* * *
For his entire professional career, Christopher worked in progressively more responsible management roles in retail chocolate. So Christopher and I shared a similar commitment and passion for our work. We lived the adage, “work hard, play hard.” I can recall driving in the early morning from downtown to Scarborough Town Centre, where Christopher was managing a store, and arriving just in the nick of time.
Christopher and I had an unmistakable sexual connection, which often overruled other signals, even if we were not together. I am sure it was a point of frustration for Christopher’s friends, as it was for mine, that anytime we were to find ourselves partying in the same environment, we were more often than not leaving together. The bloom was off the rose though as the 1990s progressed. Aside from a brief interlude in the late 1990s, Christopher and I drifted apart as my attention turned to elected politics. But by the time Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals were swept into power in 2003 and I was nearing age forty, I found myself deeply fulfilled on the one hand and terribly empty on the other. I turned my mind to settling down and surveyed some pathways that were open to me at that time. Truth is, all pathways led to Christopher.
By then, Christopher was living near the Ontario Science Centre in Don Mills and had progressed within the Laura Secord family, which was constantly experiencing new owners. He had a maturing daughter and a coterie of friends. Whether he was dating when I called him was immaterial to me, and it never came up between us. Our reconciliation came full circle when Christopher joined me and a few friends in New York City, where we took in several days of the U.S. Open tennis tournament while staying in the other-world surroundings of the residence of Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations, Allan Rock.
We flew separately. I met Christopher at the airport in Newark, and we took the train together back to Manhattan. It’s so easy for me to remember how he looked because he had dressed in Lacoste from head to toe. From that moment on, Lacoste became his house brand. Sadly, though, I could never get Christopher to take up tennis, which had by then emerged as my sport of choice. (I had joined the Queen’s Club on Dupont Street, Toronto’s oldest indoor tennis club.) Christopher was content to dress the part while encouraging me to play and delighting in receiving tennis towels that I ordered from the Australian Open every year.
The towels came in handy because the secret to Christopher’s happiness as a true northern Ontario boy could be found in lake swimming. No matter the darkness, temperature, or other perceived dangers (my greatest fear is death in cold water), Christopher was always ready for a swim. And I was always on the lookout for the next best place. Our car always had a suit and towel on hand, but, truth be known, he would have preferred swimming without the suit. Christopher’s depravity was put to the test when, at the end of a canoe trip, he and one other from our group of ten braved the freezing waters of the Sutton River at its mouth on Hudson Bay. “Good enough for the polar bears, good enough for me,” Christopher thought.
Several other swimming escapades of his terrified me. I hope never again to sense the fear I felt when he took to cliff-diving into the turbulent Atlantic Ocean at Crane Beach on the east coast of Barbados. Daredevils had to time their jumps into the height of the swells and then swim vigorously so as not to be smashed into the rocks. Ironically, Christopher survived but I was stung by a jellyfish and experienced a terrible allergic reaction as our plane took us home. Ever since, I have been forced to carry an EpiPen anytime I want to venture into the sea.
Soon after our reconciliation, an exciting opportunity came Christopher’s way. After a brief hesitation due to his loyalty to Laura Secord, he leapt at the opportunity to begin building a retail chain for Lindt Chocolate. In very short order, he established a strong regional presence for Lindt and built a team of managers, some poached from Laura Secord, who brought his level of dedication to the job. Christopher was revered by his employees, and my sisters, Joanne and Christine, were at times part of his employee mix.
At Christmas 2006, I gave Christopher a white tuxedo. In the pocket, I tucked a letter asking him to marry me. He said yes, and we told the press it was a Stephen Harper Shotgun Wedding, triggered by the prime minister’s threat to bring an end to legally sanctioned same-sex marriage. Planning for the wedding was such a happy time for us. During my many snowmobile trips throughout the Algoma District with the help of Mike Brown, the local MPP who rightly figured it was a good way to get politicians out to see the vastness of his riding, I came across a wilderness oasis that remains my favourite place in Canada (outside of Toronto): Laurentian Lodge, on Flack Lake, thirty-two kilometres north of Elliot Lake. It comes complete with a waterfall made for swimming. I had previously taken Christopher and some of his family to see Laurentian Lodge, and I told him we should get married there. The genius of our decision was that we got to pay respect to Christopher’s northern roots while securing a venue that would limit our guest list to two hundred. Christopher and I, both very operationally and logistically prone, set about organizing the wedding weekend ourselves, despite our very busy day jobs. (I was minister of health at the time.)
