The High Road (17 page)

“Stonehouse may be siphoning right-wing support away from Fox,” I responded. “If that continues, Angus may be able to slip up the middle.”

“Hmmmmm” was all she said as she appeared to drift back to sleep. But she was smiling.

——

Shortly after one o’clock, I met Angus in the driveway and we climbed into the Camry for the short drive over to Muriel’s.

“So what’s this first appointment?” Angus inquired.

“Just a brief talk to the Riverfront Seniors’ Residence that Muriel has arranged,” I said. “I think we already have the votes there, but Muriel is a big believer in never taking anything for granted. I don’t like to throw my weight around so I chose not to overrule her.”

“Do you really think you could have shut her down on this?” Angus smirked.

“Not for an instant,” I sighed. “That’s why I decided not to throw my weight around.”

“Smart lad. So I should just try to, what do you call it, ‘connect with them’ or ‘engage’ them?” he asked with the slightest sarcastic edge.

“Yep, you’ve hit the haggis on the head,” I confirmed.

Angus turned to look at me for longer than any driver should shift their eyes from the road.

“What?” I asked, pointing my index finger out the front windshield to remind him where his focus should be.

“You’d best rethink your Scottish metaphors, or one day you might find yourself wearin’ the haggis.”

“No need to get your kilt bunched up. I was just making conversation,” I countered, still working my finger towards the road. Still he eyed me. “Um, you’re drifting a bit out of your lane.” He ignored my observation.

“While we’re on the topic, the 25th is Rabbie Burns Day, as I’m sure you already knew,” said Angus. “That’s just two days before the ballots are to be marked. So I’ll be courtin’ the Scottish vote that night. The Prescott Robert Burns Society has asked me to speak, givin’ The Immortal Memory.”

“I think you’ve already got the Scottish vote in the bag … pipe.”

Angus winced.

“Sorry. That was bad, I know,” I conceded. “But we might need you to do some other events that night with fence-sitting voters. We have to use you where we can get the biggest return. Is this haggis-eating event really necessary?”

“Daniel. Hear me. On Rabbie Burns Day, I’ll be in my kilt being piped in to a dinner that happens but once yearly. It’s important. I’ll yammer with the fence-sitters at any other time.”

We drove in silence until we neared Cumberland and started traversing the newer subdivisions encircling the centre of town.

“Well, look at that, will you now,” Angus said, shaking his head.

I could say nothing, though my mouth was open. We were greeted by a sea of red. Well, for a Liberal in Cumberland-Prescott, bunches of red ribbons and the odd red bandana tied to trees and veranda railings on every fifth house or so easily constituted a sea. Clearly the canvass was going well. I made a mental note to buy beer and pizza for the two Petes and their crack canvassing crew.

“It looks so much better than the conventional lawn signs that just seem to fade into the background by mid-campaign,” I observed, craning my neck from side to side to take it all in. “Great visual impact.”

I reached for my cell and left a message for André, suggesting he take a quick drive through this neighbourhood.

Inside the Riverfront Seniors’ Residence, the common area overlooking the river ice was filled to capacity. Lunch had just ended and some sixty-five or so sated residents populated the oddly coloured couches and chairs. Several pulled up in their wheelchairs, parking in the areas most likely to cause traffic jams and irritate others. I realized that having Angus speak right after lunch would require him to be scintillating beyond all measure to forestall naps among his audience.

Muriel stood.

“We’ve talked before about what this Conservative government has done to us as seniors and pensioners, and not done for
us. It makes my blood boil. It seems we’re to be cast aside and ignored. It is so disrespectful,” Muriel railed. “At a time in our lives when many of us have more time, more knowledge, and more perspective, we are rendered invisible, purposefully or inadvertently, it matters not. The effect is the same. After sixty-five, we disappear.”

Muriel paused and waved Angus up to the front.

“I know Angus McLintock. He’s only sixty-one, so he’s not yet one of us. But I can tell you, we are not invisible to him. Angus McLintock, the very first Liberal MP for Cumberland-Prescott.” She clapped as she closed and the applause gathered strength as Angus stood before them, looking more comfortable than I’d seen him in a while.

“I cannot imagine anyone or anything making Muriel Parkinson invisible. She is always a force with which to be reckoned,” Angus opened.

