Salt-of-the-Earth Randy Hillier did something for me that no one else ever could. Eternal country boy Hillier cut like the proverbial knife through my deep-seated cynicism for politicians of all political stripes who I sincerely believe are, for the most part, a big waste of time.
My admiration for Hillier predates his election as an MPP for Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington to out of touch Queen’s Park.
Out in the boonies where Hillier hails from, the lowing of cattle is much preferable to the ramblings of big city-politicians.
Hillier’s unexpected-to-the-other-side arrival to provincial politics was the only sign of hope in the last election.
As the unruffled spokesman of the Lanark, Frontenac, Lennox & Addington Landowners Association, Hillier sent the Queen’s Park Liberals running for the Alka Seltzer.
A true renegade in the old fashioned sense of the word, Hillier was not your run-of-the-mill activist. He always did what he said he was going to do, and always stood his ground when Big Government reps came to call on the doors of unsuspecting farmers.
The McGuinty government’s unrelenting lectures, lawyers, reams of paper and bureaucracy bounced right off Hillier no matter how frustrating and tedious the occasion.
Nothing and no one was safe from late-night government visits to the farm, including elderly war veterans and their wives.
Hillier was always there to remind government types that a raid on a home some nine months after the mysterious slaughter of a single goose bordered on overkill.
Indeed some days it was like watching a feeble government trying to dissuade the gentry by throwing boulders at Frankenstein.
Government thought they had the all-clear. Farms are often isolated and voting blocs on farmland can be ignored.
But Hillier and the landowners won every single round.
I could imagine how McGuinty and Company must have been gritting their teeth on Election Day when Hillier came to join the benches of the Opposition.
Before his election, “The Ghost of Randy Hillier’ stalked Liberal MPPs when they were at their most comfortable, at cocktail parties and on those many occasions when they gathered to preach to the cornered Party Faithful.
Not everybody punched down by the government springs back up for more.
But Randy Hillier has this unshakeable lifelong belief that “farmers are people too”.
This week found him staring down University Professor Nelson Wiseman who had used some rather intemperate (if not plain racist) language in describing political leaders from the countryside as likely to be “rural yahoos”. As Hillier stated in a recent news release, “The professor further demonstrated his ignorance in stating that “smart people realize this”.
“On Jan. 9, John Tory asked me to serve at the Progressive Conservative party’s critic for the rural affairs portfolio. I have watched, with great angst, the McGuinty government’s relentless assaults upon our rural economy, our rural institutions and the rural heritage of justice and culture of freedom that built this great province,” Hillier wrote. “It is unacceptable for a university professor to promote this government’s harmful rural agenda.”
There are no more hayseeds sticking out from the newly combed hair of gentlemen farmers than there are café latte stains on the red neckties of the urban Liberal MPPs.
And you don’t need the peace and quiet of the farm life to recognize that stereotyping is just plain stereotyping whether it’s from a government office or academe.
While Professor Wiseman may use the podium as a place for his lectures, Randy Hillier can do the same in a government-paid media communiqué.
“Canadian history is paved with a marvelous collection of rural leaders who helped build a prosperous, just society and, along the way, built the academic classrooms where generous paycheques abound, wrote Hillier.
“Sir John A. Macdonald leads this list, followed closely by farm kids Sir Robert Borden, Wilfred Laurier, prairie populist John Diefenbaker and Bai-Comeau lad Brian Mulroney.”
“The professor needs to understand that it is not where you grow up but what you make of yourself that determines leadership skills. And I should not have to remind him that name-calling is the lowest form of debate.
“Then again, maybe I’m just a “rural yahoo”.
Meanwhile, there’s a smell like the fertilizer from farmer’s fields coming out of Queen’s Park.
Some would say, things have never smelled more refreshing.
Judi McLeod——
Bio and Archives
-- Judi McLeod, Founder, Owner and Editor of Canada Free Press, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years’ experience in the print and online media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared throughout the ‘Net, including on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.
