bout de papier, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1987) — Summer 1987 // Été 1987, pp. 52–54
Eugene Whelan by Eugene Whelan, Irwin
Publishing Inc, 300 pp., $19.95.
Eugene Whelan is a decent, likeable, earthy and blunt politician who has turned out a very readable memoir with the help of freelance writer, Rick Archbold. His biases come through with the subtlety of a pile-driver. His first sentence proclaims his dislike for banks (“I’ve never had much use for banks — or bankers… ), and he never lets up on that theme throughout. His lack of awe of higher education is another recurring bias. He relishes the story of the time he asked Jack Davis, once the Minister of Fisheries under whom Whelan served as Parliamentary Secretary, what a Ph.D. stood for. David replied, ’In order to get that degree all you have to do is know how to read and have a decent memory and be able to write down what you remember. It doesn’t mean you know a thing about practicality.” Whelan’s analysis of Davis’ lack of political savvy was totally accurate, but he repeats his point that education and intelligence are not synonymous to such an extent that he appears subconsciously defensive about the fact that he never attended college.
Eugene Whelan’s political successes have been such that he need not feel defensive about anything, and he would probably be outraged at such a suggestion. He is a successful, self-made child of the Depression whose father died when he was six. Eugene was the middle one of nine kids, who were raised on a modest farm in Essex County that didn’t have electricity until he was fifteen. They were dirt poor, and Whelan’s mother was obviously a saint who successfully raised what sounds like a rowdy bunch on a Mother’s Allowance. His roots were poor but proud Irish Catholic farmers who distrusted the establishment, in general, and banks, in particular.
It will not come as a shock to readers that he dislikes Toronto (“We always called it Hogtown, too, not because it had so many pigs but because it hogged everything, all the financial world and so on. It still does.”). The only surprise regarding Toronto is that he waited forty-five pages before taking a swipe at it! He also dislikes John Turner, and he makes no effort to veil this dislike which was well-established prior to Turner’s dismissal of him as Minister of Agriculture in 1984. Whelan didn’t think Turner was a “real Liberal” ’. During the leadership campaign he repeatedly told delegates,, “If the Canadian people have to choose between a real Tory and a pretend Tory, they’ll choose the real Tory every time.” ’ In contrast, Bob Stanfield, who he did like, was not a “real Tory; he was probably more Liberal than Turner.”
Whelan doesn’t hesitate to say who and what he did like and he obviously liked Trudeau and Chrétien; but his greatest love was his job as Minister of Agriculture. He literally savoured every second of his eleven years in the portfolio, and on balance he was probably Canada’s most successful agriculture minister. Traditionally most farmers dislike bankers, lawyers and Toronto. They are suspicious of bureaucrats and educated people with gratuitous advice on how to run a farm. Never before had they had such a champion who shared every one of their biases in every corpuscle of his body and proclaimed it to the world like a foghorn. Furthermore, Whelan had a fairly free hand in shaping federal agricultural policy during his tenure, as no one else in Cabinet or among the mandarins knew as much about the subject as he did.
His reminiscences of growing up are quite endearing. His hostility towards banks was shaped at an early age by family experiences during the Depression. However, his penchant for common sense, which he obviously believes to be one of his great attributes, is patently lacking in his attitude towards banks. How the country would be better off by having weaker banks, as a result of their being forced to take greater risks for the sake of the “little guy” “, is never explained. During our brief time together in Cabinet it was totally impossible to have a rational discussion with Eugene on the subject of banks. It was as if they still had to be punished for their sins of the past including those against the Whelan family.
During Whelan’s early years in parliament the dominant political force in Southwestern Ontario was Paul Martin. Whelan’s tales of the 1968 leadership campaign are great reading, including his account of how he tried for weeks to avoid a meeting with Martin in which he would be forced to break the news that he had decided to support Trudeau. He relates how Martin assured him that he had the support of thirty-two M.P.s, and of his reply, “Paul, you don’t have any thirty-two. You’ve got five.”. Whelan then gave him the names, but Martin refused to believe him. Martin wound up in tears, but Whelan was unrelenting in refusing his support. As Eugene said, “It was a hard meeting.”
