William John Saunderson wasn’t quite a teenager when his family moved north from Toronto to Maple in 1945, and didn’t he just love to play baseball. He loved it so much that when his family decided to move back to Toronto, Saunderson refused to go with them. He’d made a commitment to his baseball team to finish the season. So, he stayed in Maple, lived with his grandparents, and only after his team had won the championship did he rejoin the rest of his family in the provincial capital.
“What an act of defiance that was by an 11-year-old,” said his son, Brian Saunderson, in a heartfelt eulogy at his father’s funeral last Friday. “It was about persistence. It was about loyalty to his community. It was about finishing the job. That defined Bill Saunderson.”
That baseball championship crest was at Saunderson’s bedside when he died on February 24, at age 92. Family and friends filled Toronto’s Cathedral Church of St. James to say goodbye to one of the truly good guys of Canadian and Ontario politics.
Bill Saunderson seemed destined for public life as soon as he was born on June 28, 1933. He was named after his grandfather, who was an alderman in Toronto from 1907 to 1912. After the younger Saunderson graduated from the University of Toronto, he eventually made his way into the investment business and did extremely well.
“He never stopped giving his time, expertise, and money,” Brian said.
Bill was named after his grandfather, William John Saunderson. (Courtesy Steve Paikin)
Saunderson’s first significant foray into politics came as a member of the so-called “Spades,” a group of Progressive Conservative activists who lived in midtown Toronto’s Eglinton riding. The group took its name from a deck of cards, and each member represented a particular playing card (Bill was the Seven of Spades). They were the backbone of candidate Dalton Camp’s efforts to win in Eglinton in the 1965 federal election but came up just short.
But Saunderson was hooked on politics and volunteered for backroom assignments for the next three decades. Given his financial acumen, he was the comptroller for the federal PC party during the 1984 and 1988 elections, during which Brian Mulroney’s Tories won back-to-back majority governments — the first time a Conservative party had done that since Sir John A. Macdonald.
Saunderson was always content to make his contribution in the backrooms. That’s until 1995, when he put his name on a ballot in the Ontario election, representing the PCs led by Mike Harris. He got nearly half the votes. At age 62, the rookie MPP was made minister of economic development, trade, and tourism, responsible for selling Ontario to the world. He loved the job. But when Premier Harris made good on his commitment to reduce the number of politicians at Queen’s Park, Eglinton riding disappeared, and Saunderson retired from politics after one eventful term in the Common Sense Revolution.
There were plenty of members of that government who took their ideological cues from Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, rather than John Robarts and Bill Davis. But Saunderson provided a calm, mature presence among the more radical right-wing ideologues of that revolutionary government.
Brian Saunderson wore his father's tie at his funeral. (Steve Paikin)
On April 30, 1998, Saunderson gave a speech in the legislature which at the time didn’t seem all that important. He pointed out that 90 per cent of Ontario’s exports went to the United States. “We must look beyond our major trading partners,” he told MPPs.
For the next nearly three decades, Ontario pretty much ignored that admonition because we had a working free trade agreement with the U.S., and people in the White House who cared about their relationships with other jurisdictions. Such is no longer the case.
“Never were those words more prescient,” Brian Saunderson eulogized.
There were many figures in national and provincial politics at Friday’s funeral, including Ontario Environment Minister Todd McCarthy, former MPP Christine Hogarth, former federal cabinet ministers Art Eggleton, Peter Van Loan, and Chris Alexander, and former Ontario cabinet minister Gordon Walker.
Like Saunderson, John Parker also served in the PC caucus from 1995 to 1999. After the funeral service, I asked the former MPP from York East what Saunderson brought to Ontario politics.
“Dignity, wisdom, perspective, perseverance, determination, respect, intelligence, all of it, all the time,” he said. Then Parker was approached by two women whom he didn’t know. They introduced themselves as the wife and daughter of the man who used to repair Saunderson’s car at the local auto body shop. He couldn’t attend the funeral because of an illness, so the other family members came to represent him. Parker was in awe.
“That tells it all right there,” he marveled. “The guy who fixes his car!”
Saunderson’s commitment to public life was obviously contagious. His son Brian started his career in municipal politics and eventually followed in his father’s footsteps and moved to Queen’s Park in 2022, winning re-election in 2025. He’s the MPP for Simcoe-Grey and proudly wore his father’s blue, maple leaf-adorned tie at the funeral.
When I spoke to Brian after the funeral, he reinforced how important baseball was in his father’s life. His father had planned to propose marriage to his mother, Meredith Robinson, on October 8, 1956. But something else was happening on that day: New York Yankees pitcher Don Larsen was pitching a perfect game in the World Series. Saunderson couldn’t propose while something that unique and historic was happening.
“You couldn’t top Larsen’s perfect game!” Brian said. So, Bill postponed his proposal until the next day. Bill and Meredith were happily married for 68 years, had three kids, nine grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.
It was left to Brian to close his eulogy with these heartfelt words: “He was my father for 64 years. He’s not here but he hasn’t left me. He’s bred in my bones and in my heart. I will live with him for the rest of my life. I love you dad. And I’ll talk to you later.”