Bob Rae remembers getting the phone call on a Sunday afternoon. It was extremely odd for the then leader of the Ontario NDP to get a call from any Progressive Conservative cabinet minister, to come to a private briefing the next morning. But then again, the call didn't come from just any minister in William Davis' government. The call came from Robert Elgie.
When Rae showed up, he was met by both Premier Davis and Elgie, then the minister of consumer and commercial relations.
"Bob, we've got a serious problem," Elgie began. "There are criminal elements that want to take over a trust company in Ontario. It's just not good at all, but legally, there's nothing we can do about it. So what we need is to do is pass a law preventing it and we have to do it in a single day. We need the opposition to help us pass this bill or the consequences could be dire. Can you help us out?"
As a member of the opposition, Rae's job at the time was to oppose. Or at the very least, make life more difficult for the government in hopes of making them look incompetent.
But Rae considered the sources of this request: Bill Davis and Bob Elgie.
"Is this really what we have to do?" Rae asked them.
"Yes, it truly is," they responded.
"Well, if it's good enough for you two, it's good enough for me," Rae replied. And with that, Ontarians avoided another trust company scandal that could have brought the public's confidence in the entire sector into question. The three parties presented the bill as some kind of minor technical housekeeping measure, and it skated through the provincial parliament in a day.
I like this story for two reasons. First, it shows that there was a time in our public life, when the chips were down, that honourable members would act as the adjective suggests; they put their partisan interests aside and acted in the public interest. It required a level of mutual trust and respect that clearly existed 30 years ago in that legislature, but that seems all but gone today.
And second, the story reflects just how admired and respected Robert Elgie was by everyone who had dealings with him, because he was one of the finest public servants ever to sit at Queen's Park.
"It says something about how we used to do politics," said Rae, the Liberal MP for Toronto Centre since 2008.
Robert Elgie died last month at the age of 84. I wrote about his life in a blog post published at the time.
On Saturday, May 4 (exactly one month after his death), hundreds of friends and family gathered at the Timothy Eaton Memorial Church in midtown Toronto to remember one of the last great Red Tories.
"He was one of the smartest people I knew," said Rae to a gathering in the church basement after the funeral service. "He had an intellectual brilliance you don't often see in public life. And he was a truly kind person and a gentleman."
Elgie was both a lawyer and a brain surgeon. Yet he put both of those careers on hold, no doubt foregoing millions in income, to serve in the Davis Government from 1977 to 1986.
For 56 years, he was married to his best friend and confidante Nancy, who shared his love of public life. She's currently a school trustee for the York Region District School Board. Elgie was blessed with five children and 13 grandchildren, which included two sets of twins at either end of the age spectrum: one set that's 22 years old, and another set that's 10 months old.
"He suffered for the last few months with great dignity," Nancy said in her eulogy. "But his body was ready to leave this world."
Stewart Elgie, associate director of the University of Ottawa’s Institute of the Environment, and the Elgies' oldest son, remembers asking his father as a child: "What is the meaning of life?" Elgie, the father, told his son he'd get back to him the next day with an answer, as he wanted to give it some thought. The next day, the answer came:
"Make the world a better place for those around us," was the reply. "Those words exemplified his own life," Stewart Elgie said.
Despite having an ultra-serious side, Robert Elgie had his funny moments. During one election campaign in a particularly tough part of the riding where few Conservative supporters could be found, Elgie knocked on one constituent's door, and when a woman answered, said in his deep sonorous voice and with a straight face: "I'm Roger Ramjet. Danger's the game. Ramjet's the name."
On another occasion, Elgie had NDP MPP Floyd Laughren over to his home in Keswick. As Laughren tried to pat Elgie's dog Jenny, the dog snarled and nipped at him.
"Good Tory dog," was all Elgie said to laughs from everyone present.
"I'm not sure he believed in God," Stewart Elgie admitted in his eulogy, "but he was one of the most moral men I knew."
"He also had a crush on Olivia Newton-John, who was on his shortlist of second wives. And he saw every James Bond movie twice."
Perhaps one of the reasons Robert Elgie was such a fine man stems from the family he came from. "He loved his father, but he didn't follow his father's example," said Stewart. Elgie's father was also an MPP. His name was Goldwin Elgie, and he represented Toronto's Woodbine riding in the 1930s and 40s. The family's dirty secret was that Goldwin was an alcoholic and wife-abuser.
"My dad's greatest accomplishment was taking on the best parts of his father's character but not the crap," said Stewart.
One of Robert Elgie's best pals was NDP MPP Elie Martel, whose daughter Shelley was also an MPP, and whose son-in-law Howard Hampton is a former Ontario NDP leader.
"Look at what his dad stood for in the 1945 election," Martel said in his eulogy. "A 40-hour work week. One-hundred per cent compensation for the disabled. Hospitalization and surgery regardless of one's ability to pay. Welfare. Housing. You wonder why Bob became a Red Tory?"
Bill Fatsis, now a citizenship court judge, but once a former Tory candidate and assistant in Elgie's office, once saw the side of Elgie that resembled Mount Vesuvius. Fatsis thought he was doing Elgie a good turn by trying to get a summer job for one of Elgie's daughters, in another cabinet minister's office.
"When Bob found out, he was enraged," Fatsis recalls. "Do you think I got into public life so my kids could jump the queue ahead of all those other poor bastards out there? You've learned nothing in your three years with me. Now fix this and get out!" Elgie screamed at Fatsis. It's hard to imagine any minister today reacting the same way. Maybe they would, but it's still hard to imagine.
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