Brian Mulroney and Bob Rae in 1991/Getty Images via Bob Rae

By Bob Rae

March 4, 2024

One of Brian Mulroney’s favourite quotations was Teddy Roosevelt’s famous praise for life “in the arena”:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

The former prime minister’s death has unleashed a wave of emotion about an extraordinary man. Many comments have focused on his ability to reach out and connect. He was better at this than any other public figure I have known and worked with. Mulroney understood that all politics is not just local, it’s personal.

In two mandates, Brian achieved much. He saw great changes in the world, and provided leadership at home and abroad. He did not get the changes to Canada’s constitution he wanted, but he tried nobly to do so. He was a person of vision who was also a skillful manager of people and issues.

He had flaws, but disloyalty, unkindness and mean-spiritedness were not among them. As he himself admitted, he followed impulses that led him down the wrong path, but even in the valleys he found resilience and courage. His public persona could be too formal, but the private man was personal, warm, and candid.

Anyone who knew Brian also knew that he did not forget easily the slings and arrows that were cast his way throughout his career. I remember vividly in one of our early meetings after I was elected premier in 1990, him saying, “Never be bitter Bob — remember that, never allow yourself to wallow in that gutter. But let me tell you something about that SOB ————”.  All said with a perfectly straight face.

He did not play the piano or the guitar, but he sure knew how to play the telephone. A gathering of “people called by Brian” would fill a football stadium, with room for overflow. I first met him at my brother John’s wedding to his wife Phyllis in Montreal, well over forty years ago. He was recovering from his defeat in the 1976 Conservative leadership race, and I was finishing up law school, soon to become an NDP member of parliament. He could not have been more friendly or charming, and as our careers took their twists and turns through the 1980’s, we kept in touch on the phone.

His specialty was reaching out at a moment of loss or trouble. When my brother David died, he called early in the morning just to chat. When I shared the news of the call with our mutual friend Bill Davis, he said, “You’re not the first person he’s reached out to and you certainly won’t be the last. That’s just the way he is.” He joked with me after my election in 1990 that I should “enjoy and savour the sweet taste of victory…because it disappears remarkably quickly — they’ll weigh you under with briefing notes and the jackals in the media will turn on you on a dime.” Advice which, in my case, turned out to be true. While we sparred as premiers and prime ministers do, he was among the first to phone the night of my decisive defeat in 1995. And the calls continued for the next thirty years.

Brian’s ability to connect extended to my family — my mother, whom he phoned when my Dad died; my wife, Arlene, whom he charmed so completely at official dinners that it took time and effort to deprogram her, never entirely successfully.

Some would say this was all just blarney, but that is to do disservice to the loyalties and decencies Brian Mulroney demonstrated throughout his life. If he could make a positive difference in someone’s life, he would. He knew the power of his voice or presence to make a life-changing impact in an individual life; to change the course of a medical outcome, a personal crisis, a family emergency or just one person’s worst day, ever.

Brian’s ability to connect extended to my family — my mother, whom he phoned when my Dad died; my wife, Arlene, whom he charmed so completely at official dinners that it took time and effort to deprogram her, never entirely successfully.

On the political and policy side, he was a Progressive Conservative. An early mentor was federal Justice Minister E. Davie Fulton. They shared a dislike of “those terrible Grits” but were determined to ensure that their party remain a firmly centrist one. When Mulroney ran for the leadership of the party, he was among the least ideological of candidates, and one who, in his own life, represented the foundational belief that reconciliation among all Canadians, regardless of creed, language, and colour, was the hallmark of a great country and a great political party.

Growing up in Baie Comeau, he spoke French from childhood, and his ability to glide between two languages in the same sentence with the grace of a Gretzky on ice was a wonder to behold. Two of his landmark quests as Prime Minister — to create a constitutional opening to allow the Quebec National Assembly to endorse the Canadian Constitution, and to build a lasting free- trade relationship between Canada and the United States — were the product of his upbringing. He knew instinctively the importance of national, ethnic, and linguistic reconciliation, and he understood that Canada’s ties to the United States were of primary importance. He was a Quebecker who believed intensely in Canada. And he was a patriot who believed that a sounder relationship with the United States was in our national interest.

The failure of Manitoba and Newfoundland to ratify the Meech Lake Accord, and the defeat of the Charlottetown Accord in a national referendum, were emotional blows he felt deeply until the day he died. I was proud to work with him on both those journeys. I was not a supporter of the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA) when it was negotiated, because it failed to provide Canadian exporters with the guarantee of access to the US without political harassment. But I also recognized that once passed, there was no going back.

Brian Mulroney’s loathing of discrimination was best demonstrated in his leadership in fighting apartheid in South Africa. There were many conservatives in Canada, as well as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan beyond, who did not agree with him, but he did not back away from the fight. Together with Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke, who shared many of Brian’s qualities, he was determined that the “old Commonwealth” should not abandon the new. He established a line of communication with the African National Congress (ANC), and his efforts to free Mandela at a time when world opinion was shifting but not yet at a tipping point proved decisive. When I met Mandela in Toronto in 1990, he said that “No two people did more for the struggle in South Africa than Stephen Lewis and Brian Mulroney.”

Equally important, Brian was “present at the creation” of post- Communist Eastern Europe. As the first Western leader to recognize Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, there is no doubt where he stood in Ukraine’s struggle against Russian aggression.

I also knew Brian Mulroney as a negotiator. He could bang the table with the best of them. He honed his skills as a labour lawyer for management, serving on the Cliche Commission in Quebec, and knew when to shout, when to sing, and when to make a deal.  He also knew how to lead, not afraid to bend a little, but also not afraid to push ahead if he felt he was right. His great skill was bringing people along with him, knowing that just sitting around waiting for consensus was not going to work, and that, as Harold Wilson once put it, “If you keep the train chugging along the passengers won’t argue much with each other.  It’s only when the train stops that you’re in trouble.”

I had my differences with Brian, and he had his with me. He once tore strips off me at a premier’s conference because I insisted that the decision of his government to discriminate against Ontario on major transfers just as the recession was taking hold was bad for national unity — something other premiers didn’t want to hear either — but that argument didn’t get in the way of our willingness to work together on the issues where we could agree. On the really important things — about family, the bonds of friendship, how to bring people together, never overlooking the chance to share moments of mischief and hilarity — we were of one mind, heart, and spirit. He once said to me that he regretted I wasn’t a Conservative. I replied that I didn’t really think he was one either.

In Henry V, Shakespeare puts it this way:

“A largess universal, like the sun,

His liberal eye doth give to every one,

Thawing cold fear, that mean and gentle all

Behold, as may unworthiness define,

A little touch of Harry in the night.”

Brian Mulroney had that little touch, and that is how I shall always remember him.

Bob Rae is Canada’s Ambassador to the United Nations.