We chose the August long weekend of 2007 for our wedding and set out to design a range of activities over three days. The central decision that we made was that our wedding would pay respect to the tradition of two-spirited people in First Nations culture. Though diminished through modernization and the presence of Christianity, there was still considerable history that informed the idea that in past times two-spirited people were given greater status. This proved tougher than we might have thought. Were it not for the fact that Chief Charles Fox personally cajoled a legitimate community mystic named Indian Ron Mandaman to make the trek from Shoal Lake on the Manitoba border to Laurentian Lodge, our wedding would have been very different with respect to all those past traditions.
We had all first met Fox and his partner, Melinda Hardy, when Christopher’s daughter visited Toronto and we travelled together to the powwow at the Mississaugas of the New Credit Reserve. Fox and Hardy stood for us at our First Nations–inspired wedding, as we later had the privilege to do for them at their wedding in Thunder Bay, which triggered our son Michael’s first airplane ride.
The “legal” part of the wedding was conducted by Justice of the Peace Gerry Solursh, yet another great person I met through Barbara Hall. Solursh had been Hall’s accountant when she was in private law practice, and he also had a lot of experience as a campaign CFO for various Liberals like Jim Peterson (brother of David and former federal cabinet minister). As the 1997 megacity mayoral campaign was getting organized, Hall and I had reached out to Solursh to take on the same role for her campaign. To our good fortune, he said yes. Solursh, never one to let formality get in the way of hilarity, altered the wedding vows slightly to say, “By the powers invested in me by George” rather than “by Ontario.”
Because Elliot Lake is a small community and our numerous guests overmatched the capacity of Laurentian Lodge, we took advantage of several other venues. On the Saturday, we organized several different outings, including golf, hiking, croquet, and pontoon boat rides. All the guests met at the Lester B. Pearson Civic Centre in Elliot Lake, where we sent them off with a Tim Hortons box lunch. It was fun to see Dick O’Hagan reminisce about being in Elliot Lake with Pearson, who, while a Torontonian, was parachuted into the Algoma East riding in the late 1940s. The pictures in the lobby of the centre were these great black and whites shot at a BBQ, and you do know how I like a political BBQ. Later that same night, we threw a big party at Denison House, where many of our guests were staying. It was built years earlier, at the cost of millions, by mining titan Stephen Roman (principal owner of Denison Mines). I had stayed there while travelling with Mines minister Hugh O’Neil back in the late 1980s.
The weather on that weekend was spectacular beyond belief — part of a lengthy heat wave that had hammered Toronto. The swimmable lakes in the region eased the heat and made the drive worthwhile. But our wedding ceremony had fire and
blankets as part of First Nations tradition. I won’t soon forget when Christopher and I stood up to be walked around the fire, bearing a Hudson’s Bay blanket. We had been seated on a bench with our backs to the crowd. Only then did we realize that, aside from a stoic handful of guests, including my sister Joanne, almost everyone else had moved into the shade. Meantime, claustrophobic Christopher was wearing a tuxedo, albeit with an open shirt, and was being marched around a fire wearing a scratchy wool blanket, yet another aversion of his. Heat aside, it was all magical.
Among a very interesting array of guests were Tony Toldo Sr., his wife Josie, his son Tony Jr., and his wife Michelle. They had made the trek from Windsor. The Toldo name is synonymous with success, and their philanthropic commitment to Windsor is how I came to know them. Dalton McGuinty invited me to a meeting in his office very early in our days in office. McGuinty told me that this guy, Tony Toldo Sr., had been very helpful in Windsor and wanted resources for a local hospice. Luckily for me, our priorities included an expansion of residential hospices, and Windsor had a very evolved model with tons of community support, led by Toldo.
