I started this day with a visit to a graveyard. Not the typical way to start a day. But this is not a typical day.
Thirty years ago today, former Ontario premier John P. Robarts walked into the shower stall on the second floor of his Rosedale home, and took with him the shotgun that the Progressive Conservative Party gave to him as a gift for his years of public service.
Robarts then committed suicide, bringing to an end one of the most brilliant and tragic lives of any former politician in our country's history.
I chronicled Robarts' life in a book several years ago. And as the years go on, I continue to marvel at the impact his premiership had on the province of Ontario.
For example, during Robarts' years as premier (1961-71), Ontario built:
- its first nuclear power plant
- an entire community college system
- several new universities including York, Trent, Lakehead, and Brock
- GO Transit
- the Niagara Escarpment Commission
- Ontario Place
- the Ontario Science Centre
- the Confederation of Tomorrow conference, to examine Quebec's relationship with the rest of Canada
- hundreds of new schools
- additional funding for the Roman Catholic school system
- Medicare (although reluctantly, given Robarts' fears that the federal government would decrease its share of the funding -- precisely what's happened)
And the list goes on. Robarts' successor, William Davis, ensured his mentor's name would live on by asking the University of Toronto to name its enormous, flagship library after Robarts. (Ironically, the former premier, upon seeing the building, exclaimed, "It's the ugliest goddamn building in the city and it's got my name on it!")
The Robarts years were probably Ontario's best ever. The province began its mark towards urbanization in a major way. The revenues kept pouring into the treasury. Budgets were balanced. Times were good.
But Robarts' personal life was exactly the opposite. His first wife hated politics and was not an asset to his political career. After their divorce, he remarried a woman 28 years his junior. That was a happy marriage until Robarts was felled by a stroke in 1981. Suddenly, the formerly dashing first minister, corporate lawyer, and member of 16 boards of directors was a shell of his former self. And his much younger wife did not sign on to be a nursemaid to an increasingly depressed, weakened husband.
The Robarts tragedy didn't stop with his own suicide. His first wife Norah was an alcoholic. One night, she choked on a piece of meat while watching TV by herself, and died. Robarts' son Timothy also committed suicide, a decade before his father. He was just 21. He left a 12-page, single spaced letter, blaming no one, but saying he felt he just wasn't cut out for this world. And Robarts' daughter Robin died two-and-a-half years ago of cancer, only in her early 50s.
There has been one change to Robarts' final resting place. Thanks to the Premiers' Gravesite Program, there is a new plaque in front of his tombstone, marking the fact that a former premier now rests here. It's an appropriate change, although I notice there is still no Ontario flag near the headstone, which is supposed to be part of the deal.
In any event, rest in peace John Parmenter Robarts, who died 30 years ago today.