28 Seconds

by Michael Bryant

  In the spring of 1993, I was sitting in my cubicle at the Supreme Court, holding in my hands a letter I’d read and reread about ten times. Susan and I had been going out for several months. She was clearly marriage material, in my mind. Susan was heading to New York to work at Debevoise & Plimpton, a famous Wall Street firm. She wanted to be an entertainment lawyer, but the leading firm she had her sights on told her to get some general corporate experience at one of the big Wall Street firms first. So that’s what she intended to do. At Debevoise & Plimpton she’d been guaranteed a year in New York and then the next year in Paris, which was a dream come true for her. Susan became fluently bilingual at law school, studying in both languages, and earning both a civil law and a common law degree. She’d spent a summer in Paris, loved it, and wanted to live there. The obvious thing for me to do would be to go to Columbia, in New York. We could live together there. That’s why the letter I kept rereading was so troubling.

  It was from Harvard. I’d been accepted into the program there. No scholarships or grants, mind you. (Although within a month I would obtain both, including a Fulbright fellowship, sufficient to pay my way.) But Harvard had been a dream of mine. Who passes on a chance to go to Harvard!

  Susan appeared at my cubicle and read the letter over my shoulder. I held it up. She sighed.

  “What do you want to do?” she asked.

  “I want to be with you,” I said. “But I want to go to Harvard.”

  “We can always be together. Next year we’ll be apart.” Follow your bliss, she told me. “Go to Harvard.”

  There was another sigh. Was that a lump in her throat? Then she said: “Congratulations. Let’s celebrate.”

  So Susan went to NYC to do commercial arbitration, mergers and acquisitions, and the like. And I went to Cambridge, Massachusetts. It didn’t go swimmingly. The stresses of a long-distance relationship made things difficult. We split up in November for a month. My pattern continued: study and socialize, strategically. My studies went well, as did my alcohol consumption. At Harvard, I finished my master’s dissertation on aboriginal rights, entitled Legal Aspects of Intra-governmental Armed Conflict: Chiapas, Wounded Knee, and Oka. (It would prepare me well for a future assignment with aboriginal affairs.)

  When Susan and I reconciled in late 1993, about a month after we split, I made it clear I wanted to get married. She wasn’t ready, but agreed we were on that path. Then she left for Paris. I tried to get a job there, but couldn’t. So I got a job in London, teaching law at King’s College at the University of London. The Chunnel from England to France had just opened and we considered the London–Paris commute likely to be not much worse than New York–Boston.

  I was living at London House—with its subsidized pub, thank you very much. And my drinking continued. We visited each other every second weekend, and toured much of France and England by car and train. But it was hard to be living apart. Worse, Susan was miserable at work. The American lawyers there used her more or less as a translator. The hours were absurd.

  And so, in the backseat of a Paris taxi in 1995, we decided to move to Toronto. “You start your entertainment law career. And I’ll begin my political career.”

  OUR ARRIVAL IN TORONTO in the summer of 1995 was something less than glamorous. The first place we stayed, until we could find an address of our own, was an apartment near King and Dufferin Streets, somewhat lacking in modern conveniences but fully equipped with cockroaches.

  If nothing else, this amenity did create motivated househunters. Susan soon found a place, a house for rent near Queen and Spadina. Of course, the past almost always catches up with you. We almost didn’t get it because, as a law student, I was constantly in debt and terrible at paying bills on time. My credit-card debts even became something of a joke among the other Supreme Court law clerks. Sometimes the phone would ring and it would be a credit-card company. They’d ask for me and I would say, “Sorry, no Michael Bryant here.” It was an odd thing for other clerks to hear over a cubicle in the Supreme Court of Canada: Michael Bryant denying that he was Michael Bryant. It should have been humiliating, but I thought it hilarious.

  So after we found this place, the landlord called and said, “Sorry, I can’t rent to you, you have the credit rating of a fraud artist.” Susan was devastated, then furious. For her, debt was evil. Her father had paid cash for their family home.

  Chastened, I went to the landlord and literally begged. I gave her references. I asked her to call the Honourable Beverley McLachlin. I showed her my paycheque. Eventually, she agreed to rent to us, as long as Susan was the sole signatory.

