Conrad Boyce is the editor and publisher of the Cosmos. He has a BA in English from the University of Alberta and a diploma in journalism from Grant Macewan Community College in Edmonton. He lived and worked in the Yukon and Vancouver Island before arriving in Ontario in 1995. Beyond these pages, he is the Artistic Director of OnStage Uxbridge, and the technical manager of the Uxbridge Music Hall.
Audrey and Me
So we have another federal election in a few weeks. Is it just me, or have we had a lot of those lately? Almost makes you long for a majority government, so it could hang around for a while. Just as long as it’s not Steve or Iggy. A Green Party majority government, that’s what I’m cheering for. Not betting on, just cheering for.
I guess if you have to have an election, May’s a good choice of timing. Better than January, and I can remember a few blizzards I struggled through to exercise my democratic franchise. And like a good citizen, I’m pretty sure I’ve voted every time I was eligible to. And like a good left-of-centre thinker in Alberta, I hardly ever backed the winning horse. But somebody had to vote for the other parties, just so Ernie Manning or Peter Lougheed didn’t get too cocky.
Things improved a lot when I migrated to the Yukon. To begin with, the territory has way more than its fair share of eccentrics and weirdos; Robert Service called its citizens “The Men Who Don’t Fit In”, and that describes the current population every bit as much as those a century ago when he was writing. Also, the Yukon has a very small voting population, probably the smallest of any constituency in the nation. So just a few votes here and there in a close election can mean the difference.
When I first arrived in Whitehorse in the late seventies, the Yukon’s MP was a Tory and had been for a very long time. And not just any Tory, but the Deputy Prime Minister, the legendary Erik Neilsen. Hard to believe he was the brother of the slapstick comic Leslie Neilsen. Erik wasn’t exactly famous for his sense of humour.
Nowadays, the territory is represented by a Liberal, an old friend of mine named Larry who’s won the last few elections and is probably contesting this one. Being the Yukon’s MP is a nice gig, after all; it means you can spend a lot of the winter somewhere else. So the officeholder for decades was a Conservative, and is now inevitably a Liberal. But oh, the glory days in the middle!
Somewhere in the mid-80s, as I recall, Yukon Erik retired, or maybe he died. Same thing, since politics was his life. At any rate, suddenly the seat which had seemed his by divine right was vacant, and dozens of people of every political stripe thought they were the rightful successor to the throne. The nomination for each party was hotly contested, and especially that of the New Democrats, who had recently won the territorial election and thought getting the federal seat was the natural follow-up.
And here, gentle readers, is where I played my part in Canadian history.
As I said, being the Yukon’s MP is an excellent job. Not only does it mean flying “Outside” several times a year, it has a fairly attractive salary, especially to a starving actor, which is the occupation I was pursuing at that stage in my life. So along with about a dozen other people, I decided to contest the NDP nomination for the federal election.
Now I had worked hard for the Party in the territorial election, knocking on doors and scrutineering and driving people to the polls and such. So I thought the Party faithful would remember that. And I also thought they would take into account my work as an actor, elevating me to the status of minor celebrity. But as the nomination battle wore on, it became clear that there were two front-runners in the race, and neither of them were me. One was a former MLA from a mining town called Faro named Maurice Byblow, and he had the support of all the union types. The other was a social worker named Audrey McLaughlin, and she had most of the women in the Party in her camp. I thought all the women liked me. Not to vote for, apparently.
By about a week before the nomination vote, I saw the writing on the wall and decided to do something dramatic. Rather than wait to lose on the first or second ballot, I thought I would drop out early and throw my support to Byblow. A decisive move, as it turned out. Audrey McLaughlin won in a walk, went on to win the seat and, as you may recall, became the surprise leader of the national NDP just a couple of years later, the first woman to head a major national party in Canada.
So if I hadn’t thrown my support to Maurice Byblow, the whole course of Canadian political history would have been altered. “What’s wrong with Maurice that this weirdo actor is supporting him?” asked the undecided NDP members of themselves on that January night in 1987 or whenever it was. Poor Maurice never had a chance. And Audrey still owes me.
