Farther along the shore were Triton and Brighton. The people of this area were renowned for their hard work and determination. Many here were highliner fishermen, top loggers for the paper mill in Grand Falls, or foremen and excellent tradesmen for provincial construction companies. I came to learn that few communities in the province could match the initiative and drive of these people. When I did campaign there, I was told by the newly minted poll captains that I did not need to spend much time there, that they had everything under control, that the people here would vote for me, and I should spend my time in the other part of the bay, where I needed to get new votes. And the IWA issue of the late fifties was not forgotten.
The loggers of the province were eager to be more organized. At that time they had what the loggers considered to be an ineffective group to represent them called the Newfoundland Loggers Association. The International Woodworkers of America were invited by the loggers to represent them and the IWA obliged. It was not long before an impasse occurred with the Anglo-Newfoundland Development (A. N. D.) Company, the owners and operators of the Grand Falls mill, ancillary wood camps, and the new union, the IWA, which led to a strike by the loggers for better wages and living conditions. Meanwhile, the old Loggers Association and much of the media opposed the IWA’s intrusion into the Newfoundland forest industry and its fiery leader, H. Landon Ladd.
The strike reached its sixth week when Premier Smallwood, sensing a populace that was negative toward the new union, intervened and passed legislation stripping the IWA of bargaining rights in the province and established a new organization that the loggers would have to represent them. Public support was hardened against the IWA when, in a confrontation on the picket line, a policeman was killed. Through all of this, most loggers supported the IWA, none more staunchly than the loggers in the Triton area. I was now the recipient of fertile ground that had been partly tilled earlier, and the loggers and other independent people had had enough of an intrusive and partisan government. I gained a lot of inspiration from the people of this whole area, both in the last days of the campaign and during all my years in government. They were and are a fair people, eager to work and strong contributors to their respective communities.
Two Triton stories that symbolize their zeal for work and craftiness need to be told.
My first portfolio as a Cabinet Member was Minister of Municipal Affairs. The council of Triton decided they should visit me at my office in St. John’s. I mean, it was good to have your MHA, the minister of the very department to which all municipal councils reported. And so they arrived in the capital and, in addition to the regular meetings, I invited them to dinner. Of course we hashed over the results of the departmental meetings and other matters of mutual importance, including fish or the lack thereof.
And then one of the councillors looked at the mayor and uttered: “Well, we better tell him, your Worship.”
“Tell him what?” responded a surprised mayor.
“Well, you know . . .” said the now-subdued councillor.
“I thought we had agreed that we would not mention it,” said the mayor.
“Well, I have had a change of mind,” the councillor retorted.
“Well, Brian, it’s like this,” the mayor began. “We have this piece of land, the only decent piece of land to economically make into a subdivision. So we divided it into lots and put in a road and services. And we have been selling the lots. I think we got them sold now.”
I intervened. “I think that is fine.”
“Yes,” said the mayor, “but we were rather careful about who got the lots.”
“What do you mean?” I said, puzzled.
“There are some people who would not be an asset to the town, who don’t work that much, who would bring the town down. We refused a couple of lots to people like that.”
And then on another occasion the council told me of their very legal but unusual financing. When the council was started, first the councillors were told that they could expect certain monies from the province. They would get a dollar from the province for each dollar the town raised, up to a certain amount, then seventy-five cents for each dollar to another amount and then fifty cents . . .
Well, the council got to thinking. If they could get all their taxes paid really early in the year, instead of having it spread over the whole year, the province would have to provide the matching funds and the council would have a sizable amount of money, most of which it could deposit in the bank and make interest. No other municipality did this.
But I digress from the campaign . . .
My last day of the campaign was in Springdale, where the campaign office over the previous week was beginning to balloon with new people who wanted to help. The poll captains and their helpers blanketed the town and taught the new poll captains in the other communities around the district to identify those who were definitely going to vote for us, those who were definitely opposed, and those who were truly undecided, and then on polling day to get those for us out by noon, those undecided by suppertime, and any of these two groups who were out of town or busy earlier, out before the polls closed. What a day.
And then about ten minutes before the polls closed I noticed that there was a decided for us that had not voted. I shouted, “What happened here? Margaret Warr hasn’t voted. Who slipped up?”
“Well, no one, boss,” Davis Hull exclaimed. “Marg is nine months pregnant, can go any time, you know.”
“No, I did not know,” I retorted. I knew we were closing in. I could not lose by one vote! “Who has a car? Let’s go.”
We made a mad dash for Marg’s door. She opened the door wearing her housecoat.
“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.
LEARNING AND LEGISLATING
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 re
sponding 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 sit
e 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.
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