“But she’s such a bossy-boots,” complained a grizzled man slumped in the corner of a couch towards the back, his elbow sitting on the armrest, his chin reclining in his palm.

“Oh hush up, Ralph!” Muriel shot back.

“See!” he replied, his hands now lifted in supplication.

Ralph seemed to settle down when the woman next to him, who looked twice his age, backhanded his forearm, never once taking her eyes off Angus.

“I can see that this is a tough and impatient audience so I’ll not tax your time unduly,” Angus started.

“Let me start simply by saying that I cannot stand here and tell you that if you elect me, and if the Liberals form a government, your lives will immediately change for the better. In fact, despite Muriel’s well-meaning, albeit somewhat partisan words of support, I can find nothing in the Liberal policy book, the so-called Red Book, about seniors and the issues and challenges you’re confronting.

“What I can promise you all is that my eyes are working well. I do see all of you before me. Though I’m not far behind you, I
do understand that you’ve lived through times that I’ve not seen. That you’ve already crossed thresholds that still lie ahead of me. That you have insights that I don’t. I also know that it is never too late for us old dogs to learn some new tricks. And I’m the living proof of it.”

Angus paused and looked down for a moment before lifting his eyes once more.

“Less than a year ago, I lost my wife. She was my better half through nearly forty years of marriage. I looked up to her. I learned so much from her. I didn’t think I had any living or learning left to do when she died. But all of you know that I was wrong. Aye, and now I know it too.

“For an old dog like me, serving in the House of Commons, initially against my will and certainly in defiance of history and logic, is surely a new trick. But I feel I am learning it. I think I’m getting the hang of it. And it has me feeling alive again, which I can assure you is far preferable to the alternative.

“Now we won’t always agree. This is not a monolithic community. There will always be differences of opinion. But I’ll promise to tell you my view, and when we disagree, I’ll always tell you why. Now, what say all of you?”

Angus stood there eyeing the group, looking for a hand or someone slowly getting to their feet. A woman sitting near me, whom I’d first seen at Muriel’s inaugural GOUT meeting, piped up. Both Angus and I recognized her from the nasty question she’d asked Emerson Fox at the first all-candidates meeting.

“Angus. What you say is all well and good. And Lord knows politics in this country needs a good cleaning-up and a kick in the keister. But Emerson Fox is evil incarnate. He won’t be stopped till you’re lying by the side of the road to be spat upon by Tory followers.”

“Well, I’m not certain that’s an accura–” Angus interrupted.

“I’m not finished yet,” she said holding her hand up.

Chastened, Angus nodded and waved to cede the floor back to her.

“I just think you’re going to need some help against that scoundrel. And I want you to know that we’ve … um … we’ve …” She stopped to whisper to her co-conspirator seated next to her, who then whispered back. “Right,” she said, turning back to Angus. “We’ve got your back, Angus. We’ve got your back.”

“I thank you, I think,” responded Angus. “I’m not interested in defeating Emerson Fox using the same nefarious weapons of political battle that he seems to wield. I’ve no interest in that. We need more Canadians to vote, not fewer. So we have to win in a way that actually enhances voters’ respect for democracy and reminds us all of our obligations and duties in the democratic bargain.”

“Yes, yes, that’s all well and good, Angus, and we’re with you on all of that. But still, when the flamethrower is ignited, we’ve got your back.”

“Ahhh, I thank you,” he said. This time, the “I think” part was only etched in his face.

By 3:30 we were back on the road to the editorial offices of the
Cumberland Crier
. Angus and I had been invited to a rare Sunday afternoon meeting with the editorial board. I wondered why Sunday? André said it was just a little quieter on Sundays and they could deliberate as an editorial board in relative peace. Fine by us. Angus was parking when an aging Cadillac lumbering by let loose a long and loud blow on its horn.

“Jehoshaphat, that’s a racket!” erupted Angus.

We spun around to see an older man at the wheel with his window open despite the below-freezing temperature.

“Go get ’em, Angus!” he shouted, waving his fist and then leaning again on the horn. He had red ribbon tied to all four door handles, woven throughout the front grille, and wrapped the length of the radio antenna. Finally, he had several longer pieces of ribbon streaming from the windshield wipers that he inexplicably had operating at high speed in the sunshine, as the great boat floated by.