  On the career front, things rolled along. Susan had the first job. Before we returned to Toronto, Graham Henderson, husband of Margo Timmins of the Cowboy Junkies, had left McCarthy Tetrault to start his own entertainment law boutique. He asked Susan to join him. So, after we wrote the Ontario bar exams (Susan finished in the top three and got an award; I almost flunked), she started with Henderson.

  Her practice—mostly music law, with a little bit of film and video gaming law—blossomed from the beginning. They built that shop up to about six or eight lawyers and she became the managing partner.

  Meanwhile, I wanted to be a litigator. I thought McCarthy Tetrault was the place to be. Ian Binnie, one of the leading litigators of his generation and later a Supreme Court of Canada justice, was there at the time. They had a huge litigation department that drove that firm’s profits, which was unusual for Bay Street. Most of them are transactional, mergers-and-acquisitions shops, with a litigation practice on the side. At McCarthy’s, litigation was their strength.

  I started there in January 1997, and that was the second best thing that happened over that New Year holiday. The first was that Susan and I got engaged.

  We’d gone to Victoria for Christmas. We took a walk on the beach at Saxe Point Park, which had great meaning for me and my family. That’s the park my grandfather had created, and his ashes were spread there. Susan wondered why I was proposing on a funeral pyre, and former garbage dump, but accepted nonetheless.

  I had champagne cooling in the trunk of the car, confident of the outcome. And I’d booked an engagement notice advertisement in the local paper, the Victoria Times-Colonist, before I got the answer. It never occurred to me that she’d say no. So I proposed, she said yes, and the next day the ad was in the paper. (Everyone but Susan pointed out the risk I’d taken, but she understood me too well to affect surprise at my overconfidence.)

  Almost from the beginning at McCarthy’s, I was nicknamed “The Professor” by the litigation lawyers. This was not praise. They regarded me as overeducated, while they were gritty litigators. I wanted to do appeals. They liked the scholarly side of me, writing up factums and injunctions. That again turned out to be fantastic training for politics.

  Injunctions require urgent action, an inhuman amount of work in a compressed period of time, and it can all end in a moment. They’re often make-or-break procedures. If you win the injunction, even though it’s supposed to be an interim measure, often that’s the end of the case.

  The lawyer often called upon to pull an injunctive rabbit out of a hat was my mentor, Tom Heintzman, Q.C. A formidable crew of litigators learned under Heintzman: Darryl Ferguson, Andy Reddon, Bill Black, Jonathan Lisus, Marguerite Ethier—all senior partners today in Toronto. From Tom and this posse of barristers, I learned how to balance the need for thoroughness with the ability to meet deadlines, the need for creativity in the moment, and the need to be prepared for everything. I learned how to anticipate what the other side might do, and to have in hand a response to the anticipated reaction. I would often have two or three appeal factums ready before we even went to court. The strategy was basic-ally to steamroll the other side.

  By now, Susan and I were both working long hours. Money was starting to flow in. But she was ensuring that we saved for a house. We were also busy trying to find a rabbi willing to marry a Jew and a Christian. There were none in Ontario. We finally found on
e in Montreal, Rabbi Leigh Lerner, who agreed to marry us so long as I took the conversion course. So I did. I took the course, but I didn’t convert. I signed a ketubah, a Jewish marriage contract affirming that our children would be raised Jewish.

  The rabbi had originally intended to make the ceremony quite secular and allow no Hebrew to be spoken. Susan had always envisioned that there would be some Hebrew spoken at her wedding, so she was disappointed. A few months before the wedding, I wrote Rabbi Lerner a letter and explained my own spirituality, my commitment to any children being Jewish, my affinity to Judaism even though I was unable to convert.

  I told him this was not just a show for us; we wanted it to be a Jewish wedding for spiritual reasons, not for cosmetic reasons. He responded very favourably, and on the day of the wedding he said, “Okay, we’re going to do the last part in Hebrew. Both of you.”

  It was only a line, a “repeat after me.” Susan was happy. I was just as thrilled. It did, however, prompt a lot of people to assume that I’d converted.