Achieving success in the plastics industry in the 1950s, Toldo had long since given up long drives in cars for short rides in airplanes. His aircraft grew in sophistication over time, and Elliot Lake Airport’s runway couldn’t accommodate his latest private jet. So he had to drive in from Sudbury, two hours away. Tony made it clear that wasn’t a sacrifice he was accustomed to making for just anybody at that stage in his life.
Christopher and I both love carrot cake, and among Barbara Hall’s many talents is baking. Her contribution to our wedding was two hundred mini-cakes, each carefully decorated on the day of the event by a team that included my mother and aunt Sylvia. The heroic aspect of all this is the fact that only twenty-four hours before, Hall had dismounted her bicycle in Montreal, having ridden for six days in a fundraiser for the Toronto AIDS service organization, PWA. I had done half the ride and left Hall a few days earlier in Kingston to head directly for Elliot Lake (by car). She slept in the back seat as her husband, the fantastic Max Beck, made the very long drive north. Fortunately, Beck is a North Bay native, so many of the roads were familiar to him.
Mike Brown, the local MPP, and Monique Smith, MPP from nearby Nipissing, also attended the wedding. Smith brought along well wishes from the premier, then gearing up for the coming election campaign. Molly Johnson sang and DJ TigerStyle kept the place jumping. Our honeymoon, beyond a few days on Manitoulin Island, was at a timeshare in Rio de Janeiro, provided by my mother and stepfather. But it was delayed until after the 2007 election.
Christopher and I were both keen to expand our family unit, so it wasn’t too long before we started to talk about the prospect of adoption. Around this time, our home on Rose Avenue in Toronto’s Cabbagetown was subjected to an OPP security audit (because of some harassment of me) and found to be severely lacking. Accordingly, in 2008 we moved into a spacious condo just a few short steps from Maple Leaf Gardens. We delighted in bringing our own tastes to this great apartment and experiencing a good quality of life with a combined income of $300,000. But by 2008, Christopher started to feel a lot of apprehension about my role in politics and had what he felt was a bruising experience with the spouse of an ambitious colleague of mine. Nothing was ever really the same afterward, and Christopher’s insecurities outside of his own domain became more and more prominent.
* * *
Still, despite these problems, our lives continued. Christopher and I still both went about our day jobs with dedication. We also registered with the Children’s Aid Society and spent many days completing the CAS course for prospective parents. We spent days more filling out paperwork. And then we waited, but with no clear outlook about whether a match would be found, much less when.
As 2009 rolled along, the idea of running for mayor the following year remained an option; yet, as I have commented in chapter 7, it was never a subject I raised with many people, given the sensitivity of my position at Queen’s Park. I set the trap for myself in September by admitting that I was considering a run, and several of my cabinet colleagues, seemingly anxious to see me go, sought to further their own prospects by generating turbulence around me. That deeply soured my cabinet experience. Brash and outspoken as I might have been, I never used power at the cabinet table to upset the apple carts of others. I later regretted that the same professional courtesy wasn’t extended to me.
The gamesmanship, some of which was apologized for later, soured Christopher, too. He struggled as he saw me being backstabbed after so much work and loyalty to our party, the premier, and his government. I recall one night when I wandered home at 10 p.m., dessert in hand for Christopher but tired after another night of fundraising and still with hours of paperwork to attend to. “Fuck them, George,” Christopher said. “Let them figure out for themselves what real work feels like when you’re gone.”
The year-end offered a brief respite, and as soon as chocolate season and Christmas passed, we took to the road and did our customary post-Christmas drive south to deliver my stepmother, her dog, and her car to her winter home near Ft. Lauderdale. Shortly after that, we crossed “Alligator Alley” to Tampa to spend a few days with the Toldos and with my own mother, who had a mobile home there. It was so cold there that we high-tailed it to Key West, but we found no reprieve. An omen, perhaps.
