By Robert Hurst
I was on Brian Mulroney’s ‘Enemies List’.
It was 1985, a year after Mulroney became Prime Minister. Two members of his Cabinet had resigned, Defence Minister Bob Coates and Fisheries Minister John Fraser.
There were 4 of us on The List, all of us from the Parliamentary Press Gallery. We were there because we had chased the scandals hard. The Enemies List was the creation of zealots in Mulroney’s Office who wanted to cut us off and shorten our careers.
But that wasn’t Brian Mulroney’s style.
In the weeks and months that followed, Mulroney would talk to us without rancor or disdain. He would look us in the eye. He would listen to us and treat our questions with serious regard. If we needed a news scrum, he would quickly oblige.
Mulroney was sometimes treated unfairly in the media. The most egregious example from my memory, was the ‘free trade’ election campaign of 1988. The CBC and Toronto Star, at the time, seemed intent on defeating free trade. Some of us in the Press Gallery wondered if these two organizations had crossed the line from reporting to advocacy.
How did Mulroney respond?
He didn’t crap on the media. He didn’t shout ‘fake news.’ He didn’t call reporters names or label them un-Canadian, as so many politicians do today.
Brian Mulroney understood that if you take on the media you are eventually going to lose. This doesn’t mean there’s a conspiracy among journalists. The media is a disorganized and unruly bunch. It often makes mistakes – but rarely as a collective group.
Why don’t our current leaders understand that when you attack the media, you are attacking a fundamental pillar of Canadian democracy?
Brian Mulroney actually liked reporters. He talked to them often and sometimes at length. Perhaps he was just seeking relief from listening to party hacks and sycophants all-day long.
He treated journalists, at least the ones I knew, with decency and respect.
Much has been told in the last few days about Mulroney’s empathy for others. About telephone calls to folks. My old colleague Bob Fife, (now the Globe’s Ottawa Bureau Chief) said a few days ago how Mulroney had called him–to Fife’s face–a knee capper. But Fife says that over the years he and Brian Mulroney became confidantes.
Journalist Jim Coyle, with whom I co-authored a political book, wrote a few days ago about how Brian Mulroney telephoned to praise Coyle’s sobriety after battling alcoholism.
Brian Mulroney didn’t just call people at election time, he did it his entire life. In many ways, he was like your parish priest constantly checking in to see how you’re doing. Does anybody do this today, in the age of the internet, where social connections are manufactured through fingers on a keyboard?
From my own time, I recall how Brian Mulroney asked about my wife and family. And my Mother whom he had met briefly. During his last trip to Moscow, where I was posted, Mulroney saw me on the airport tarmac and called me aside for an impromptu briefing on events in the Soviet Union.
One wonders what motivated Brian Mulroney to get on the phone with folks every day. Was he himself lonely? Was it that he needed the connections and the fellowship more than those he was calling? Certainly, Brian Mulroney on the public stage was full of Irish bluster and B-S. But privately, there was little of that. More likely his motivation came from a deep interest in those around him and their well-being.
How many of today’s leaders can claim that?
Robert Hurst worked for CTV News for 40 years. He was on Parliament Hill from 1984 to 1988. His other postings included Beijing, Washington and Moscow. Hurst was appointed President of CTV News in 2001. He retired in 2011 and moved to the family cottage on Peninsula Lake with his wife Catherine.
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