OTTAWA — Question: How can you tell when agriculture minister Ralph Goodale is relaxing?
Answer: It isn’t easy. Maybe he won’t be wearing a tie. Maybe he’ll be lifting weights.
“He’s an intense kind of guy,” says Regina businessman Don Black, a long-time friend. “Even when he relaxes, he tends to be pacing. When he relaxes, it is sometimes hard to tell.”
One of the remarkable things about Goodale is that after more than two decades in public life, his public image is cardboard thin.
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It is a one-dimensional image of a serious, polite, friendly, concerned fellow impeccably dressed and well-mannered.
In a media age when having a colorful personality is usually considered an asset — or even essential — for a successful political career, Goodale the private man remains almost invisible.
“It’s a shame he doesn’t project himself and his personality as strongly as he should,” says Liberal organizer and Goodale fan Barb MacNiven of Delisle, Sask. “He’s no Eugene Whelan but for people who know him well, he is different in private than in public.”
Black, president of the Investment Corporation of Saskatchewan and a friend since the early 1980s, would not be surprised by the lack of more interesting “private personality” tales.
He sees Goodale as a hard-working, ethical, strong-willed man who thrives on problem solving and politics — personality traits that have landed him in the agriculture minister’s chair when the industry is going through some of the most fundamental changes in a generation.
But “exciting” or “colorful” are not adjectives he uses.
Back in the mid-1980s when Goodale was living the lonely life of a Liberal leader in Saskatchewan, Black offered his serious young friend some advice.
“I told him he wouldn’t be a successful politician because he’s too straight. He really is pretty boring, you know. Ralph is not a guy who ever had long hair.”
And the glare of the public spotlight doesn’t change him.
“The public Ralph you see is pretty well the private Ralph,” he said. “He reads political books, not novels. He is addicted to the news. I don’t think he has fun like you or I might.”
Dale Eisler can vouch for that. He is a Saskatchewan newspaper columnist who went to university with Goodale and has covered his political career.
In university, Goodale acted very much like a young version of the 1994 model. “His mannerisms, the way he spoke, his caution, he was a politician-in-training even then.”
But surely, at his 1986 pre-marriage “stag” party at Regina’s ritzy Assiniboia club, Goodale let his short hair down a bit, right?
“I don’t remember Ralph doing anything unRalph-like,” says Eisler. “What you see in public is what I saw there.”
