A Fool on the Hill

The Rest of the Story

 Shortly after I arrived in the capital, it was time for the National Press Club dinner. This was a formal affair, with skits and dancing to an orchestra. I didn't really have the right clothing, but improvised something out of a scarf to go with a long velvet skirt. Those of us from the Journal all sat at one round table, many with spouses, and enjoyed the entertainment. That year there was a mock-up of the Toronto Star called The Hogtown Star, and the headline was "Fidel Tells Pierre the way to handle foreign ownership," with a picture of the Cuban leader, and similar spoof stories. Some of the Press Gallery members put on a skit about the Prime Minister's new press secretary, called "Dick O'Hagan from Washington Came," referring to his former job as press officer at the Canadian Embassy there. Canada being the small country it is, less than 10 years later I was working for O'Hagan when he was in charge of public affairs for the Bank of Montreal. Being new to Ottawa I missed some of the jokes at the dinner, but it did give me a better impression of the city.

I loved the pageantry of Parliament Hill and especially Question Period, when members of the Opposition had a chance to query Government Ministers on matters of policy.. We journalists seldom sat through the actual question period itself, with its rituals such as members "rising on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity" and references to the "Honourable Member" or the "Right Honourable Member" in the case of Cabinet Ministers. It all seemed a lot more interesting than the U.S. Congress, where few members were in evidence most of the time and most of those paid little attention to the speeches.  Often my editor would call with a request that I beard a Cabinet Minister in the Member's lounge after Question Period and ask him about a certain subject. These meetings were called scrums, and to be successful you needed to be loud and pushy, not two of my better qualities. Those of us in print media often made fun of the TV people, with their perfect hair and smiles, whose cameras tended to push in front of all of us. Of course, we were envious.

I recall a few of the journalists who were there at the time, such as Mike Duffy, an overweight reporter from the Maritimes also known as Mike Puffy, who seemed to be very sure of himself. He was named a Senator when the Conservatives gained power, and more recently was the subject of a scandal. Jim Munson, a radio reporter, was another future Senator. A reporter from Canadian Press, Glenn Somerville, befriended me and invited me to join him for practice with the Press Club co-ed hockey club. I was tempted, but demurred. I could barely skate, and the people I would be playing with were Canadians who are born on skates and absorb the rules of hockey with their mother's milk.

Pierre Elliott Trudeau was a star among international media, but I soon discovered that he treated local media with barely disguised contempt. This came as a surprise, since I knew he had himself once been a journalist of a sort, founder of a French language publication called Cite Libre. His Finance Minister, Jean Chretien, seemed to be a much nicer person. I once started asking him questions in French, and seeing my struggle he answered graciously in English.

One of the beats I had to cover was the newly-created Anti-Inflation Board. At that time inflation was a problem in North America, and the board was supposed to try to keep it under control in Canada. It didn't have price-fixing power as similar institutions had enjoyed during war time, but it was supposed to keep track so that big companies did not take advantage of their monopoly or near-monopoly positions to raise prices unreasonably fast. Several years later, the central banks decided to try to tame inflation by raising interest rates to unprecedented levels. Canada Savings Bonds yielded 18 per cent one year, and as I learned a few years later when I bought a condominium apartment in Montreal, mortgage rates were at the same lofty heights.

I mentioned earlier that I met Helen Aikenhead while walking Igloo along the Canal near my flat, a walk I took almost every day. Helen invited me over for coffee in her comfortable townhouse, and plied me with sweets. She was very welcoming and had an interesting background. Her husband Bruce worked for the Space Agency, and they had spent time in the early years of the space program in Virginia. She herself had been a journalist in the Maritimes before she married. She was very liberal in her views, and while they lived in Montreal they had often entertained foreign students for meals and sometimes to stay. I enjoyed her company a lot, so with her, Karen and Marjorie I was starting to like Ottawa. In addition to walking Igloo in the city, I sometimes took him across the river to Gatineau Park where I could let him run freely. He loved that, especially when there was snow on the ground. One cold morning I took him over to the Canal without putting on stockings, just boots and a long skirt. The temperature was way below freezing, and when I got back to the apartment the inside of my knees was frostbitten.