  Actually, I had discussed the possibility of converting with a rabbi at Holy Blossom Synagogue in Toronto. But he said, “I don’t know how you could do it. To me, it would be like getting a sex change.” I thought, yeah, I’m just not. I’m not Jewish.

  At the time, my state of spirituality was pretty much what I’d gotten from my mom, a sense that there was a God, that He was everywhere, and that He looked favourably on truth, goodness, and love. I had no strong sense of Christianity and the gospels, but just to discard them seemed to be a disavowal of something fundamental to myself.

  So on August 31, 1997, Susan and I were married, under a chuppah in Montreal’s Montefiore Club by Rabbi Lerner. There with us, dancing the Hora, was the future chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, our country’s first woman chief justice, the groundbreaker for whom I’d clerked. Also clapping was another Supreme Court justice, Frank Iacobucci, a man who’d gone to law school with my father and had been at my own parents’ wedding.

  Ours was a marriage of two people surrounded not just by love, but by headline names and top-flight success; two people who seemed ordained to succeed by gifts of intellect, education, ambition, and connection.

  In addition to getting some Hebrew into our wedding, I also managed, in my usual ad hoc way, to look after the honeymoon. I was at McCarthy’s late one night—actually the early hours of the morning—waiting for photocopies in the photocopy room beside a fellow first-year associate. There was an awkward silence as we waited, the machines humming in the background. I noticed a poster on the wall, advertising some tropical destination, pinned up by the photocopier staff as a substitute for a window. So, to make conversation, I said, “I don’t suppose you’ve got an acre on the beach in Maui you could loan me for my honeymoon in September, do you?”

  And he said, “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  His family had a massive beachfront property in Maui (beside one owned by Alice Cooper, for you shock rock fans). So, after we were married, we stayed there for three weeks.

  Almost as soon as we came back from our honeymoon, we took possession of our first house, on Palmerston Avenue in the Annex neighbourhood of Toronto. So, by fall 1997, gainful employment, marriage, and home ownership were now ticked off the to-do list and my attention turned to politics.

  I faxed David Peterson, who by then—thanks to the election of the NDP government of Bob Rae in Ontario in 1990, and then the drastic swing right in favour of Mike Harris’s Common Sense Revolution in 1995—was long out of office and chair of Cassels Brock law firm. I reminded him of our meeting seven years earlier. He remembered. He asked what I wanted. I told him I wanted to run. He asked where. I said I didn’t know. And he said, “Well, why don’t you go and figure that out.”

  So even though I’d never been a member of any Ontario political party, never been politically active in any way except on behalf of my dad, I called the Executive Director of the Ontario Liberal Party, Guy Bethell, and asked for a meeting. When we got together, he pulled out a map and explained who were the MPPs in the area and who were the candidates for election. I didn’t grasp the audacity of my inquiry, asking about electoral districts like I was choosing cold cuts from a deli counter. Bethell held back his grins, politely, assuming this was a passing fancy of mine, another vanity candidate sniffing around the Ontario Liberal Party.

  The ridings had just been redistributed, as a result of Premier Harris shrinking the Legislature to 103 seats from 130, and MPPs and candidates were scrambling for places to run. Bethell told me the Liberal candidacy in St. Paul’s—a riding held at the time by Progressive Conservative MPP Isabel Bassett—had just opened up. (St. Paul’s was initially being held for MPP Monte Kwinter, but he had decided to run in another riding.) Our new house was just outside St. Paul’s. I had no idea why it was called St. Paul’s (the old parish name, it turned out). Nor did I know the names of most of the streets in the riding, having lived in Toronto a relatively short time. I was clueless as to the riding’s rich history, the community leaders, the local businesses, the municipal politicians, the brewing or festering of local issues, and had only a vague recollection that the federal MP, Carolyn Bennett, had previously run as MPP but lost to Isabel Bassett. Too clueless to be daunted, I decided there and then that I would become the next MPP for St. Paul’s.

  By now, David Peterson had called Liberal Leader Dalton McGuinty and suggested he meet with me. So McGuinty and Rod MacDonald, one of his senior staff, agreed to a meeting, in the Opposition Leader’s offices, in early 1998.

