David Peterson and Bob Rae had every reason not to like Brian Mulroney.
After all, he was supposedly an ideologically right-wing conservative and was sitting atop the biggest majority government in Canadian history: 211 seats after the September 4, 1984, election.
By the time Peterson got into the premier’s office the following June, his was the only Liberal government in the entire country. Talk about feeling isolated. And when Peterson and Mulroney faced off at their first First Ministers’ Conference, it didn’t go particularly well. Mulroney accused the new premier of having “an unbecoming degree of temerity” in criticizing his government’s attempts to find a new trading relationship with the United States. But Peterson shot right back, accusing the prime minister of “an unbecoming degree of temerity” himself in trying to move forward on free trade without Ontario’s consent.
It could have signalled the beginning of a testy relationship between the two fortysomething leaders of Canada’s two biggest governments. In fact, it didn’t. A couple of years later, the two men affixed their signatures to the Meech Lake Accord and expended significant political currency in the hopes of finally getting Quebec’s signature on the Constitution.
Left: Brian Mulroney (centre) at the 1983 PC leadership convention; Right: Mulroney (third from right) in his convention box with Peter Pocklington and Michael Wilson, both candidates who moved to support him after dropping off the ballot. (Steve Paikin)
Ultimately, it didn’t happen, as Newfoundland and Manitoba failed to ratify the agreement within the three-year timeframe. When the two men left politics — Peterson in 1990 and Mulroney in 1992 — they had huge respect for each other and what they’d tried to accomplish.
“He was unfailingly kind and generous,” Peterson emailed me late last night. “Even when we disagreed, I never disliked him. His civility and decency, in addition to his great accomplishments, will be an important part of his legacy.”
The same kind of story could be told of Mulroney’s relationship with Peterson’s successor as Ontario premier, Bob Rae, who was ideologically even further away from Mulroney than Peterson was. A year into Rae’s premiership, Mulroney appointed Hal Jackman as Ontario’s new lieutenant-governor, a move that seemed to catch Rae off guard. When reporters scrummed the new premier to get his views on Jackman, a big-time Conservative fundraiser, being appointed to the vice-regal position, Rae responded, “Don’t look at me. He wasn’t my appointment.”
Brian Mulroney at the 1983 PC leadership convention, which he won over Joe Clark. (Steve Paikin)
Again, despite vast policy differences between the PM and the premier, Mulroney and Rae forged a solid working relationship and friendship over their joint efforts to have another round of constitutional renewal succeed — the Charlottetown Accord of October 1992.
But once again, just as with Meech, the effort came up short. Charlottetown needed a unanimous vote in the federal House and in all 12 provincial and territorial legislatures (Nunavut didn’t exist yet). Only six jurisdictions voted yes. Ontario was one of them but only by 50.1 per cent.
Brian Mulroney and his wife, Mila, walk up on stage after his win on the fourth ballot at the 1983 PC leadership convention (top); card handed out at the convention. (Steve Paikin)
Nevertheless, the experience solidified a friendship between Mulroney and Rae. On future occasions, I would find myself in private settings with Ontario’s 21st premier when the subject of Mulroney would come up.
Those assembled expected Rae to rib Mulroney for their ideological differences or pile on when talk turned to Mulroney’s legal travails. But Rae never did. His respect for what the prime minister had tried to accomplish always prevailed.
Even though it didn’t last very long, Mulroney’s closest friendship with a sitting Ontario premier was with Bill Davis. Mulroney won his massive majority in September 1984, and Davis announced his retirement from public life the following month.
But the two men had considerable history. Davis once told me privately that he voted for Mulroney at the 1983 Progressive Conservative leadership convention.
Even more significantly, he turned over the keys to the “Big Blue Machine” — the Ontario Tories’ successful election-winning apparatus — to help Mulroney win the PC party leadership and then defeat Prime Minister John Turner in the ’84 federal-election campaign.
The best story about the 18th prime minister and 18th premier I’ve ever heard came from Mulroney for a biography I wrote on Davis in 2016. The two men were sharing a private moment on the ’83 leadership-campaign hustings on a bus in southwestern Ontario, when Mulroney raised the issue of what the Big Blue Machine might be able to do for his campaign’s efforts. Davis, according to Mulroney, in a rare moment of bravado, replied, “Brian, I am the Big Blue Machine.”
From left to right: Ontario premier David Peterson, federal finance minister Michael Wilson, and Brian Mulroney at Queen's Park to discuss the Meech Lake Accord, in the late '80s. (Premier's Office archives)
While there was more truth in that response than perhaps other members of the machine would have liked, the fact that the normally modest Davis uttered those words out loud made Mulroney burst out laughing when retelling the story. When I later informed him that Davis (sort of, but not terribly forcefully) denied Mulroney’s recollection of events, the former PM laughed even harder.
“He can deny it all he likes,” he chortled. “I was there. He said it!”
For two men who got on so well, they were actually nothing alike. Mulroney was a brash, outgoing extravert who loved to swear and was a superb orator. Davis was (almost always) modest, much more introverted, wouldn’t say s**t if his mouth were full of it, and tried to put people to sleep with his speeches. Mulroney was brilliantly fluently bilingual; Davis couldn’t speak a lick of French. Mulroney had been an opposition MP for all of one year before becoming prime minister; Davis didn’t spend a second of his political career in opposition and had been a government MPP for almost 12 years, including almost nine years as minister of education, before becoming premier.
Brian Mulroney with Premier Bill Davis during the 1984 federal-election campaign. (Bill Davis's Premier's Office archive)
But they liked and respected each other immensely. In fact, Davis gave Mulroney some excellent advice when the former PM was neck deep in scandal and controversy early in his first term. Mulroney had populated the senior roles in his prime minister’s office with friends and hangers-on from the campaign. Davis reminded him that “the people who get you there aren’t necessarily the best people to keep you there.” Mulroney subsequently fired many of those cronies and replaced them with professionals who cleaned up his act and enabled him to win a second consecutive majority government in 1988 — the first and still only Conservative PM since Sir John A. Macdonald to win back-to-back majorities.
Over the years, I’ve had numerous conversations with Mulroney for books, columns, and television interviews. They have always been memorable. About a decade ago, we were talking about which of his four children might follow him into public life. I naturally asked first about his son Ben, who had the highest profile of the kids and was interested in politics, quick on his feet, and shared his dad’s ability to connect with people. Mulroney informed me I was barking up the wrong tree. He told me to watch out for his daughter, Caroline, whom he figured would be the first to dive in. Which she was.
Agenda segment, April 4, 2011: Brian Mulroney, past and present
In fact, like her father, before having been elected to anything, Caroline ran for her party’s leadership (the Ontario PC Party). And, in that 2018 leadership election — like her father in his first attempt — she came third (in her case, to Doug Ford). She has, however, successfully won her York–Simcoe seat twice, while serving as a senior minister in Ford’s government for five and a half years. And rumours persist that she’ll seek the leadership again once Ford decides to pack it in.
The Mulroney offspring most like his father is probably Mark, a Bay Street businessman with five kids, who tells me he’s avoiding public life because of his family responsibilities. Numerous political observers say Mark is the total package and would be a star if he ever decided to run.
The Mulroney connections to Queen’s Park persist in 2024. But they started more than 40 years ago with — whether you liked him or not — one of the most extraordinary politicians of the 20th century.
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