Whelan goes on to recount that, in fact, Martin wound up with only five M.P.s supporting him. “A lot of people had told him one thing and done another. It’s often that way in politics.” At first blush it might seem surprising that Whelan’s canny gut instincts in predicting the outcome of the ’68 leadership race weren’t functioning in 1984. However, it’s difficult to be objective about oneself, and Whelan had exactly the same delusions about his own strength in ’84 as Martin had in ’68. “I figured I’d get support from farmers and from people — M.P.s and others – whom I’d helped over the years. Quite a few promised to vote for me at least on the first ballot, and then didn’t when the day came.” When the results of the first ballot were announced, Whelan came dead last. “I was devastated, destroyed. I’d never expected that I’d have only eighty-four votes. You can’t imagine how bad it feels.” I was in that civic centre that day and I think the only person who was surprised at his showing was Whelan himself, and perhaps his family. In his own words he just “couldn’t understand
“, but in retrospect, he had the honesty to say, “I guess I felt a bit like old Paul Martin back in ’68.”
Eugene Whelan should not have run for the leadership. Had he not done so, he might well be our Ambassador in Rome at the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Why did he run? I don’t think he thought he had a genuine chance. But he seriously overestimated his strength and he thought he could establish himself as a major force in the party by demonstrating a national base, particularly from rural areas. What in fact happened was the exact opposite in that he demonstrated weakness. It wasn’t that Liberals didn’t like Whelan — they did. He was probably second only to Chrétien in popularity when giving stemwinder partisan speeches to Liberal gatherings across the country. But the Liberal troops didn’t remotely see him as a prime minister. In the long run some of his antics, such as the green stetson which helped give him a national identity and profile, backfired on him, as the caricature that emerged had touches of buffoonery that were totally incompatible with the Liberal delegates’ image of a leader. They saw their duty in selecting Trudeau’s successor as far too serious to waste their first ballot on a good friend who they did not see as a leader. His poor showing undoubtedly reinforced Turner’s belief that his talents were dispensable when he was trying to put a new face on an old cabinet in July of 1984. Likewise, Mulroney also discounted Whelan’s popularity with farmers as a result of his disastrous leadership bid, and concluded that he could be fired with impunity as Ambassador to the F.A.O.
Mulroney made a mistake. Whelan would have been a superb voice for Canada at the F.A.O.. Ironically, Whelan can probably blame a third fellow Irishman for his ouster as the F.A.O. Ambassador – Bryce Mackasey. Were it not for the uproar over patronage that Bryce’s appointment triggered, Whelan’s appointment would probably have survived. I vividly recall the moans and groans at Trudeau’s final cabinet meeting when he announced that he was appointing Bryce Mackasey as Ambassador to Portugal. He held up his hands and said, “Why I’m doing you all a favour!”. When the room fell silent in disbelief he said, with a twinkle in his eye, “I’m getting him out of the country!”. In contrast, no one objected whatsoever to Whelan’s appointment, which was generally regarded as appropriate and well-deserved.
Whelan is a good judge of character, and a little story which I have never told Eugene illustrates this point. Whelan hosted Gorbachev for ten days during his 1983 Canadian tour when Gorbachev was the Soviet Union’s agricultural boss, be tore he took over as General Secretary. Prior to the initial summit between Reagan and Gorbachev which took place in Geneva in 1985, I was having lunch with a friend of mine who is in the U.S. State Department. As Gorbachev was a relatively unknown commodity in the West at this point, I suggested that my friend track down Whelan on the off chance that he might have some insight into Gorbachev’s personality. After the General summit, my State Department friend phoned to say he owed me a great favour for my suggestion. He told me he had received “heaps of praise” from the White House, the State Department and the National Security Council for having produced the single most helpful background paper for the President which contained new information on Gorbachev’s personality. My friend’s entire paper was based on his interview with Eugene Whelan.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1987) — Summer 1987 // Été 1987, pp. 52–54. Read the rest of this issue →