However, I wasn't home enough with Igloo. He was generally well house-trained, but one time I went out after work and by the time I returned he had pissed all over the kitchen, where he was confined. I felt like a rat. I went back to Columbus to visit my parents at Christmas time, and had found a kennel where I planned to leave Igloo. However, when I got there the place seemed unkempt and the owner unreliable. He wouldn't let me see where Igloo would be kept, so I decided I couldn't leave my dog there. Instead of flying as I had planned, I drove, a journey of two days each way. Igloo's head was on my knee most of the time.

I spent a fair amount of my free time at the Press Club after work, where the bartenders were friendly and the drinks inexpensive. Also, the company was often interesting. One time Adrienne, the wife of Agriculture Minister Otto Lang, came in dragging a big green garbage bag full of the clothing she was taking for her children on their trip back to Saskatchewan. Another time I was pleased to speak with Brian Stewart, then a big time CBC TV commentator and thoroughly nice guy. The correspondent from TASS, the Soviet news agency, was a regular at the Club. One evening I spoke with him for a long time, then found it creepy the next day when I happened to bump into him at the grocery store. We were still paranoid about Communist spies, and Ottawa had been the site of a very early spy case, the Guzenko affair in the late 1940s.

After Christmas I had an interesting assignment as one of the reporters assigned to cover the leadership convention of the Conservative Party. I spent a whole day before the convention with one of the candidates, Flora Macdonald, as she campaigned in Toronto. She was a nice, smart woman, but I was more impressed with a young, bilingual lawyer from Montreal named Brian Mulroney. I met him and his attractive wife at an elegant lunch which boasted all the glitz I had grown used to in Montreal. 

The convention itself was a challenge. I listened to some of my fellow reporters talk knowledgeably about the back stories of a number of the speakers and candidates, but as a Quebecer I knew little about the Conservative Party, which was anchored in Ontario and the West. I was assigned to cover the very short campaign of a Quebec Member of Parliament from the Eastern Townships, Heward Graffety. Once he dropped out after the first ballot, I had little to do. However, the candidate I had followed in Toronto, Flora MacDonald, was influential in keeping the leadership away from Mulroney. She threw her support to Joe Clark, a young lawyer and M.P. from Alberta, and he was elected Leader, and soon after, formed a new government.

Covering the budget was fun in Ottawa. At that time, reporters were locked up all day with a copy of the budget and an executive summary. Finance Department officials were available to us for consultation. However, no one was allowed to write or broadcast anything about the budget until the Finance Minister, by tradition wearing new shoes, had presented it to the House of Commons. I was starting to enjoy my job by the summer, and was writing more and more for The Globe and Mail, which increased my income considerably. However, my editors were not pleased that I was working for The Globe. I can see now why they might have considered it a conflict of interest. At the time, though, the fact that another Journal reporter, my colleague Jeff, was doing the same thing, implied for me that I should be able to do likewise.

In any case, my editors said that I would have to give up my office on the Hill and come work at the main office, under the close supervision of a new editor. That was not an appealing idea. I thought about the possibility, but it was not at all enticing. It seemed like a demotion, and would definitely take me away from the friends I was starting to make on the Hill. And giving up freelancing for The Globe would have a significant impact on my income. In any case, the deadline was approaching when I would have to start getting serious about finishing my PhD. thesis, if I ever wanted to do so..Therefore, I decided to quit and go back to Montreal for a couple of months,then go to Ireland to do research for the thesis. That would mean finding another home for Igloo. Fortunately, my parents agreed to take him, so I knew he would be well treated. My mother loved dogs, and my dad came to enjoy him too.