You wouldn’t think a guy who’s just been through four knee operations and suffered a stroke would consider himself particularly fortunate. But talk to John McDermid, who was a cabinet minister in Brian Mulroney’s governments back in the 1980s and ’90s, and he’ll assure you he does.
“I’ve had some amazing experiences,” insists McDermid, who will turn 84 next month.
McDermid won four straight elections for the Progressive Conservative party, starting in 1979. He won handily during three of those campaigns but barely got back in during the 1980 election. He won by 367 votes out of 62,000 votes cast.
“And we had 367 polls in that election, so I won by one vote per poll. If anyone says one vote doesn’t count, well, let me tell you, it does!” he chuckles.
McDermid was appointed to Mulroney’s cabinet in 1988 and has met every prime minister since the current one’s dad and some U.S. presidents too. And don’t forget royalty: he was also introduced to the then Prince Charles and Princess Diana, when they were together, and the king and queen of Spain. He had a good go in politics and decided not to run again in 1993, when the Tories were reduced to two seats.
No doubt, very few of his constituents knew that, in March 1940, McDermid’s maternal grandmother sent her single, 19-year-old daughter from Sarnia to the Salvation Army Hospital in Hamilton, where she gave birth to McDermid. The teenager was then forced to give up her child — the result, McDermid suspects, of a high-school fling — for adoption. That’s what unwed mothers did back then, if they didn’t have abortions in secret.
McDermid’s original name was David Michael Date.
Brampton minister John McDermid. (Courtesy of John McDermid)
When McDermid was three weeks old, he caught a break. A United Church minister from Brampton named John McDermid and his wife, Nora, couldn’t have kids of their own, so they adopted “David Date” and renamed him John.
“I was actually the fifth John in a row,” he says.
McDermid got a radio and television arts degree from Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University), then hosted a show on CHOV in the Ottawa Valley. (A guy named Peter Jennings hosted a competing show opposite him in Ottawa.)
He got involved in PC party politics in Brampton because he knew the daughters of Gordon Graydon, Peel’s MP from 1935 to 1953. Eventually, he served on a riding executive and worked for Ontario premier Bill Davis during election campaigns.
In 1979, PC party leader Joe Clark encouraged him to run; it turned out to be a pretty good election for both men. Clark became Canada’s 16th prime minister, and McDermid became the MP for Brampton–Georgetown for the first of his four terms.
Five years ago, a friend of McDermid’s told him that she had done AncestryDNA and discovered she had two brothers living nearby. She recommended he do the same, given his own past history with adoption. McDermid did it and got a report back with five names of potential relatives. One of those names was “Date,” his name at birth.
“I discovered I have two brothers and two sisters, all younger than I and all still alive,” McDermid tells me, still with wonder in his voice.
He still didn’t know his birth father’s identity, but six months later, he found that out and discovered he had another two sisters and a brother. McDermid was 79 years old and experiencing the most wonderful and astonishing news of his life.
Turns out his birth father was a man named Dick Ouelette, who was the icemaker at the Board of Trade Curling Club in Woodbridge. McDermid figures he was pretty good at his job, because his nickname was “Smooth.” Two years ago, McDermid met Ouelette’s widow in Toronto, and when he told her the story of his birth, she replied, “I’m not surprised. He ran around on me all the time.”
Left: John McDermid with former prime minister Brian Mulroney. Right: McDermid with Joe Clark, who urged him to run for MP in 1979. (Courtesy of John McDermid)
McDermid never did meet either of his birth parents. His birth mother died of lupus at age 83. But when he visited her daughter (his sister) Bonnie for the first time, Bonnie told him she had a gift that she’d been holding on to for years. Apparently, their mother was always crocheting and knitting stuff. She had four children — at least four that all the siblings knew of. But before she died, Bonnie’s mother gave her five sets of knitted placemats, with no explanation.
“I could never figure out why Mother gave me a fifth set,” Bonnie told McDermid, “until today.” She gave him the fifth set.
“My siblings knew nothing about me,” McDermid confirms. “Nobody knew. Then I dropped in out of nowhere, and they accepted me. And I so enjoyed their company. It happened so fast, my head spun around. It was a feeling of joy that came over me.”
Brother Peter Oulette and sister Michelle Massey, from McDermid's birth father's side. (Courtesy of John McDermid)
McDermid’s maternal grandmother was, in fact, a PC party official in Sarnia responsible for dispensing patronage in that part of the province. “And I wasn’t a total stranger to my birth siblings either,” McDermid says. “I wasn’t a household name, but I wasn’t unfamiliar to them. They knew me from my days in politics. They’re good Tories!”
Despite his recent happy discoveries, life has thrown its share of curveballs at McDermid. His first marriage, of 27 years, to Elaine, ended in divorce, although he spent the last few years of her life attending to her as she died of brain cancer. His second marriage, of 16 years, to former professional golfer Sandra Post, also ended in divorce. Neither marriage produced children.
Today, McDermid lives in a seniors’ residence in Orangeville, about half an hour from his old stomping grounds in Brampton. While he was in hospital recovering from a fourth knee operation, he suffered a stroke.
“I’ve got a bum left leg,” he says. “My left arm isn’t bad. I’m learning to cope with it. It’s a challenge, but God sends them. I’ve lost 40 pounds. I’m a skinny bugger now!”
Notwithstanding his health problems, McDermid just seems incredibly grateful.
“Thank God my mom and dad adopted me,” he says. “I am one of the luckiest guys in the world.”
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