Jim Bradley was the Cal Ripken Jr. of Queen’s Park.
Like the great Baltimore Orioles shortstop, Bradley just kept showing up for work, day after day. And the fans loved him. Ripken became baseball’s “Iron Man,” playing in 2,632 consecutive games, a record that will never be broken.
Bradley was pretty much the same at Queen’s Park. He was born to do politics. He served at the legislature from June 9, 1977, to June 6, 2018, an astonishing 11 straight election victories in his beloved St. Catharines. That’s 40 years, 11 months, and 29 days in office without interruption. Only one MPP in Ontario history ever served longer (Harry Nixon, from 1919 to 1961).
When Bradley finally lost in the Liberal wipeout of 2018, he staged a comeback and became the chair of Niagara Region in the municipal elections just a few months later. And he held that post until September 26, 2025. Bradley just loved public life, and the public was clearly happy to have him in it.
A big part of the 1985 Liberal government's front bench: from left to right: David Peterson, Jim Bradley, Robert Nixon, and Sean Conway, at Nixon's 90th birthday celebration in 2018. (Steve Paikin)
Bradley suffered a stroke a few weeks ago and was never able to recapture his health. He was also suffering from liver cancer. He decided to seek medical assistance in dying on September 26. He was 80 years old.
James J. Bradley was born in Sudbury, became a teacher in the Niagara Peninsula but quickly figured out that politics was his destiny. He got himself elected to St. Catharines city council in 1970 and spent the next 55 years in public life, only leaving once for those few months in 2018.
Like so many of the greats, he lost in his first two attempts to get elected to Queen’s Park, in 1967 and 1971. But he finally tasted victory in 1977 (by only 723 votes) and never looked back.
He spent his first eight years as a Liberal MPP in opposition. In 1981, Premier Bill Davis bought a $10.6 million Challenger executive jet to make getting around the province easier. But as the worst recession since the Great Depression took hold, Bradley skewered the premier, constantly listing other things that money could have been spent on.
“This does little to help people such as laid-off autoworkers, financially strapped senior citizens, struggling farmers, the desperate single parent, or perhaps the forgotten psychiatric patient,” Bradley would say. Not with the over-the-top, fake indignation of today’s question period, but with sincere and steady understatement. His campaign was so effective, Davis’s principal secretary John Tory (yes, that one), told the premier he was getting creamed on the issue and had to get rid of the jet. Davis traded it in for two water bombers used to fight forest fires.
Bradley was a guest on The Agenda many times over the years. (Courtesy Steve Paikin)
After eight years in opposition, Bradley was part of the Liberal crew that in 1985 turfed the 42-year-long Tory dynasty, making David Peterson the premier. Peterson took Bradley with him to an interprovincial meeting. As they looked out the window at the airport, jets belonging to Quebec and British Columbia in view, Peterson teased Bradley about their “rinky-dink prop plane.”
(In 2009, Bradley sent Davis a personal note congratulating him on his 80th birthday. And with the Liberals now in power under Premier Dalton McGuinty, Davis teased his old friend by asking, “don’t you now wish you’d let us keep that jet?”)
Gary Gallon, Mark Rudolph, Bradley, and David Oved . (Courtesy Mark Rudolph)
Peterson tapped Bradley to be environment minister and, if you ask around, people from all parties will tell you he was the best one we’ve ever had.
Two factors allowed for his success. First, Bradley cared a great deal about the environment and surrounded himself with a group of young, idealistic, political advisers such as Mark Rudolph, Gary Gallon, and David Oved. Second, he always had the backing of his premier, a luxury not historically afforded to the environment file. He had the political authority to get stuff done. And did he ever.
At last year's Robarts-McKeough Luncheon with former cabinet colleagues Greg Sorbara and Eleanor McMahon. (Steve Paikin)
Previous ministers had tried to get the province’s worst polluters to clean up their act, but to little effect. Corporate executives would simply lobby the finance or economic development ministers, or even the premier, to back off.
But Bradley and his team developed something called Countdown Acid Rain, targeting the worst point sources of sulphur dioxide emissions in Ontario and demanding the owners dramatically reduce their pollution, or else he’d fine them — or even shut them down. Companies such as Ontario Hydro, Inco, Falconbridge, and Algoma Steel found themselves in the crosshairs and tried to fight back. But this time, when the executives went over Bradley’s head, Peterson backed his minister. The result: the companies spent millions to reduce the pollution they spewed into the air, then took credit for their improved environmental standards.
Bradley got the Spills Bill passed, requiring companies to contribute to a sort of superfund that would clean up their chemical messes, rather than having the taxpayer foot the bill alone.
And that blue box you put your recycling in every week? That too was a Bradley initiative, and it was the first of its kind in North America. These were the days when Ontario was an environmental leader.
