Image, Bill McCarthy/Design, Benoît Deneault

Welcome to our Policy Online series, Remembering Brian Mulroney. The former prime minister, who passed away on February 29th at 84, was a devoted reader and supporter of Policy, and our tribute pieces have been more personal than partisan, written by contributors who knew their subject personally. They are all wonderful reads, and we thank all the writers for contributing to the series. 

We open with a happy memory. Policy founding Editor and Publisher L. Ian MacDonald — now publisher emeritus — has been a close friend of the former prime minister dating back to their days in Montreal when Ian was a young political columnist and Mulroney was a rising-star lawyer. Ian wrote a bestselling biography published after the 1984 landslide, Mulroney: The Making of the Prime Minister, and became Mulroney’s PMO speechwriter in 1985. Over the past decade in Policy, the two have conversed regularly on history, politics, family and the future. Here is the most recent of those Q&As: Brian Mulroney on Free Trade, Minority Rights, and ‘Ain’t Life Grand?’

From longtime friend and advisor Charley McMillan, we have a biographical tour d’horizon, from Baie Comeau to Laval to 24 Sussex. Here’s Brian Mulroney a Canadian Life.

From Historica Canada President and former Maclean’s editor Anthony Wilson-Smith, Above All, a Transcendent Talent for Friendship. “Mulroney was most beloved and trusted by those who knew him best,” writes Wilson-Smith. “His friends, who drew a protective circle around him, could be found across the country and beyond.”

From Policy contributor, United Nations Ambassador and former Ontario Premier Bob Rae, Brian Mulroney Dared Greatly. “Brian’s ability to connect extended to my family,” writes Rae, “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.”

From Contributing Writer Jeremy Kinsman, former ambassador to the EU and Italy and high commissioner in London, whom Mulroney appointed Canada’s man in Moscow, Brian Mulroney, a Canadian Leader of International Consequence. “Mulroney had things to say to his peers,” writes Kinsman, “and some were harsh when necessary, as on the necessity of crushing apartheid.”

From Derek Burney, who served as Mulroney’s chief of staff during the negotiations on the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and later as Ambassador to the United States, ‘How Will it Play in Drumheller?’ Brian Mulroney and Free Trade. “With Brian Mulroney’s second majority win in 1988,” writes Burney, “the negative stigma associated with free trade in Canada mostly disappeared.”

Nelson Mandela arriving in Ottawa, June, 1990/Bill McCarthy

From Policy Editor Lisa Van Dusen, a look at Mulroney’s approach to human rights at a time when his fight for Nelson Mandela’s freedom seems all the more remarkable in retrospect. “At a moment in history when human rights are being degraded globally, Mulroney’s record on the inviolability of these basic, universal principles of human rights is well worth recalling.” writes Van Dusen. Here’s Mulroney and Human Rights: When Power Met Principle.

From Policy Contributing Writer and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, a testimonial from one of the many Unlikely Friends of Brian, i.e. those who began at odds with the former prime minister and ended up the opposite. Here’s An Environmentalist Misses Brian Mulroney, All Over Again. “That I should even have been remotely acquainted with Brian Mulroney was a long shot,” writes May. “To have become a friend, and to love him as a friend, was beyond long odds.”

From Contributing Writer Colin Robertson, a reminiscence about that night in Tinseltown when it was just like having his own agent. Here’s With Mulroney in Hollywood: A Lesson in Diplomacy from the Great Networker. “We moved to the dining room, where Mulroney took his place beside the host in the receiving line,” writes Robertson. “When I moved towards the cocktails, he grabbed my arm and said, ‘You stand beside me…these are people you want to meet…bring lots of cards?’ I had.”

From Thomas D’aquino, longtime president of the Business Council on National Issues (forerunner of today’s Business Council of Canada), Brian Mulroney, Canadian Business and Nation Building.“The prime minister’s passionate pursuit of national unity was beyond admirable,” writes d’Aquino, “and while timing and politics had other plans, we never regretted joining forces with him in support of such a worthy cause.”

From Kevin Lynch and Paul Deegan, an exploration of why Mulroney, from free trade to the GST to ending apartheid, was a transformative prime minister. “How did an electrician’s son from the paper-mill town of Baie-Comeau become so consequential at home and abroad?” ask Lynch and Deegan. “The answer is obvious: long-termism.” Here’s Mulroney Was a Transformative Leader.

Brian and Mila Mulroney in 1990/Bill McCarthy

From Policy Contributing Writer and Earnscliffe Principal Geoff Norquay, who served as Mulroney’s senior policy advisor, a look at the late prime minister’s leadership style. “He regretted his failures, but not his attempts to succeed against all odds in building a stronger Canada,” writes Norquay. “As he told the graduating class at McGill University in 2017, ‘Life is an unending sequence of challenges from which no one emerges unscathed. Defeat is not something to fear, but surrender is something to reject’.” Here’s A Larger-than-Life Leader.

From longtime Liberal pollster Martin Goldfarb, a lovely piece about another unlikely friendship, Mulroney’s political and policy legacy, and a memorable lunch at the Toronto Club. “When we sat down, he whispered that neither of us — he Irish Catholic and me Jewish — would have been allowed in the club a generation earlier,” writes Goldfarb. “We reminisced, we talked about our kids and grandkids, and we laughed. It was a wonderful, deep, engaging discussion that I will never forget.” Here’s Farewell to a Leader of Big, Bold Ideas.

And, last but by no means least, from our regular Policy columnist Don Newman, Mulroney’s Passing and the Progressive Conservative Dream. “As long as he was alive,” writes Newman, “he was the symbol of what the Progressive Conservative Party had been.”

A moment of solitude at Calgary airport/Bill McCarthy

We highly recommend our gallery of images from former PMO official photographer Bill McCarthy, who spent five years as a constant presence in the lives of the prime minister and his family. Here’s The Mulroney Years in Pictures. It includes the one above, which looks like an Andrew Wyeth painting, taken while he was waiting for his wife, Mila, at Calgary airport. “He looked around and said something like, ‘You know, I think I’d like to go for a walk, on my own,'” recalls McCarthy. “He turned to the Mountie bodyguard and asked, ‘Would that be okay, if I went on my own’? It was very sweet, as it was one of the only times I ever saw him off on his own.” The gallery also includes some more recent shots from current PMO photographer, Adam Scotti, who happens to be Billy’s son. Thanks so much to both for sharing their wonderful work with our readers.

And many thanks to our contributors for their fantastic pieces, to the former prime minister for his friendship and support of Policy and The Week in Policy over the past decade, and again, our deepest condolences to the Mulroney family.

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