L. Ian MacDonald

December 8, 2022

On election night, September 4, 1984, Brian Mulroney gathered his friends and advisers around him in the guest house of Le Manoir Baie Comeau. None was closer than Sam Wakim, his closest friend of all the years since their undergraduate days when they were roommates at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia.

As the results came in from Atlantic Canada, it soon became clear that Mulroney and the Progressive Conservatives would sweep the country, as they did, winning 211 out of 282 seats in the House of Commons — the biggest landslide in Canadian history. Within an hour, the PCs had won 25 out of 32 seats in the Atlantic region, including nine out of 10 seats in the traditional Liberal stronghold of New Brunswick. Wakim, a native of Saint John, understood the particular significance of Mulroney winning the three predominantly francophone seats in northern N.B.

“Well, Bones, there’s the history,” he said.

Mulroney, who had delivered his maiden address in the House in 1983 on francophone minority language rights in Manitoba, nodded his agreement. He had spent a weekend there during a pre-campaign swing in the spring, when he had drawn over 1,000 people to Shediac.

“Somebody said to me, why would you want to spend a Saturday night in Shediac,” he replied. “There’s the answer.”

It was Wakim who sat beside Mulroney in his box when he won the Conservative leadership on the fourth ballot in Ottawa on June 11, 1983. Wakim welcomed Michael Wilson to the fold as the future finance minister and Edmonton Oilers owner Peter Pocklington walked over to endorse Mulroney when they dropped out after the first ballot.

As I wrote later in my book, Mulroney: The Making of the Prime Minister: “Hardly a day went by, wherever he was, that he wouldn’t ask someone to get Wakim on the phone.” And whenever they were together in a room, they would always be Sam and Bones, “the oldest and best of friends.”

Mulroney lost that friend on Monday, when Wakim died in Toronto at 85, leaving his wife Marty, their six children, and many more grandchildren. His funeral will be held December 22 in Toronto, with a celebration of life in the spring.

And there is much to celebrate in that life. The son of Lebanese immigrants from East St. John, he married Marty Robertson some 60 years ago. She was also a student at St. F.X. where, Mulroney says, “we all met.” He also had a number of other women in his life — his sisters.

“He had eight sisters,” Mulroney recalls. “When he turned 50, we had a black-tie dinner for him and the family at 24 Sussex, and all eight sisters came. They had to put expanded tables in for them.”

Sam and Marty’s children, three boys and three girls, have all had successful careers. And he spoiled his grandkids silly. “He was the best grandfather you’ve ever seen,” says Mulroney. “He would drive one of the kids for hours so he could play hockey, and get them the best seats for hockey, basketball and baseball games in Toronto. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for them.”

As for his own career, Wakim was a corporate lawyer in Toronto. And he had a turn at elective politics himself, winning the Toronto riding of Don Valley East and serving as an MP in the minority government of Joe Clark in 1979, though he lost by less than 1,000 votes in the Liberal restoration under Pierre Trudeau in 1980.

When Mulroney swept into office in 1984, he quickly offered to name him to the Senate, but Wakim declined. He did not want to expose his friend or himself to the charge of accepting a patronage appointment to the Red Chamber. And he was busy enough in Toronto, including as chief counsel to the Ontario Securities Commission, an influential post in the Toronto business community.

“If you’re really blessed in life,” Mulroney said during a conversation following Wakim’s passing, “you have a great friend like Sam. He always gave me the unvarnished truth. I didn’t need a pollster, I had Sam, who always told me when he thought something was a bad idea. I guess I spoke to him every day for 35 years.” When he raised $100 million to establish the Brian Mulroney Institute of Government at St. F.X., the former prime minister endowed the Samuel Wakim Scholarships.

Wakim always reached out to friends and people he met along the way, including journalists, to whom he was known as “Big Sam.”

Bill Fox, then Quebec correspondent for Southam News, recalls meeting Wakim during the 1976 leadership campaign. “I was wearing a suit with a vest,” Fox says, “and we were flying on a small charter to New Brunswick. He said to me ‘you don’t go into Saint John wearing a three-piece suit.’ I replied, ‘you don’t tell a reporter what to wear.’ After that we got along just fine.”

In all the years since, whenever something went wrong, Sam would often be on the phone. Somehow, he had an instinctive sense of those things. He would never say hello, he would just start talking.

Until the last year or so, when I didn’t hear from him as often. He had suffered a stroke about a year and a half ago, and was focused on his rehab.

“I was fortunate to see him three times in the last couple of months and take him to lunch,” says Mulroney. “We went to the National Club each time, and he was always in good form.”

The last time I spoke with Sam was a couple of months ago.

He went on for about 20 minutes, about politics, his friend Bones, and thanked me for something I’d sent him. “I love your magazine,” he said. “Congratulations.”

No, thank you, Big Sam, for the gift of your friendship and love.

L. Ian MacDonald is Editor of Policy Magazine.