Bradley and his former cabinet colleague (and foe) Robert Nixon share a laugh about old times at Nixon's 90th birthday party in 2018. (Courtesy Steve Paikin)
Bradley’s fights in cabinet with then-treasurer Robert Nixon were legendary. The environment and finance ministers frequently tangled, with debates turning into shouting matches. But the premier frequently backed Bradley, forcing the treasurer to find more money to pay for environmental programs. But in 2018, at Nixon’s 90th birthday party in his hometown of St. George, there were Bradley and Nixon, hugging and laughing, and just thoroughly enjoying the memory of those days.
Bradley was also a great constituency guy. He helped convince the premier to move the ministry of transportation’s head office to St. Catharines, putting 1,400 stable and well-paying jobs into the often overlooked city. He also twisted plenty of arms to get a new hospital built for “St. Kitts,” not to mention widening the Queen Elizabeth Way along the Niagara Peninsula.
(There weren’t too many MPPs who had a closer ear to the ground in their constituencies than Bradley. He’d often tell cabinet or caucus colleagues about what he was hearing at the local watering hole in St. Catharines: “I don’t think this is going to play with the folks at The Golden Pheasant.”)
Then the Liberals fell on hard times, losing elections in 1990, 1995, and 1999. Bradley found himself back on the opposition benches for the next 13 years. But he was admired by people on all sides of the house for not employing a take-no-prisoners approach.
In 2003, the Liberals returned to power under McGuinty, and Bradley found himself back in cabinet as minister of tourism, then transportation, then municipal affairs and housing, and then community safety. But when environment minister John Wilkinson was defeated in the 2011 election, Bradley reclaimed his old post and held it through the transition to Kathleen Wynne’s premiership, making her the third premier he served.
Bradley never showed more class than when he was dropped from cabinet in a shuffle, but attended the swearing-in ceremony to show support for his successor. He's seated beside NDP MPP Rosario Marchese. (Steve Paikin)
When Bradley was dropped in a 2016 cabinet shuffle, the then 71-year-old demonstrated incredible class by showing up to the swearing-in ceremony of his successor, putting on a brave and supportive face despite what was surely a hard moment for him. He lost his seat two years later, along with 48 other Liberal MPPs, as the electorate turned on Wynne’s Liberals and elected Doug Ford as Ontario’s 26th premier.
I once asked him how he managed to keep winning, and winning, and winning.
“I take a relatively non-partisan approach,” he said, “so I’ve got active support from Conservatives and New Democrats as well.”
Bradley never married and never had kids. He was very much married to the job; a subject I once asked him about. “I’m personally not put out by that, because it’s a choice I made,” he told me. He sometimes described seeing colleagues with spouses and kids as having what looked like an impossible balancing act.
“It was my decision and I have to live with it, so I won’t complain about it,” he said. “But I knew politics would consume all my time, and at times I regret that. But I’m also having a direct influence on the lives of many people.”
Bradley loved nothing more than attending Buffalo Sabre games. I'd bump into him there from time to time. (Steve Paikin)
Bradley loved sports and would travel all over North America to attend events such as the Kentucky Derby, the Stanley Cup playoffs, or the World Series. He adored his (somewhat) local NHL team, the Buffalo Sabres, and had season tickets. I’d sometimes see him at a game and we’d catch up on politics and sports. He knew of my obsession with the Boston Red Sox and, when visiting Fenway Park, would often pick up a souvenir program and send it to me.
On Friday, September 26, Bradley decided enough was enough. He made a series of final phone calls to say goodbye to people who were important to him. His friend and colleague Mark Rupcic was with him at the end, to help. As was his long-time campaign manager and friend, Ron Cuthbert.
“It’s time for him to rest,” Rupcic said. “He’s earned it.”
Bradley (left) with former Premier David Peterson (right) at a 2024 Queen's Park tribute to their cabinet colleague Sean Conway (centre). (Steve Paikin)
I received one of those calls. When we spoke, I could scarcely believe this would be our final conversation. Bradley sounded weak, but in good humour. As always, he teased me about the Red Sox and how miserable I must be with their late season swoon. (He’s right about that.) He told me how much he appreciated the work I’d done over the years, and I told him how much I treasured our friendship, which lasted more than 40 years.
“Well, we had a lot of things in common, didn’t we?” he said, referring to our love of politics and sports, and not necessarily in that order.
I told him I intended to see him again, hopefully not too soon, in that big hockey arena in the sky. He responded by saying the final song at his funeral would be Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again.”
Then he finished with a joke.
“There are only three things in life that are unavoidable,” he said. “They are: death, taxes, and construction on the QEW.”
That was such a Jim Bradley thing to say, I actually burst out laughing. Then he finished with a “Farewell, Steve.”
I don’t know if he shed a tear at that moment, but I sure did.
No, Bradley didn’t have children. But he very much saw Ontarians as his extended family. And I, for one, mourn the loss of a beloved family member today.
Donate Now