The 1974 federal election campaign began badly and only got worse.
As leader of the Progressive Conservativeparty, Robert Stanfield was promoting price and income controls starting with a 90-day freeze to halt rampant inflation. Voters loved having a lid on prices but not on their salaries.
The policy was a tough sell and became even more troublesome as the media daily raised questions that required ever more complicated explanations.
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Three weeks into the election, Stanfield’s campaign plane, filled with staff and press, left Halifax for a gruelling follow-the-sun schedule with numerous campaign stops along the way, ending in Vancouver 20 hours later.
En route, we landed in North Bay to refuel. Everyone deplaned for a little fresh air. Someone began throwing a football around on the tarmac and soon Stanfield joined in— tossing, running and catching the ball with an easy grace that belied his 60 years.
Canadian Press photographer Doug Ball shot a roll of film. As Stanfield’s press secretary, such was my delight with Stanfield looking so lithe and athletic— just like that fellow Pierre Trudeau we were running against— that we held takeoff while I accompanied Ball into the airport terminal and helped him ship the film to pc28so his editors could put something on the newswires.
Imagine my chagrin the next morning when I saw the photo that appeared in just about every newspaper in the nation. You probably remember the one: Stanfield was stooped over, wearing a white shirt and tie, his empty hands clutched hopelessly together as the football tumbled to the ground below. He looked awkward and knock-kneed. His face was a grimace, his eyes clamped shut.
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That photo became ametaphor for our beleaguered campaign. The pc28Sun later asked The Canadian Press to send the complete 36-frame shoot, and published a series of photos showing Stanfield looking deft and agile, but the damage was already done.
Stanfield soldiered on to election day in July, but everyone knew that we’d long since lost.
“Zap! You’re frozen!” said Trudeau about Stanfield’s proposal for controls, but the following year adopted the very policy he had mocked in order to win his mandate. Politics and life aren’t fair, I know, but that volte-face seemed well beyond the pale.
When Stanfield died at 89 in 2003, the first recollections that came unsummoned to my mind were not the policy ideas, the more than 250,000 kilometresI travelled, or the camaraderie of politics. It was Stanfield’s sense of humour. In his speech to a 1975 roast held in his honour, Stanfield said, “No one has really laid a glove on me. It only proves, as Mackenzie King once said, you cannot roast a wet blanket.”
Television interviews after Question Period in those days were conducted in Room 130S, in the basement of the centre block on Parliament Hill. On one occasion, Stanfield was standing in front of a row of cameras waiting patiently while a technician fixed a problem.
Veteran NDP MP Stanley Knowles entered the room, lingered at the back amid the silence, and finally said: “Speak up, Bob, we can’t hear you.” Replied Stanfield, “I’m in the middle of one of my pauses.”
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Ah yes, Stanfield’s halting speech, a quality that ranked right up there with his solemn demeanour. Yet, year after year Stanfield gave by far the most humorous speech at the Parliamentary Press Gallery dinner, an off-the-record evening of drinking, skits and speeches. His deadpan timing was impeccable. Trudeau always delivered a dud.
A final story, as much about me, as the leader. Stanfield had borrowed a friend’s house in Halifax for a vacation shortly before stepping down. Finlay MacDonald Jr., a local broadcaster, phoned me in Ottawa to see if he could interview Stanfield.
I knew Stanfield would be agreeable, so I called him and passed along Finlay’s number. After I hung up, I realized I’d mistakenly given Stanfield the phone number of the house where he was staying. Oh well, I thought, he’ll figure that out.
Finlay called the next day to say he’d heard nothing. Fearing the worst, I phoned Stanfield.
Before I could explain, he said, “I haven’t been able to get through to Finlay. His line’s always busy.”
“Sir, I’m sorry, but I gave you your own number. You’ve been dialing yourself.”
There was an exasperated sigh.
“You guys are just sitting there up in Ottawa figuring out ways to ruin my vacation,” he said. “I could have been prime minister years ago.”
Yes, I would’ve liked to have been on the winning side. So would he.
There was no final victory, but if you’re going to lose,far better to do it alongside a gallant good man than win with connivers who will do anything and say anything in order to win at any cost to the country.
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