Esquimalt was a great place to grow up in, but we made our own entertainment. At the end of our street there was forest you could get lost in and giant rocks for climbing. My cousin Tanya was the same age as me and lived right next door. We’d often get into trouble together. She’d urge experiments—like testing a window’s breakability—and I’d execute her plans.
Once, when I was about 4, Tanya and I scrubbed the driveway of our house with beer. I remember it was a case of Labatt’s Blue, stubbies. We must have found a bottle opener. We’d each take a sip of the beer, then pour it on the driveway and it would suds up like soap and we’d mop it. My parents, on their return, were unimpressed. It wasn’t the last time I’d be in trouble over alcohol.
In Esquimalt, such religious education as I received occurred at a place called The Truth Centre. It was a new-thought church, sort of a combination of Unitarian and Christian Science. It was headed up by a lady named Dr. Emma Smiley. Essentially, it made a religion out of optimism. I don’t remember any talk about Jesus. I just remember being told that God was everywhere and good, and that if I nurtured positive thoughts they would come to pass.
As much as I’m proud of my father’s precocious political achievements, my mom might have been more impressive still when I was growing up.
Between the birth of my older sister, Janine, in 1962 and my arrival four years later, my mother had a stillborn child and almost died. It was then that she sought counselling from Dr. Smiley. And it was around that time, we think, that her multiple sclerosis began to manifest itself.
She was diagnosed with MS when I was a newborn. One morning, she woke up cross-eyed and stayed that way for a month. At other times, her knees would buckle and she’d collapse. Or she could hear out of one ear and not the other. She was easily exhausted.
Her obstetrician was my godfather, Dr. Robert Morgan. Dr. Bob would later leave Victoria and his college friendships to head up the medical school at the University of Toronto, to teach at Stanford, and eventually to make some serious money as an expert witness on environmental matters. He would reappear in my life when I graduated from law school. By then, he had a place in the Bahamas, which I showed up at about a year later. We went fly-fishing in the knee-deep waters for bonefish and barracuda. (All godfathers are allowed a little hiatus, as long as they come back with a place in the Bahamas where you go bonefishing.)
Two memories from my visits stand out. First, Dr. Bob introduced me to what became my favourite drink—Manhattans—and to my favourite bourbon, Maker’s Mark. Second, he told the tale of my mother’s diagnosis.
My parents had insisted that he diagnose her suspected ailments, as they didn’t trust doctors at the time. Only him. After doing the tests, he sat down with my dad outside our house in Esquimalt. “She won’t live to age 50,” Dr. Bob said. “And she’ll likely be in a wheelchair in a few years.”
My father refused to believe it. And my mother, still in her twenties, refused to cooperate with her prescribed decline. Over the years she would have flare-ups—“relapses,” she called them. But sometimes her MS would go into remission for long periods. She walks with a cane. She naps a lot. But she is positive and happy all of the time. Far from expiring by 50, she’s kickin’ MS’s butt well into her 70s, thank you very much.
For some time, my dad had wanted to move the family from Esquimalt. He was one of a few kids in his high school who went to university. Most got jobs as soon as they could and thought there was something wrong with anyone who wanted to go to school any longer than was required. My dad wanted us to grow up where the culture encouraged larger dreams.
Family legend has it that the moment of truth came when I was about 3. Dad was late for a council meeting because he’d been playing with me. He was my hero. As he was pulling out of the driveway, I ran after him, yelling, “Daddy! Daddy!” not wanting him to go. He looked in the rearview mirror at me, crying in the driveway, until he couldn’t stand it anymore. Then he adjusted the mirror so he couldn’t see. The story is that he arrived at the council meeting that day and announced he wasn’t running for re-election.
He was only 32. There was lots of speculation that he’d end up running provincially or federally. But he never held elected office again. He went back to practising law in downtown Victoria on Fort Street, mostly handling estates, public works, real estate—a solicitor’s practice. He’d become the founding general counsel of B.C.’s Municipal Finance Authority, a bank made up of and for the treasuries of towns and cities. Smart.
