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From the Editor

The politicians in my life

by Judi McLeod

January 19, 2004

It will always seem a peculiar stroke of fate that the three politicians who have figured most prominently in my life happen to be Ed Broadbent, Jack Layton and Dennis Mills. Broadbent and Layton are easy to fathom; they’re dyed in the wool socialists. Liberal Mills, on the other hand, will forever remain an enigma to me.

In certain chapters of my life as a reporter, Broadbent and Mills could have been considered friends. I could never use the word ‘friend’ in the same sentence with Layton.

Layton and a former Toronto school board trustee by the name of Olivia Chow came on to the radar screen when I was education columnist for the Toronto Sun. It was a media relationship that was to continue through the life of Our Toronto, and now Toronto Free Press. To this day, Jack Layton cartoons grace the walls of TFP’s Elm Street office. When word first filtered out that Layton would be going to Ottawa to capture the leadership of the New Democrat Party, many friends and cohorts worried aloud that the media hip Jack would someday be Prime Minister of Canada. Not me, I threw a private little bash, the "Jack Off To Ottawa Party." Toronto, I thought, would be a better place without him; the even bigger egos on Parliament Hill would eat him alive. I wasn’t worried about Layton’s wife Olivia Chow. People never paid much attention to the municipal level of government and amalgamation marginalized politicos like Chow even more.

In the long ago days of my callow youth, I hoisted many beers with Oshawa MP Ed Broadbent. Young and impressionable, I considered Broadbent an intellect because he was a professor at York University. as he held forth on a plethora of topics, I listened attentively to the professor/politician at the Whitby Legion, and even bought into the fallacy that the NDP stood up for the working man.

Broadbent may not remember how we came to meet. I do. Running a tabloid called Whitby Free Press, I once wrote a shoot-from-the-hip editorial that Broadbent and his trade union friend Cliff Pilkey thought identified me as a socialist. The editorial criticized the manager of a local bank who, joined with a social club to place a brightly painted green bench next to one of the town’s busiest bus stops. The bank manager and club’s idea was that ordinary citizens would avail themselves of the bench when waiting for the bus. Instead, the town drunk and a few down on their luck derelicts soon monopolized it. "They may not dress in pinstriped suits and smoke brandy-dipped cigars, but they’re citizens of the County Town after all," I wrote in that week’s paper.

Broadbent and Pilkey were so impressed with the Whitby Free Press that they came up with an idea to get the Canadian auto Workers (CaW) to financially support it. Soon after I wasn’t feeling much like a socialist when I found out my new party had ties to the dreaded Communists.

My husband Bill Durkee, listed on the masthead as publisher, went off to drive tractor-trailers in order to get us out of debt. a predator with money had broken our hearts when he took control of the paper, driving us out.

Soon after when I showed up downcast at the Legion, Broadbent uttered his shock at the latest turn of events. "I can’t believe it. From a newspaper publisher to a truck driver," was the gist of his opinion.

This from the politician who boasted of belonging to a party that defended the working man. a truck driver isn’t a working man?

and now all these decades later, Layton, as new NDP leader, has drafted Broadbent back to the party.

Layton could tell the former professor stories about that dratted Judi McLeod, who runs a small paper and website in socialist-monopolized Toronto. Broadbent would only remember her as Judi Durkee.

Back in my youth, I would have been incredulous envisioning an NDP with both a Broadbent and a Smilin’ Jack.

That brings me to the unpredictable Toronto-Danforth Liberal MP Dennis Mills. The ups and downs of our politician-journalist relationship could fill a book (and someday may).

When the Toronto Star’s Joey Slinger lamented about Mills’ "I’ll get back to you" promises, I nicknamed him, "Dennis-I’ll-get-back-to-you-Mills".

Mills, who survived both Slinger and myself, will be spending the next six weeks reviewing the federal government’s role in waterfront revitalization--and more importantly suggesting areas for action.

an unwavering supporter of Toronto island airport expansion, Mills, who will be running against none other than Jack Layton in the next federal election, is in the driver’s seat.

If it’s a small world, it’s an even smaller one in politics. at city hall, Layton’s friend, NDP Mayor David Miller, remains obsessed with an anti-airport agenda, at a time when a debt-ridden Toronto least needs it.

For all of his personal idiosyncrasies, Mills makes a formidable crusader when there’s a challenge to be met–even when it’s SaRS.

The Toronto Islands and the bitter fight against linking to the mainline is the last bastion of the left.

If Dennis Mills wins this battle, he’ll stand on the top of a mountain where there are no others of his kind: a Liberal politician who made it to hero status.

Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com


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