“Aye, I will,” Angus said, looking a little sheepish when he turned to me as we parked. “What have we done?”

Alerted by the partisan Caddy, a few pedestrians stopped on the sidewalk when they recognized Angus walking by. One booed and gave us two thumbs down. But the others clapped. Angus was headed the other way when I grabbed his arm and nudged him over to the sidewalk supporters to glad-hand a bit.

We were about to climb the stairs to the
Crier
offices above the venerable Reg Paterson’s Mens Wear when Angus pointed out that the thirty-year-old mannequins in the store window each sported red ribbons in their lapels. It took me a moment to notice the flashes of red as it was difficult to see past the dummies’ garish pants, shirts, and jackets. The bold checks, stripes, and paisley combination would have been quite at home in a second-rate golf club pro shop.

“If only they could vote,” chuckled Angus as he took in the mannequins.

“As your campaign manager, I decree that you are forbidden to shop here,” I said. “We want Reg’s vote, but not his clothes.”

“Agreed. Although I understand the two Petes never miss his Boxing Day Blow-Out Sale.”

That didn’t surprise me.

The
Crier
isn’t a big operation but it takes its role in the community seriously. Angus and I sat on one side of the boardroom table while André, the executive editor, the news editor, and the managing editor sat along the other. It felt a little like defending my PhD thesis.

The meeting went reasonably well, for the most part. Angus made a few opening remarks touching on the now familiar themes that formed the core of what you might now call his stump speech. Even when baited by the news editor, Angus refused several invitations to trash Emerson Fox. They asked some questions about the Liberal Red Book that we’d just seen for the first time the day before.

“I cannae say I support every plank in the platform but in general I am comfortable with the direction,” Angus stated.

There was the opening. The executive editor filled it.

“Is it not incumbent on every Liberal candidate to stand behind every policy promise made in the Red Book?”

Uh-oh. I was about to jump in but Angus shot me a look so I held back.

“I’d say that’s a rather extreme interpretation of a candidate’s obligations,” Angus started. “I support the party. I support the Leader. And I support all but a couple of the proposals in the platform released yesterday. The few with which I have some concerns, I would gladly support if our economy were booming as it was eight short months ago. So I will invoke the caveat that you’ll also find in the Red Book that grants us flexibility in implementing the measures when the economy and the government can afford them.”

Not bad, Angus, I thought. Not bad at all. I exhaled. They let it pass.

“One more question, Professor McLintock. You may have read our series on health care a week or two back. We’re quite concerned with the state of our health care system, the mounting costs, the long wait times, and the frequency of collective bargaining breakdowns, be they with nurses, doctors, phsyios, or hospital orderlies. What’s the answer?”

Great. Health care was one of the few areas Angus, Muriel, and I had not covered in our several policy briefings last week. The meeting had gone so well, only to close out on a policy area certain to reveal Angus’s ignorance.

“I see you leave the easy lob until the end,” Angus noted. The table chortled.

“I’m no expert on health care, as will almost certainly become clear, although your recent articles were instructive. I have no ready solutions for some of the challenges you’ve described, like wait times and hospital overcrowding. It seems to me we should probably look at the root causes of the
current problems and not be distracted by the symptoms. If we can address the underlying causes, the symptoms should resolve themselves.”

Not bad, Angus, I thought to myself. So far so good.

“I do think the way most doctors are compensated could be part of the problem. The fee-for-service model ensures that public costs and doctors’ incomes rise with the number of tests done, diagnoses made, and treatments started, whether all are absolutely necessary or not. Doctors make more when their patients require more services. I’m inclined to look favourably on the roster system where doctors make more when they keep their own roster of patients healthier, and out of hospital longer. The incentives then shift to practising healthier lifestyles and illness prevention. Now, I don’t think all doctors like this more integrated approach, and the longer-term evidence is certainly not yet in to show the superiority of one model over another. In the end, I suspect some kind of blended model will ensure that Canadians have access to the health care they need and that doctors are encouraged to keep their patients healthy. I’ve prattled on too long already. The brains of smarter thinkers than I are required,” Angus concluded. “Besides, it’s really more of a provincial responsibility.”