Then, when I was 6, two big changes happened in our family almost simultaneously. We moved to Longview Drive on Gordon Head in Greater Victoria, near the university. And my parents adopted my brother, Alan.
I don’t know how they did it, but I swear they timed it so we moved the same day we picked up the infant Alan. I got to name him, after my best friend. Alan Thomas Bryant was a redhead. He would grow to 6'1", towering over the diminutive Bryant clan. For the first years of my life, I’d worshipped my older sister, Janine. But as Alan grew, we did more and more together. When I was 10 and he was 4, we’d take the bus to the first McDonald’s in Victoria for breakfast every Saturday morning. It was about a 40-minute bus ride and it was the highlight of our week. Egg McMuffins for me, pancakes for him, then we’d turn around and go home.
In Victoria, I started at Fairburn Elementary School in 1972, then later went to Arbutus Junior High School (where NBA basketball star Steve Nash would soon walk the halls with Alan). They don’t call them the formative years for nothing. As with every other child, things happened that, unbeknownst to me at the time, were shaping me in ways large and small.
I was the shortest kid in my class, always trying out for the teams and never making them. Along with that disappointment, I didn’t escape the fate common to many small boys. Doug D. was two years older than me. And a two-year age difference, especially when the younger kid is small for his age, amounts to the difference between David and Goliath.
Doug D. had what these days would be called a posse. And, once, on the way home, I became the day’s prey. I was cutting through an overgrown vacant lot with well-worn trails when the chase began. I had no clue what I’d done to earn their wrath, but I began running toward the edge of the field. If I could get there, I’d be in view of my house. In my house was a large German shepherd named Trixy. I grew up with German shepherds. First Trixy, later joined by Alan’s very own Kimo and Marley. I loved those dogs.
Anyway, Trixy had a bark so loud she could scare a pit bull. Maybe my mom would come to the window, see what was happening, and let Trixy out the front door and the mass of muscle and teeth that was my dog would race to my rescue.
But it soon became clear I wasn’t going to make it to the edge of the field. I stopped and turned to face my pursuers. Doug just started laughing at my foolhardiness. I remember the sneer. I remember the string of saliva that travelled from his mouth to my face. I remember it stringing across my forehead and eyeball and cheek, hot, before I wiped it and retched. Then, I remember being on the ground, my face pushed hard into the dirt. I remember the smell of the earth being salty and the odour of cement and metal and pain. I don’t remember how long the beating went on. I only remember walking home defeated, then wailing on the sofa, my mom sitting next to me, ignoring the curse words I spat out. I railed against God, and against Trixy, for allowing this to happen.
“Oh, Michael,” said my mom. “I don’t know what to do.”
It wasn’t the first time I’d known such pain and shame. It was hard at first to convince my mother, but sometime that year I started boxing. And I made it my sport.
I started, of course, at the London Boxing Club, Victoria being more British than Great Britain itself. The gym was downtown, in the basement of a Nelson’s Music Store. It had two heavy bags and two rings. I started going with a buddy named Kelly, whose dad was a police officer. Eventually, Kelly stopped going. But I didn’t.
There were about 40 kids split into two groups, the expe
rienced (which is to say talented boxers) and the beginners (or others). I stayed in the latter group the entire time. The coach of my group was Mr. Ballantyne. His son was Clifford Ballantyne, who ended up fighting professionally.
Once, I boxed the smallest kid in the talented group. It was the first time I saw stars, but I loved it. I loved hitting the heavy bag. I loved jumping rope. I loved all those calisthenics, the runs we’d go on. I loved putting on the hand-wraps and snorting with a well-landed punch.
Boxing was rational. It was broken up into weight classes, so I would be fighting someone almost exactly my weight. It would be an equal contest—in theory, anyway. I was not only small, but compact and heavy for my stature. The flyweights I’d compete against almost always had longer arms, which presented problems.
