Some Day the Sun Will Shine and Have Not Will Be No More (16 page)

“Sorry, Marg, needs that vote. Let’s go.”

We made the polling booth with a minute to spare! “Oh, what a night it was, it
really was,” sang Elvis.

We won that night, a real upset, by the grand sum of 51 votes. The next day we
increased it to 135 votes with the special polls from around the province. It
marked the first time that Green Bay had voted Conservative in its history, and
the last district to elect a Conservative in the province.

My political career was launched. Two former English students to whom I
introduced Shakespeare in grade seven sent me a telegram: “Madness in great ones
must not unwatched go.” Hamlet. Congratulations from Alvin and Dave.

OF COURSE
,
IT WAS
only a day or so and
the phone calls and letters began to pour in. One elderly lady nearby called
requesting that I see her immediately, since she had voted for me, so she said.
I obliged and was confronted with the demand that I purchase a new furnace for
her as soon as possible, since her present one was in deplorable condition.
There was no easy way to approach this situation, so I bluntly informed the lady
that this kind of gift did not come with the job. If she was receiving
government assistance, then I could make representation to the social service
authorities to have her condition assessed to see if she qualified.

I don’t know if it was deliberate or not (even then I was becoming a little
wary of the federal government), but there was this spike in incidents of
alleged income tax evasion and threatening letters from Revenue Canada to small
business people in the Green Bay area. There was a forest contractor, a service
station owner, and a fisherman. So, suddenly, I became a bit of a lawyer,
representing these people at appeals I launched on their behalf. One was simply
a bookkeeping mistake that could have been handled in a phone call; another was
a mix-up in correspondence; and the last one, the fisherman, was a Revenue
Canada mistake. The fisherman was distraught, frightened, and
felt like he had committed some hideous crime. What was common in all three
cases was how a government department could move in such a heavy-handed fashion
and trample on a person’s dignity.

One of my biggest problems in those early days was to respond promptly to the
letters I received. Since I was without a secretary or typewriter, I went to a
local store and purchased several writing tablets—carbon sheets and all—and
began responding to the letters in longhand. Many of the letter writers were
surprised to get such a quick answer and often called me to express their
appreciation. Then it was off to St. John’s to get an office and some
secretarial help.

Outside the Confederation Building there were parking spaces for all the
members of the House of Assembly. And so I parked dutifully in the place marked
Green Bay. I was still driving my first car, a standard shift,
four-door 1967 Chevelle. It had seen better days. It was then carrying
over 100,000 miles, what with carrying basketball teams around the province and
travelling many gravel byways; it was not in good shape. I think it was my first
week in St. John’s. I left my new office lunchtime and went to get my car to go
to a meeting downtown. But there was no car in my Green Bay space. I was
puzzled. Surely no one would steal the car in such a public spot in the middle
of the day! And anyway, who would want to steal such an old, unattractive car as
mine? Retreating to my office, I mentioned my problem to one of the experienced
secretaries, who immediately got on the phone to the Public Works
Department.

“George, this is Peggy from the Member’s office.”

“Yes, Peggy, what’s up?”

“Well, Mr. Peckford, the new Member for Green Bay, went to get his car in the
Green Bay parking space out front and it was gone. He suspects it has been
stolen.”

“What kind of car is it?”

“It’s a dark tan 1967 Chevelle.”

“With some rust on it?”

Peggy looked at me. “Is there rust on your car?”

“Well, yes, a little bit.”

“Yes,” Peggy said to George.

“Oh, we made a mistake. We just towed it away. We figured such an old thing
would not belong to a Member.”

Apologies all around, my car was returned.

I was eagerly anticipating the opening of the House of Assembly because I knew
I would enjoy the cut and thrust of debate, and I thought that over time I could
be effective in this forum, perhaps catch the attention of the senior
parliamentarians, and also impress our House Leader and the premier. Therefore,
I spent a fair amount of time in those first weeks reading the parliamentary
authorities, Arthur Beauchesne and Thomas Erskine May.

On April 25, 1972, I made my inaugural speech in the House of Assembly. It
began with the following: “Mr. Speaker, may I say at the outset that I am very
proud to stand in the House of Assembly today and represent a district, the
district of Green Bay, which for the last century or so has not seen a
representative from the Progressive Conservative Party.”

From that day forward until my retirement in March, 1989, I enjoyed every
minute of my time in the legislature.

Of course, even with my previous experience with the Department of Welfare as a
student, there was still a lot to learn about the government, the workings of
the departments, and getting to know who in those departments were the key
people, the workings of the Treasury Board, the Throne Speech process, and the
budget process. And most particularly to learn of the slow pace of government
and how certain policies or procedures, once fixed, were very difficult to
change.

This latter point was driven home to me when I first encountered the Department
of Highways. Roy Foster had a carrot patch on the road from King’s Point to
Rattling Brook in my district. The six-mile stretch dead-ended at Rattling
Brook, aptly named after a waterfall nearby. This was the farming area of my
district. A lot of families grew root crops and in the fall at harvest time
marketed their produce door-to-door in a wide area of Central
Newfoundland.

Roy loved his carrot patch and boasted that he had the best
carrots in all the area and that he had the customers to prove it. I met Roy
and his wife during my campaign—they were real supporters and were very
independent—she the teacher and he the part-time farmer.

They asked for nothing and just wanted some good, old-fashioned, honest
government.

Unknown to Roy or anyone else, engineers with the Department of Highways at the
Regional Headquarters had their own ideas about upgrades for that stretch of
road. Just after I was elected, Roy had a stranger knock on his door. This was
an engineer from Highways.

“Are you Mr. Roy Foster?” queried the stranger.

“Yes,” said Roy.

