by name of Bob Rae) on Finance Minister John Crosbie's budget. She could count, and Joe's men couldn't. After all, she was female. They laughed. All they had to do was to offer a minor committee vice-chair to one of the small and lonely rump of Social Credit MPs from Quebec Ñ or a "fact-finding" mission to Australia at Christmas time. Instead this was Tough Joe who had declared his minority government was going to govern "as if it was a majority" Ñ the worst political decision since the Emperor Caligula of Rome made his horse a pro-consul. And so Tough Joe's government fell that night. Who listens to a girl? And so the three Western Canadian PMs since Dief Ñ Joe, Turner and Campbell Ñ lasted a total of only 17 months in power. Ontario will decide if it trusts the new boy. Monday? Hold onto your hat.
