It’s worth remembering around Family Day that politics can very much be a family affair. Just look at the current crop of politicians at Queen’s Park.
The premier himself is the second Doug Ford to serve in the legislature (father was an MPP from 1995 to 1999). Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney’s dad was Canada’s 18th prime minister, from 1984 to 1993. Colleges and Universities Minister Jill Dunlop’s father, Garfield, was an MPP from 1995 to 2015. MPPs Norm Miller and Mike Harris Jr. both have fathers who were Ontario premiers. (In fact, Mike Harris sat in Premier Frank Miller’s cabinet in 1985.) John Yakabuski’s dad, Paul, was an MPP from 1963 to 1987. Laurie Scott’s father was an MP from 1965 to 1993. And on it goes.
But in each of these examples, it was the parents who first blazed the political trail and were then followed into public life by their offspring.
The Bradfords, however, are different.
In fact, they’re the only parent-child combination I know of where the son got elected first, then convinced his mother to follow in his footsteps.
Brad Bradford was an urban planner for the city of Toronto, barely into his 30s, when he decided in 2018 to make the leap into municipal politics. He won his Beaches–East York Ward 19 in Toronto by just 288 votes, having received unusual twin endorsements from both Mayor John Tory and Tory’s prime challenger, former chief planner Jennifer Keesmaat. The mayor liked Bradford’s moderate politics; Keesmaat appreciated his planning chops. Now 35, Bradford is vice-chair of the influential budget committee, a member of the Toronto Transit Commission board, and on the planning and housing committee, while continuing to be an independent voice on council.
Valerie Bradford’s journey into electoral politics took a lot longer. “Our family is not a political dynasty,” she jokes.
Valerie grew up on a dairy farm in Dunnville; her parents always voted, didn’t always agree, and weren’t particularly politically engaged.
“My dad always delighted in saying, ‘I think I killed your mother’s vote again,’” she recalls.
Valerie’s own political awakening happened in the late 1970s. She wrote federal finance minister John Crosbie a letter, registering her unhappiness with a tax system she felt was unfair because it taxed a single person earning $100,000 more than a two-income family in which each partner earned $50,000 apiece. She thought household income mattered more and said so.
“That was the extent of my political involvement,” she says.
Life would later take a difficult turn for Valerie. In the 1980s, her marriage ended; her ex-husband wasn’t actively involved with the kids, leaving her a single mother to three children, ages seven, six, and three. (Brad was the oldest.) She didn’t know it at the time, but figuring out how to make that life work gave Valerie all the real-life experience she’d eventually need to understand the plight of many of her future constituents.
It was at this time, still just a child, that Brad — whose full first name is, in fact, Bradford — made one of his more important decisions. With her ex-husband out of the picture, Valerie decided to go back to her original surname, Bradford. She asked Brad what he wanted to do. He could retain his father’s last name or, like her, switch to Bradford.
“I want to be a Bradford,” her son said.
Valerie worried that her son would be welcoming a life of taunting and humiliation because his first and last names were the same. Brad didn’t care. “I’m Brad, and I’m good with that,” he said, demonstrating a wisdom well beyond his seven years of age.
“He was teased, and it was horrible,” Valerie says. “But he never let on. He always knew who he was, even at seven.”
Years later, during his run for office, Brad would tell his mother how smart the name change was. Being near the top of the alphabet meant being near the top of the ballot. “And the name is memorable,” Valerie says. “He would say, ‘People will remember my name.’”
Brad’s first run for office in 2018 was crazy-hectic. One of the first things the newly elected Ford tried to do was cut Toronto city council in half. Then a court overturned that effort. Ford threatened to use the “notwithstanding clause” of the Charter to set aside the court’s decision. Eventually, a higher court determined Ford’s law was legal, but Brad (and every other council candidate) had no idea what constituency they would be contesting until three weeks before election day.
For Valerie’s part, she eventually moved to Waterloo Region 17 years ago, chaired the Workforce Planning Board for eight years, and got involved with local Liberal politics in Kitchener. When the former Liberal MP for Kitchener South–Hespeler was charged in connection with an assault and opted not to seek re-election, Brad seized the moment.
“Mom, you’re going for the nomination, right?” he asked her.
In fact, Mom had no such plans at all. Valerie, now 68, had planned to retire. “Running for federal office was not part of my retirement plan,” she says. “But then Brad started kicking my butt regularly.” (Yes, Valerie talks like that; she’s a plain-spoken, down-to-earth person.)
“It wasn’t top of mind for her,” Brad now says, “She wasn’t all in. It took time for her to get her head around it. But it occurred to me that she had the lived experience and career experience to win an election.”
Brad saw in his mother a woman who’d spent her whole life focused on other people — first, her kids after her divorce, then people looking for work in southwestern Ontario.
“She was politically aware,” Brad says. “She just never contemplated herself being a politician.”
The Liberal nomination meeting for Kitchener South–Hespeler was called in October 2020 but not held until June 2021. “It dragged on for so long,” Valerie says. “It felt like a race with no beginning and no end.” Three candidates contested the nomination, and Valerie won on the first ballot.
One thing Valerie certainly had experience with was campaigning. After all, she’d pressed the flesh at subway stations at six in the morning and gone door-to-door for Brad in his bid for elective office.
“She’d say, ‘Nobody’s known Brad longer than I have,’” the son recalls his mother saying while door-knocking. “She was a great character reference in a way no one else could speak to.” And, of course, the son campaigned for his mother in the lead-up to last September’s federal election.
As was the case with her son, Valerie’s margin of victory was tight — just 948 votes. In fact, she told her supporters at her election-night party to go to bed, expecting it would take some time before her riding’s result could be confirmed. In the end, it took three days for Elections Canada to declare her the winner.
Now, Valerie leads the life of an MP (“It’s fast-paced; you’ve gotta go 100 miles per hour to accomplish anything”). When the House sits, she flies to Ottawa on Sunday nights and back to Kitchener on Fridays. She’s learned first-hand about the limitations of the job during the era of COVID-19. While casting some votes virtually is fine, “virtual sittings are not good for a rookie MP,” she admits. “There’s nothing like making a face-to-face connection.” As an example, Valerie met with a group one morning, then that afternoon saw three cabinet ministers in the House to help solve their problem.
“You can’t do that remotely,” she says.
The biggest change in both politicians’ lives is that they can no longer get each other on the phone whenever they want. “Now, I have to compete with others to get time in her schedule,” Brad says.
“We’re both so busy, we have to plan those calls in advance now,” adds Valerie. “There’s a lot of missed calls now.”
Given that they represent different cities in their jobs, neither holds out much hope that someday, they’ll both be at the same announcement, doing a photo op together. But that would be a bit of a dream come true. “That would certainly be one to take back to the dinner table,” Brad says.
And what does the councillor think about his unique circumstances, where the second generation entered politics before the first?
“I may have been elected first,” Brad says. “But she in every way was the role model in how to get the job done.”
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