Frank Miller died 25 years ago today.
Ontarians of a certain age will remember him well. Never mind that he was Ontario’s 19th premier; he was a helluva character. You never had a problem finding the “Man from Muskoka” in a crowd. Proud of his Scottish heritage, he wore garish plaid jackets, told corny jokes, and was a real man of the people.
But Miller had another side, which he often hid because it might conflict with that “everyman” image. For starters, he was fluently bilingual — and the first such premier of Ontario. I remember a moment from question period after Miller became premier in 1985: both opposition leaders (David Peterson and Bob Rae) asked a question in French, and the premier answered in French. It occurred to me at that moment that the Ontario legislature had never seen that happen.
Second, although he liked to downplay his educational credentials, he earned his engineering degree from McGill University (where he also suffered from polio and was bedridden for three months).
Third, although he was synonymous with Muskoka and being well-off financially, he was actually born in Toronto and grew up in hardship. His father died when Miller was only 12, so he and his mother moved to Gravenhurst.
He met his wife Ann at age 19, during his second year at McGill, and learned French. He’d been a self-starter ever since he was a kid in Toronto with a paper route; when he returned to Muskoka in 1960, he bought a lodge, sold cars at the local Chevy dealership, and then bought a second lodge. By 1964, he had three sons and then adopted a girl.
This period also saw his first foray into politics, following what Miller believed was inordinate interference by Munck township into his business. He ran for the township council in 1962 and lost. But he’d try again, multiple times.
In 1966, at age 39, Miller spent three months at Toronto General Hospital where he nearly died, probably from exposure to toxic paints in one of his former jobs.
In 1967, he won a seat on Bracebridge council, then ran for mayor three years later and lost. It looked as if his political career was over. But in 1971, Muskoka PC MPP Robert Boyer announced he wasn’t running again, and no one seemed interested in replacing him. So, five days before the nomination meeting was to take place, Miller threw his hat into the ring and won. He kept the seat in the PC column in the October 1971 election, and the new premier, Bill Davis, gave him the honour of responding to the Speech from the Throne on behalf of the government — the same honour former premier Leslie Frost had bestowed upon Davis.
Miller’s career took off. Davis appointed him health minister in 1974 with orders to get a handle on spending. When Miller tried to close Doctors’ Hospital in downtown Toronto, the community rose up in anger. So did the area’s MPP, Larry Grossman, a fellow Tory. Miller was forced to back down, and it would begin a decade-long rivalry between the two, culminating in a showdown at the 1985 PC leadership convention.
Frank Miller was known as the popular MPP from Muskoka from 1971 to 1987. He had a great sense of humour and loved to laugh. (Courtesy Steve Paikin)
In Durham (the town in central Ontario, not the region east of Toronto), Miller held a public meeting to explain why the local hospital needed to shut down. It got ugly. The mayor declared a state of emergency. The OPP took over, and 15 officers escorted Miller out of the meeting using a “flying wedge” formation. The crowd pelted Miller with stones, eggs, and snowballs, and when he got into his waiting car, tried to tip it over.
Miller was known for a great sense of humour, consistent with the times. Once, while attending an optometry conference, he walked to the stage and saw a giant picture of an eye. He said to the crowd: “Am I ever glad I’m not addressing a gynecology conference.”
Miller became treasurer (finance minister) in 1978 and ran a tight ship, occasionally finding himself offside from Premier Davis. The most glaring example of that came in 1981, when Davis had the province purchase 25 per cent of Suncor for $650 million ($2.2 billion today). The much more conservative Miller fought the sale in what he referred to as “a lonely battle” in cabinet. But in the end, Miller swallowed hard and didn’t resign his post, although he offered to.
In 1983, the Globe and Mail rifled through the treasury ministry’s garbage, finding secret budget documents. In effect, the budget had “leaked” — and opposition MPPs demanded Miller’s resignation. He considered it but ultimately didn’t, saying it would create an unfair burden and precedent for future ministers (although the shredder business increased significantly after that).
But a year later, Miller went back to Davis and told him he’d had enough, that the premier and his treasurer were too offside from each other on big issues, and he needed to resign. Davis did a very strange thing; he told Miller to be patient, that it would be worth his sticking around. What Davis was signposting was that he'd be leaving the premier’s job soon. Miller should stay where he was, then run for leader.
Why Davis did that remains a bit of a mystery. He didn’t think Miller was the right candidate to replace him. But his sense of fairness and, to some extent, loyalty prompted him to give that advice, which Miller took.
When Davis announced his retirement the day after Thanksgiving in 1984, Miller was the first candidate out of the gate. He’d already lined up a huge chunk of caucus support. The key to the PC party’s success over more than four straight decades in power was espousing a pragmatic, moderate conservatism. Miller was having none of that. He was a disciple of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and ran for the leadership on an unabashedly more right-wing ideology.
The other three more moderate leadership candidates (Grossman, Dennis Timbrell, and Roy McMurtry) aligned with each other in hopes of beating Miller, but it was the Man from Muskoka who topped the third ballot on January 26, 1985 — opening up a chasm between the old Big Blue Machine gang and the more right-wing elements of the party which had felt increasingly marginalized as the Davis years went on.
Two months later, with a 25-point lead over the opposition, Miller called an election for May. The campaign sputtered from the start. The normally open, affable, and available Miller took bad advice from his inner circle. He sat on his huge lead and took no chances. He declined to participate in a leaders’ debate and got pilloried for it. His platform landed with a bit of a thud. In a rare, unguarded moment, he admitted to the Globe and Mail’s John Cruickshank that “they won’t let me talk to you,” referring to his advisers.
The tartan jackets disappeared, replaced by staid blue jackets and gray slacks. People wondered, Where did the real Frank Miller go?
On election night, Miller’s Tories took it on the chin, winning the most seats (52, to 48 for the Liberals and 25 for the New Democrats), but the Liberals garnered more votes (38 per cent of the total vote to 37 per cent for the PCs). NDP leader Bob Rae held the balance of power in a minority parliament and opted to back the Liberals. The opposition parties combined forces in the legislature to defeat Miller’s government, ending 42 straight years of Tory reign in Ontario.
Miller turned out not to have been the right man for mid-1980s Ontario, but he (mostly) enjoyed contributing to public life. Two years after losing the premiership, he even accepted an appointment from his successor, Premier Peterson, to become the new chair of the Ontario International Corporation. Miller always seemed happiest while selling Ontario to the world.
In 1991, he jumped back into politics, becoming chair of the District of Muskoka, but there he found many of the same frustrations that dogged him at Queen’s Park.
In some respects, Miller may have been ahead of his time with his intense dislike of tax increases, big deficits, and what he saw as too much government. Common sense revolutionaries regarded him as “Mike Harris before Mike Harris.”
Miller had suffered a heart attack while playing goal at Maple Leaf Gardens in 1976 and spent much of his life dealing with the effects. Some of his friends think he experienced a second attack on election night in 1985. On July 21, 2000, he suffered a fatal heart attack while in Bracebridge at age 73.
Miller’s son Norm, who served as the MPP for Parry Sound-Muskoka from 2001 to 2022, once told me there was a wonderful silver lining to his father’s 1985 defeat. He’s convinced the pressures of the time were so intense that, had his father stayed in politics, he’d have surely died in the 1980s.
“Because he lost, I think we got the pleasure of his company for another 15 years,” he said.
So, the next time you’re on the second floor of Queen’s Park and you walk past the portrait of an amiable fellow, sitting with a wry smile on his face, consider this: there was a lot more to like and remember about Frank Stuart Miller than just the way he left politics.
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