I was never a great boxer, especially outside the ring. Once, in the schoolyard, I took on a kid who was blind in one eye. He was a southpaw. His right eye didn’t work. This should have made him susceptible to a right lead—throwing a right cross to the right side of his face, across his right front leg. To make matters even easier, he started out throwing a roundhouse left hook, leaving himself laughably defenceless to a right lead.
But for some reason I froze solid, stood there flat-footed, and—after he let me have it—ended up gasping for air on one knee when the bell rang to end the lunch-hour. It seemed I was a fighter in all things except the fights.
Still, it was the concept of being a boxer that benefited me. It created a sense of confidence, but more importantly an aura around me that played well with the other kids at school. Even though I wasn’t likely to become a legend of the ring, I was still the only boxer known to Fairburn Elementary and Arbutus Junior High. I spun exaggerated stories of my prowess. Muhammad Ali became my hero, and his cockiness was the kind of armour I adopted too. Boys stopped wanting to fight me. And I stayed at the London Boxing Club almost until I finished high school.
In high school, things were better for me. I wasn’t a jock. I played basketball on the B team and that was it. I also wasn’t much of a bookworm, but I must have done something right because I sneaked onto the Honour Roll. Mostly, I partied and had my heart broken.
I started playing the trumpet (my dad had played it) at about the same time I started boxing, and it too helped build my confidence. (When I met Susan I was playing in an amateur jazz band, and as an MPP in Toronto I would play “The Last Post” at high school Remembrance Day services.) I played in the junior high school band. We finished second in the nationals in Calgary when I was about 13; it was my first time east of Vancouver. Our world had been one of West Coast sensibilities. We travelled to Seattle, to Disneyland, and to Hawaii after my dad started making some money.
My life back then was basketball, music, and parties. I got my first girlfriend at Mt. Douglas High School, and we went out for about a year and a half. I’d been crazy about Michele since Grade 8, but it had taken her a few years to see the appeal in my attentions.
When I graduated, my marks were not top-notch but good enough to get into the University of Victoria. The plan was that I’d go there for a year, as my dad did, then go to UBC, as he had, and eventually become a lawyer, as he was. If my dad’s was the path I was vaguely following as I headed off to university in 1984, it was around this time that that my mother and my sister stepped in to put a little focus and direction in my life. In truth, there were probably few people on the planet, certainly few on Vancouver Island, better qualified for that task.
When I was 15, my mother, who’d been a teacher, went back to UVic herself to get her Bachelor of Education degree. Life being a curious thing, she became a full-time university student the same year that my sister did. The first consequence of Mom’s decision was that everyone in the family had to take on some tasks around the house. That included dinners. Everyone had to cook dinner one night a week. That included me. And with the lack of culinary imagination typical of the teenage male, I almost always made the same thing: tuna tetrazzini, a fancy name for tuna casserole from a box. Think Hamburger Helper, except you’ve got to open a can of tuna (or cat food, accidentally, but I never made that mistake again).
Another consequence was that the Bryant household became something of a hothouse of learning. I remember cue cards everywhere. And I remember our hallway being lined with books my mother and sister had borrowed from the Faculty of Education library. There must have been 100 or more. It seemed to me there was no way they could have read them all. I convinced myself that what they’d done was basically take the school library hostage in the name of scholastic victory.
As I recall, they placed first and second in their graduating class. I got the impression they were extremely competitive—not with each other, but with the rest of the world. This helped nurture my already growing sense that ours was a Hobbesian realm in which competitors must be not only defeated but destroyed. It merely built on a message I’d already got from my dad that if I didn’t scratch and fight like hell to achieve success, the world would have me for breakfast.
My mom, I think, just wanted me to fulfill my potential. She and my sister had both finished university not long before I started. They were both superb students and teachers, great with the mechanics of academic learning. They basically taught me how to study, how to write an essay, how to be a student.