“I am from the Department of Highways. Do you own some land near that turn in
the road going to Rattling Brook?”

“Yes, I do,” Roy responded.

“That turn by your land is very dangerous. We have to make it safer. We will
need to take your land, so we want to do an agreement. If you don’t agree, we
will have to expropriate.”

Roy was shaken. “Expropriate? What does that mean?” Roy inquired.

“We would take it from you and give you some money for it.”

Roy could no longer speak. His wife appeared and bailed him out of this unreal
encounter. “Please go away,” she said to the Highways man. “We have to think
about it.”

Roy was devastated. His cherished carrot patch, which had been part of the
family for generations, was about to be no more. For days Roy and his wife
debated the incident they had with the Highways man. What could they do? Finally
she said, “We will have to call Brian and see what he thinks.”

“No,” Roy said. “He’s just elected, and we never supported him to try and get
something from him.”

“Well, we are not,” she said. “We didn’t know about this when Brian was
running for election. I’m sure he would help us.” Roy would not relent.

However, the Fosters had a son, Mervyn, who had just been hired
for a teaching position at the school where I had taught. I had met him.

One day, I got a call from Mervyn, explaining his parents’ predicament and
inquiring whether I would go visit his parents to review their situation. Of
course, I remembered the Fosters and was only too happy to go visit them.

The next week, back in my district, I visited the Fosters. After a big chat
about the problem, Roy took me to the site. He wanted me to see the patch. Down
below the turn in the road was this scenic level piece of land that tumbled at
its edge to the beach and the salt water. A more idyllic setting would be hard
to find.

“Simply beautiful,” I exclaimed to Roy.

“Yes, boy, it’s pretty, isn’t it? Brian, I got one of my buddies to look at
this turn. He knows about road building; he builds forest access roads. He says
that it isn’t necessary to come out from the present turn to cut down on the
steep angle. He says the hill that causes the turn is not hard rock, that it
looks like shale rock that would crumble easily, and the cost would be less than
building that big turn.”

Well, back to St. John’s the next week, and a meeting with the deputy minister
to explain the situation and how this problem of mine could be easily
rectified.

“No doubt the engineers in Grand Falls have already looked at your alternative
and found it doesn’t work,” said the deputy minister.

“Do you know that to be the case?” I responded.

“No, but it makes sense that they would have looked at this.”

“Can we call Grand Falls?”

Reluctantly, the DM called Grand Falls, and to his surprise the engineers had
not considered the alternate plan. After some persuasion, I convinced the DM to
have the engineer revisit the site with me and Mr. Foster.

The big day arrived, and by now the engineer was not a pleased man, what with
having his project questioned and having to come back to the scene on orders
from the DM to examine some silly alternate way to do the project.

Roy and I both had a go, but the engineer was adamant that his
way to build was the best and only way.

“What about we get a backhoe or tractor to just test that bank,” I proposed.
“Then we will know if the alternative makes any sense.”

Roy thought this a good compromise and readily agreed to put his idea to a
test. The engineer remained unconvinced. “Let me think about it,” he uttered.
“I will call you tomorrow.”

The next morning the call came and the engineer agreed to the test. A local
backhoe was brought to site the next day and the engineer oversaw the operation;
with a few strikes in the bank the shale rock was loosened, and gravel and rock
almost blocked the road!

Roy was overjoyed. The engineer got out of his truck and approached Roy. “You
were right,” he said. “This looks like a much better method.”

The project was estimated to cost $110,000. The new approach was less than
$90,000 and safety was assured. But of most importance, Roy’s carrot patch was
saved!

The rest of 1972 saw me dealing with district issues and learning the ropes of
government. It was a lot of work but I jumped in with both feet and found it all
very interesting.

With the arrival of 1973 I could claim that I was really getting to understand
the legislature and the workings of government. I guess Premier Moores thought
the same way, since he appointed me to work in his office as a Special
Assistant. I also acted as his parliamentary assistant in the legislature. This
was a great promotion because it gave me some authority to deal with government
departments and agencies and to interact with senior officials and the
ministers. The office was disorganized, and after a meeting with the premier,
during which I questioned what all those mountains of paper were doing on his
desk and how come the many letters were not answered, I had his blessing
(cloaked in a sarcastic tone) to clean it up. And with the other people working
in the office, we set about doing that.

It was obvious that there was a small clique of ministers who the premier
trusted at that time, including Dr. Tom Farrell, William Doody, and Joseph
Rousseau. They spent a lot of time together and
it would not do
well to cross either of these gentlemen. I tried not to. But I remember that
once I must have gotten on the wrong side of Mr. Rousseau, since I was
unceremoniously called to see the premier to answer to accusations that I had
criticized him at a public gathering. When I questioned as to the nature of this
public gathering, it so happened that I had not even attended it, since I had
been out of town at the time. Once I explained this, the premier told me who his
informant was: Mr. Rousseau. I learned quickly to be very, very careful.

The year 1974 was an important one. I was invited into the Cabinet to serve as
minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. I felt willing and able to jump right
into the ministerial fray. And I did. It was refreshing, if not daunting. The
department needed serious restructuring. With the quick resignation of the then
deputy minister, I was able to begin with many of the existing people there to
improve the efficiency and financial apparatus of the place. This had been the
repository of some of Smallwood’s appointments. There still was Mr. Harold Rowe,
brother of one of Smallwood’s former elected lieutenants, Frederick Rowe (then
serving his reward in the Canadian Senate), receiving a salary and having the
title of Special Adviser. I respected his longevity and marvelled at the stories
he could tell about when he and other ministers and deputy ministers were on the
receiving line of Smallwood’s special intercom system and would hear Smallwood’s
voice, at any time, summoning them to the “great one’s” office to be belittled
in front of cold strangers.