Just a few days after New Year’s, I received an email from Don Guy (McGuinty’s campaign manager) asking if I could resign my seat soon so that the government might move along with the anointment of Glen Murray as my successor. I was pleased that the party was able to replace me with a person of stature and values. Soon after this, I penned my letter of resignation from cabinet to the premier.
This major change in my political career was accompanied by an even more significant one in my personal life.
CHAPTER NINE
Mayoral Race
I first began thinking seriously about running for mayor of Toronto in the summer of 2009. I was disgusted by Mayor David Miller’s handling of the thirty-nine-day outside workers’ strike, which turned various city parks into garbage dumps without extracting any public benefit whatsoever at the bargaining table. During that strike, I used my provincial political organ-ization as a base to organize community cleanups of street corners across Toronto that were overflowing with garbage. That experience really got me thinking about moving from Queen’s Park to city hall and back closer to my community roots.
Because of my Queen’s Park job, I didn’t have the luxury of consulting with many people about the possible move. One or more of them might leak to the media that I was thinking of exiting provincial politics, which would undermine me. But one person I did approach was former mayor Barbara Hall, my long-time friend and “big sister.” She was supportive of my running, but warned me that provincial politics are very different from the municipal variety, where there is no party-line voting. “You might find that frustrating,” Barbara told me.
I thought I was well aware of the differences, and despite my reputation as a partisan was actually excited about the prospect of spreading my wings into an arena that was not dominated by party politics. I had worked at city hall in the 1990s as Barbara’s chief of staff when she was mayor. My office was right beside the mayor’s, with a view of Nathan Phillips Square. Back then, I used to dream about being mayor myself. Of course, at that point in time I wasn’t anticipating being a senior provincial cabinet minister and deputy premier. In 2009, it would take a leap of faith for me to leave my position and power at Queen’s Park and attempt a risky run for the Toronto mayoralty against a powerful incumbent.
But there were other influences pushing me in that direction. While there was nothing to indicate that my position as a senior minister in Dalton McGuinty’s government was in jeopardy, I was getting a little bit restless at Queen’s Park. In ten years there, I had given a lot of myself. I was doing things in Dalton’s name and in my party’s name. I yearned to be th
e person in charge rather than a number two. The silos that dominate in the ministerial model limit one’s relevance, as I was reminded on the day of the Sunrise propane explosion in Downsview when nobody called me, despite my supposed importance and status as the region’s most senior minister. And with Dalton firmly ensconced as premier, I was looking at years of hard time in the trenches. Finally, while I don’t have a bad word to say about Dalton, by 2009 the decision-making process inside the government was elevating some of those staffers I liked least. Increasingly, decisions were being made on the basis of how to pacify backbenchers. (This phenomenon presented itself most clearly in the decision to cancel the gas plants after I left.) Also, my fiscally conservative mindset was frustrated by the lack of discipline on the expenditure side, where I spent a lot of political capital in confronting spending on hospitals and prescription drugs. Despite the government being in deficit, full-day kindergarten was launched with only a sketchy understanding of the costs involved, especially on the infrastructure side. I was also frustrated that Ontario’s approach to managing public-sector labour costs was dull, half-hearted, and often incoherent.
I could, of course, have waited for Dalton to step down (which he did three years later) and then run for premier. The reality I faced was that, when I looked at the man in the mirror, I had to admit my taste for partisan battle never applied within the Liberal Party. Whatever my reputation, I didn’t have the stomach for battle with current colleagues. My ambition was to perform well on behalf of my leader. My sexual orientation was also a concern. Although my own openness about it had in a sense normalized the gay reality inside the Ontario government, I remained aware that haters always lurk out there. I felt that my sexual orientation would be a net benefit in Toronto and a mixed blessing provincially. Kathleen Wynne proved me wrong on the latter, and running as a gay man in Toronto didn’t turn out so well for me. But more about that later.
Unconventional Candour Page 17