You’ve got to admit, former premier Bill Davis had a pretty good sense of humour.
Fifty years ago today, on February 26, 1974, Davis appointed a 27-year-old MPP from Don Mills to his executive council, making Dennis Timbrell the youngest cabinet minister in Ontario history. And what portfolio did the premier give his precocious MPP, who’d been elected only two and a half years earlier?
What else: minister responsible for youth.
Timbrell still maintains the distinction of being the youngest cabinet minister ever. New Democrat Shelley Martel got close in 1990 at age 27. But she was three months older than Timbrell. In the current cabinet, Premier Doug Ford’s nephew Michael is the youngest minister, having been appointed after the 2022 election. But he was 28.
Timbrell seemed destined to make waves in politics. The story goes that, when his great-grandfather saw a picture of young Dennis at only three months of age, he said, “That boy’s gonna be a politician!” Sure enough, Timbrell got elected in the 1971 election at age 24.
Dennis Timbrell at the January 1985 leadership convention, held at the CNE Coliseum. (Steve Paikin)
Davis saw something of himself in Timbrell, a somewhat shy but quite capable and ambitious MPP who made such a good impression that Davis gave him a huge promotion to minister of energy less than a year and a half after Timbrell’s cabinet debut. And all this happened even though Timbrell had supported Davis’s chief opponent, Allan Lawrence, at the 1971 PC leadership convention.
“That never came up, not even once, in our interactions over the next 14 years,” Timbrell now says.
At that point — it was now the summer of 1975 — the Tories had barely squeaked back into office with a small minority government. Ontario Hydro was telling the premier it needed a massive 30 per cent boost in electricity rates, something that could easily have brought down the fragile government. (For a more modern-day example, think about what electricity rates did to Premier Dalton McGuinty’s government. It wasn’t good.) Davis essentially told Timbrell to find some way to fix the problem without making the Tories more politically vulnerable.
Remarkably, Timbrell did. He managed to convince the opposition parties to put the province — rather than their partisan political interests — first. As a result, the legislature created an all-party committee (chaired by NDP leader Donald C. MacDonald) that had the power to call witnesses, do independent research, and see whether the rate increase was warranted.
Left: Dennis Timbrell (right), after having moved to Larry Grossman (centre) following the second-ballot results at the January 1985 convention. Right: Frank Miller's campaign "loaned" some delegates to the Grossman campaign to ensure Timbrell would drop off the ballot early. (Steve Paikin)
Apparently, it was. And all parties signed a unanimous report. The same process happened the following year as well and again resulted in a unanimous report. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Timbrell’s expert stickhandling of that issue might have saved the government’s skin.
“No confidence motion ever developed around the issue of electricity-rate increases,” he now says. “Proud to have guided our government around the issue.”
Again, Davis took note. In 1977, Timbrell scored another big promotion, this time to minister of health, a role he kept for five years. Ontario has had 33 health ministers since the ministry was created 100 years ago. Timbrell is the fourth-longest-serving minister ever, and no one over the past half-century has had the job longer than he had it.
Timbrell shocked provincial politics when he asked Davis to shuffle him out of the high-profile health ministry to become agriculture minister in February 1982. It seemed a bizarre move for the Toronto-based MPP, who would surely be giving up significant media opportunities, not to mention zeroes in his budget, to assume the new role. (Today, the agriculture minister’s budget is $818 million; conversely, the health minister has an $80 billion budget.)
But Timbrell was playing the long game. He suspected Davis would be leaving politics at some point in this mandate, his fourth. He also knew he needed to build a much bigger base of support in rural Ontario, where the Progressive Conservatives as a party were strong, but where Timbrell’s profile needed work — thus, the move to agriculture.
Sure enough, two years later, Davis retired, and Timbrell jumped into the race to replace him, confident that his age (he was only 38) and his mix of experiences would serve him well in a four-person race against older cabinet colleagues Frank Miller (57), Roy McMurtry (52), and Larry Grossman (41).
The author covered the January 1985 PC leadership convention for CBLT Channel 5 Toronto. (Courtesy of Steve Paikin)
Davis admonished his ministers to make nice in the contest to succeed him, and, in public, the contestants obeyed. But, on convention day, January 26, 1985, Miller’s team played some dirty pool designed to hurt Timbrell. Miller led after the first ballot, but with only 30 per cent of the delegates, it was a precarious margin. His campaign team feared it would lose a one-on-one final ballot against Timbrell, so it cleverly orchestrated a manoeuvre to “loan” some of its delegates to the Grossman camp on the second ballot.
Left unsaid but clearly believed was the notion that the more conservative Miller could beat Grossman on the third and final ballot, but probably not Timbrell, who would have been the consensus choice of the party’s red Tory wing. Grossman was Jewish, a non-starter for some delegates four decades ago.
The strategy worked. Grossman emerged only six votes ahead of Timbrell on the second ballot out of nearly 1,700 ballots cast. It was so close, the party actually had an unprecedented recount. But the results were the same, and Timbrell, in shock, was forced out of the contest. He stuck to a pre-convention deal he’d made with Grossman and endorsed his fellow Toronto MPP. But Miller, as expected, narrowly beat Grossman on the last ballot by just 77 votes.
