There’s a nice tradition at Queen’s Park that, when a former member of the legislature dies, current members gather in the house to pay tribute. Occasionally, a few families and friends attend and listen to the speeches from the Speaker’s Gallery. Almost always, there are relatively few members in the House to hear the tributes because those speeches often take place at the end of the day, when MPPs have other stuff going on.
I’ve heard many of these speeches over the years. And with no disrespect to any MPPs who get tapped to eulogize their predecessors, the speeches often sound similar. The deceased members are lauded for attending to their constituents, for making a contribution to the province, and then gratitude is expressed to families for sharing their husband/wife/father/mother with us.
Most eulogies are heartfelt but not necessarily memorable. But one that took place earlier this week surely was.
On Tuesday the house was nearly full — and so, for that matter, was the Speaker’s Gallery — as members gathered to pay tribute to someone first elected in 1959 as the member for Peel. That 29-year-old MPP eventually became the second-longest serving premier in Ontario history, with a list of accomplishments that could sink a ship.
That MPP’s name was Bill Davis.
Bill Davis's family stands in front of the portrait of the former premier. (Steve Paikin)
The Speaker’s Gallery was almost full because Davis’ 89-year-old wife, four of his five kids and their spouses, several grandchildren, and three of his closest advisers — one a current mayor (John Tory), one a former senator (Hugh Segal), one an author (Sally Barnes) — were there to witness the event. Let’s just say they all had a hard time keeping their eyes dry.
The tributes to Ontario’s 18th premier were no doubt a challenge. After all, Davis hadn’t been an MPP since 1985, so no one in the current house ever served with him. Davis died 14 months ago having lived to age 92, making him the longest-living Ontario premier ever. And the speeches were lovely.
“His approach was the opposite of divide and conquer,” began Peggy Sattler, the NDP member for London West, “the antithesis of polarization and unilateralism.”
Sattler quoted Stephen Lewis, the NDP leader during Davis’s time as premier, who said: “It’s hard to imagine a more decent adversary. When compared to the political dynamic today, the Bill Davis era was astonishingly civilized.”
Liberal MPP John Fraser asked one of Davis’ successors, Dalton McGuinty, the 24th premier, for some observations. “I was just one of the many who was inspired by him,” Fraser quoted McGuinty as saying. “I was impressed by Premier Davis’s longevity, but I was even more impressed by the quality of his leadership, his integrity, his courage, his commitment, his goodwill, and of course his good humour.”
Premier Ford and Kathleen Davis share a moment in his office. (Steve Paikin)
Davis’ years as education minister in the 1960s were Ontario’s best years ever. He oversaw the creation of five new universities, the college system, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), and TVO. He added two more years of public funding to the separate school system and helped save French-language schools, which were threatened with extinction for lack of funding. When Davis succeeded John Robarts as premier in 1971, he stopped construction of the Spadina Expressway, created the ministry of the environment and the Niagara Escarpment Commission to ensure our world-renowned biosphere would be protected, brought in rent review, got the SkyDome built, and became a modern-day father of Confederation by helping Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau repatriate the Constitution with a Charter of Rights and Freedoms.Particularly impressive about his premiership was the fact that six of his 14 years were spent in a minority parliament, where his ability to find compromises with his political adversaries was the essential secret sauce to his longevity.
Davis was a reassuring presence atop the org chart of “Ontario Inc.” He remains the only premier of the last half century who left office at the height of his popularity and who undoubtedly could have won another election had he wanted to fight it. He didn’t. Instead, he retired from public life having never lost anything he contested: seven straight election wins as an MPP, the 1971 PC party leadership convention, and four straight general elections as premier. No one had been victorious in four consecutive elections since 1914, when James Whitney did it.
What also stood out in Tuesday’s speeches was the fact that Premier Doug Ford was in the chamber and spoke for the PC caucus. Premiers are almost never in the chamber during these occasions. Their time is considered too valuable to sit through these symbolic but ultimately non-urgent tributes. Not only did Ford insist on being there, but he also gave the eulogy.
That’s a fascinating development in the attitude of Ontario’s 26th premier. When Ford was first elected in 2018, he brought his disruptive, populist, confrontational, and bombastic approach to politics with him. It was as strong a repudiation of the moderate, pragmatic, understated approach of Davis’s that you could imagine.
But over the years, Ford has been wise enough to figure out that Davis’s reassuring, calming, steady approach is also a winning approach if you want to keep the job.
Despite the fact that these two Tory premiers never met (or even spoke), Ford has clearly tried to appropriate the Davis approach throughout the pandemic, and it’s served him well. He is the first premier since Howard Ferguson in 1929 to win consecutive majority governments and increase his seat count the second time in a parliament of the same size.
“He certainly left big shoes to fill and all the premiers since his time have been measured against his legacy,” Ford said solemnly. “And while there will never be another William Grenville Davis, as public servants, I believe we should all aspire to conduct ourselves in a way that would make him proud.”
Premier Doug Ford and Toronto Mayor John Tory admire a portrait of the late Rob Ford. (Steve Paikin)
Ford also did something I suspect is unprecedented after the speeches were over. He invited Davis’s family and friends into the Premier’s Office to have a chat and take pictures, even knowing he’d probably take a hit in the media for doing so. (Ford ducked Question Period earlier in the day to avoid answering questions about his refusal to appear before the Emergencies Act inquiry in Ottawa.)
But he was all smiles as he invited Davis’s widow of nearly six decades, Kathleen, to sign the inside desk drawer in his office, then posed for pictures, including with Davis’s former principal secretary, who’d just won a landslide third-term victory for Toronto mayor the day before. Yes, John Tory wouldn’t miss the tribute to his political hero, even as Ford joked during the photo op: “Check and make sure the mayor’s hands aren’t in my pocket.”
Ford’s embracing of the Davis legacy is as powerful a signal as we’ve seen to date that this premier has no interest in returning to his former ways. Like Davis, he has cozied up to another prime minister named Trudeau when it serves Ontario’s — and the nation’s — interests. Like Davis, Ford has become the type of leader to lower temperatures rather than raising them, refusing to take the bait when opposition members or media bait him to blow his stack.
Ironically, the most emotional speech of the day came from Green party leader Mike Schreiner, who having been born in Kansas, never even lived in Ontario during Davis’s time in office. And yet he summed up the feelings of many when he said: “May we all aspire to your legacy. Ontario is forever grateful to your vision, your leadership, and your service. May you rest in peace."