Anyone who listened to a CBC morning show last week – it seems like the whole province – knows I cried when Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow announced his retirement.
The announcement wasn’t unexpected. I saw him in early August at the induction ceremony for the Saskatchewan Agricultural Hall of Fame. He appeared tired and his remarks just weren’t vintage Romanow.
The tears weren’t so much for the NDP premier of the province, but more for the man; the statesman, the politician who was always accessible, the man who, following the premiers’ conference in Saskatoon a couple of summers ago, cancelled interviews with some of the major media to spend half an hour with a country publisher and her daughter, who gave me much more time than scheduled in a millennium interview last December, who took a phone call last summer when he was supposed to be having some time off.
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While the countryside turned against the NDP, it was seldom expressed in terms of being anti-Romanow, but more anti-NDP or anti-government.
In politics, as in life, he could be disarmingly direct, but always a gentleman.
For the second time in a week, the tears flowed last Thursday afternoon, this time for a former Liberal prime minister.
Hearing of Pierre Trudeau’s death, two memories immediately sprang to mind.
In the 1974 federal election, the highlight of the Liberal campaign in Assiniboia constituency was a visit by Trudeau to Gravelbourg and Weyburn.
I was responsible for the logistics from the Saskatchewan end, and was in Gravelbourg when he arrived.
The first French Canadian prime minister to visit the community, he spoke to a capacity crowd in the auditorium of College Mathieu. After his speech, the crowd surged toward the platform, pushing and shoving and holding up hands, to be shaken or just to touch the PM.
Trudeau crouched down and shook a few hands. Then, without warning, he jumped into the midst of the crowd.
Trudeau surfaced in what must have been seconds but no doubt seemed much longer to his handlers. Flushed with excitement, he was obviously enjoying himself and was oblivious to the brief panic he had caused.
Fast forward three years. By this time married and living on the farm with Ottawa far behind, I heard the prime minister was to be with then-MP Cliff McIsaac in North Battleford.
McIsaac steered the PM in our direction and he and I had a brief talk.
In one week, this country has lost two of its finest leaders and, politics aside, we are all the poorer for their going.