I spoke to Timbrell earlier this month about that event and the rumours of “delegate loaning” I had heard on the convention floor at the CNE Coliseum. He assured me, those weren’t rumours.
“Two years after that convention, I got a call from someone,” Timbrell began. “The man said he was calling to offer an apology.”
Timbrell said the conversation went something like this:
Timbrell: “Why are you apologizing?”
Caller: “Because of what the Miller campaign did to you at the 1985 convention.”
Timbrell: “Yes, I heard some rumours about that.”
Caller: “Well, they weren’t rumors. There was an actual plan to loan delegates to Grossman for that second ballot.”
Timbrell: “How do you know?”
Caller: “Because I was in charge of organizing the plan.”
Timbrell went silent. Then he was furious. “Well, I hope you’re happy with yourself and what you did to our party and province,” he said. Then he hung up.
Outgoing premier Bill Davis congratulates his successor, Frank Miller, at the January 1985 leadership convention. Dennis Timbrell (far right) and Larry and Carole Grossman (middle) look on. (Steve Paikin)
One can never know, but I’ve always believed that gambit against Timbrell might have cost the Ontario Tories their dynasty. Miller, while an able and affable cabinet minister, was the wrong man at the wrong time to lead the PCs. Had Timbrell (instead of Grossman) faced Miller on the third and final ballot, I’m convinced he would have won the convention and possibly the ensuing 1985 election. When Davis retired, he left the Tories 25 points up on the Liberals, led by David Peterson. And even with Miller running one of the worst campaigns in Ontario history, the PCs still emerged with the largest number of seats in the ’85 election: 52, compared to 48 for the Liberals and 25 for the New Democrats. Before Miller’s victory, there’d been no outcry in the province to ditch the Tories. I’ve always believed Timbrell would have run a better campaign than Miller, in which case, it’s quite possible the 42-year-long PC dynasty would have continued under “Premier Timbrell,” despite a terrific campaign run by Peterson and the Liberals.
But who knows?
When the Liberals and New Democrats combined forces to end the Miller government after the election, Miller stepped down, and the Tories found themselves in yet another leadership contest that year. Timbrell ran again for the brass ring, but things were now different. The prize wasn’t the premiership, but rather, leader of the opposition. Grossman was considered a tougher, sparkier candidate compared to the lower-key Timbrell.
Timbrell lost again, but just barely. The margin was 19 votes on the second ballot — another heartbreaking defeat.
He finished out his fifth term and declined to stand for re-election in 1987, but he never totally got politics out of his blood. He ran for the federal PC party in the 1997 and 2000 elections in an eastern Ontario riding but came up short both times, as the conservative vote was split between the PC and Reform parties.
A decade ago, when I was writing a biography on Davis, I asked Ontario’s 18th premier, who was notoriously tight-lipped about so much, to tell me something about him I didn’t know.
“Like what?” he asked.
“Well, how about this: tell me who you voted for at the leadership convention to replace yourself in 1985,” I answered.
From left to right: Dennis Timbrell's supporters chant at the November 1985 PC leadership convention; After losing the January 1985 PC leadership convention to Frank Miller, Timbrell lost the November 1985 race to Larry Grossman; Former premier Bill Davis at the November 1985 convention. (Steve Paikin)
“Who do you think?” he asked again. (Yes, this is what it was always like trying to get an answer out of him.)
“Larry Grossman told me you voted for him, but I don’t believe that,” I said. “I think you voted for Dennis Timbrell. I think he reminded you of you, and so you voted for him.”
There was a long silence. And then a very brief answer.
“You’re right,” was all Davis said.
When I told Timbrell that the next time I spoke to him, he seemed genuinely moved to learn it. Today, he says: “Mr. Davis gave me one opportunity after another to prove myself, so knowing that he voted for me on the second ballot is immense. My only regret is that idiots on another team robbed me of the opportunity to repay Bill Davis’s confidence in me!”
Timbrell is now 77 years old and lives in St. Thomas. He and his wife, Janet, have seven adult children, 16 grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren, with another due in June. When I suggest his family get-togethers must be either amazing or terrifying, he responds, “Got that right!”
He is still a dyed-in-the-wool Progressive Conservative, which occasionally puts him at odds with both his federal and provincial parties. His phone still rings, usually from those in the health sector seeking advice. And he tries to live by former U.S. vice-president Hubert Humphrey’s maxim: “Complaint and denunciation alone are never satisfactory; positive advocacy and action are needed to attain our goals.”
A quarter century ago, I asked Timbrell what he most loved about being in politics. “It’s the ability to make things happen,” he then said. “To pick up the newspaper in the morning and say, ‘That’s not right,’ and pick up the phone and go into a cabinet meeting and do something about it. There’s nothing like it. It’s the ultimate high.”
A high that, for the former member for Don Mills, started 50 years ago today.
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