During my year at UVic, I lived like a Jesuit. The priority was books and marks. I took a typical first-year course load—history, political science, philosophy, English. In my spare time, I read a lot and was very big on John Irving’s novels. The World According to Garp, The Hotel New Hampshire, and later, A Prayer for Owen Meany—I read them all. Maybe it was because Irving had been a wrestler, while I was a boxer, and wrestling was threaded through his work. Maybe his was a sensibility with which I could identify.
After a year at UVic, I was accepted into the honours English program at UBC. I’m embarrassed now to say that, though I obtained both a B.A. in English literature and an M.A. in political science, I was extremely strategic in my studies. I was very competitive and obsessed with achievement, focused more on marks than on learning. I was a heavy consumer of Coles Notes, figuring it was more efficient to read the condensed version and write on that than it was to actually read the book. But two things happened while I was in university that made an impact on me.
I read a book titled W.A.C. Bennett and the Rise of British Columbia by David Mitchell. Bennett’s populism made a lot of sense to me. He was, like my grandfather, a builder. He built bridges and dams and highways and infrastructure. He was on the cover of TIME magazine in 1966; the cover story ran under the headline, “Canada: Surging to Nationhood.” It was Bennett’s inspiration that gave some energy to the pull that politics already had on me from the example of my dad and grandfather: I decided that (a) I wanted to be in politics, and (b) I wanted to be the Attorney General and maybe Premier of British Columbia.
During my last year as an undergrad at UBC, I also took a course that had a profound effect on my thinking and my life. I’d already taken a class or two from Professor Paul Tennant in municipal law and provincial politics. I liked him as a professor. He also taught aboriginal rights.
Now, I was born and raised in a province whose government denied that there was such a thing as “aboriginal rights,” even after they’d been entrenched in 1982 by the repatriated Constitution of Canada. My education had taught me the fairly common view that Canadian history began in 1867, not at the time of the first European contact with First Nations; that segregation was bad, assimilation was good; that this impoverished culture would have a better life if it abandoned ways that weren’t working and did things the mainstream (Caucasian) way.
So I took the class mainly to disprove Prof. Tennant’s explication of aboriginal rights as requiring special constitutional protections. Another modest undertaking by Michael J. Bryant. What I came away with was something entirely different. I got what Paul Tennant was saying. I was awakened to the shameful history of Canada�
��s treatment of aboriginal people. And it changed everything about my outlook.
Essentially, I started becoming a liberal and a Liberal. That is, I began to depart from the anti-statist tendencies of my political lineage, and the anti-NDP ideology that polarized B.C. politics (truly a two-party province, throughout its history, the right being represented by Conservatives, then by the Social Credit Party, then, believe it or not, the B.C. Liberal Party; the left being represented by Liberals, then CCF, then the NDP). This made me a liberal thinker, and a Liberal Party supporter.
The injustice of Canada’s treatment of aboriginal peoples was more than disturbing to me. It became a lifelong cause to address the injustices, past and present. As a student, I would go on to complete two graduate degrees on the subject. As a lawyer, my focus was always on aboriginal rights. As a politician, I’d do my best work with aboriginal leaders. Most important, I have enjoyed loyalty, generosity, friendship, and even spiritual bonds with men and women of aboriginal descent.
It’s for this reason that when Darcy Sheppard, the man on the bicycle as those 28 seconds began, would turn out to have First Nations blood and be recognized as Métis, it would strike me as a twist of fate cruel beyond reckoning.
THREE
Law, Love, Luck
With two university degrees to my name, I left British Columbia in 1989 to study aboriginal rights. I was bound for Toronto’s Osgoode Law School, because that’s where the gurus were.
But if Paul Tennant had helped ensure my mind was newly open on that issue, my attitude and outlook about education otherwise hadn’t much changed. At Osgoode, my competitive and ruthless approach to school grew even more intense. I was convinced that the students I was competing against were out to get me.
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