  Rod was extremely charming and friendly. He glad-handed me in the waiting room and walked me into the sprawling office within which Dalton McGuinty sat, in a large leather chair in the middle of the room, facing a less comfortable, high-backed old chair at which I sat.

  I’d never met him before. He was tall, his back ramrod straight; Rod sat in another chair, beside McGuinty. Rod was on the edge of his seat, literally, fidgeting with a pen, his glasses pushed up onto his forehead.

  I began to speak with the cadence of a machine gun, spraying McGuinty and MacDonald with words, my hands swirling, my eyes wide with fascination at whatever I was blurting out.

  Amongst other things, I told him I wanted to run in St. Paul’s. I told him about the political tradition in my family and my dedication to public service.

  McGuinty seemed intrigued and was amiably encouraging. He was careful with his words, however. He repeatedly paused before he spoke. Then he dropped a bombshell. McGuinty told me that if I was going to run, I couldn’t be a full-time litigator at a downtown law firm.

  “Yeah, I think you’re right. I assumed that I’d have to campaign for the nomination full time.” Of course the thought had never crossed my mind until that moment.

  So, to prove my commitment, I quit my job in February 1998. (Dalton said later he was only half serious and was surprised I actually did it.) I figured I’d start up a research company and basic-ally write factums for other law firms. And that’s what I did. It was called Briefs by Bryant Inc. It paid the bills.

  The Liberal nomination in St. Paul’s didn’t receive too much media attention, because it was assumed Bassett was going to be tough to beat. But my opponent for the nomination turned out to be formidable.

  At some point that spring, Kathleen Wynne entered the race.

  She had made a name for herself opposing education budget cuts and as a leader of a prominent grassroots movement called Citizens for Democracy. But I had a big head start and some advantages. (Wynne would go on to serve as one of the best education ministers Ontario ever had.)

  One of the first people I met when I came to Toronto was Liberal author and lobbyist John Duffy, who got me involved in the Walter Gordon Circle. There, I met the legendary Liberal David Smith, who was head of that organization and also head of the green-light committee that decided when nominations are called. He called it at a favourable time for me.

  After quitting my position at McCarthy’s to
run for the nomination, I joined the party(!); I had no campaign organization in place, so in March 1998 I invited a bunch of my friends from law school over to my house on Palmerston Avenue. I sat on my stairs and made my first ever political speech to the 15 people in my living room, none of whom had any experience in politics. They were just drinking buddies, law school classmates, men and women and their girlfriends and boyfriends. I asked them for a cheque for $200, with no tax receipt; I asked them for nominations, to sign up as party members, and to come knock on doors with me.

  I was stunned when they agreed.

  I went out every night, either with Susan or one of them, or volunteers we met along the way, and slowly but surely built up a team. Carolyn Bennett, the local MP, had endorsed me, and that made all the difference. She gave me instant credibility. After that, a number of members from her riding association also signed up to help.

  In September 1998, I was nominated as the Liberal candidate for St. Paul’s.

  Later, people asked me how I’d built the network that quickly. Jan Innes, Les Scheininger, Joe Ragusa, John Duffy, Dr. Carolyn Bennett and her MP predecessor Barry Campbell, and former federal cabinet ministers Donald S. Macdonald and Doug Frith joined people like Sen. David Smith, former Premier David Peterson, former Premier Frank McKenna, and the late Sen. Keith Davey (the fabled “Rainmaker”) as early supporters. These people were political legends. How did I do it?

  I was lucky. One of my colleagues at McCarthy Tetrault was Tim Murphy, who once gave me some excellent political advice whilst I ruminated about a political career. He’d been an MPP, and would become Prime Minister Paul Martin’s chief of staff. He said to me: “The only way to run, is to run.”

  So run I did. And running means asking a lot of people for help. All those political legends gave their limited time to me, primarily because I asked them. It was as simple as that. Once you get a couple of legends on side, more will want to join. But first you have to ask. And when you ask, you’d better be running like a winner, or else you’ll just look like a talker, not a doer. Political people always admire someone who sticks their neck out, actively and often, so that’s what I did.