Sunday, March 24, 1991 - North Shore News - 9 A Place To Go When You're Pregnant And Need Support: DINE A firebrand rebounds PERHAPS IT was just the end of an exhausting week, during which New- foundianders ransacked his depariment’s office at Port-aux-Basques. It might have been the Van- couver sun beaming through the window of his hotel suite. The company of deputy minister Bruce Rawson and press secretary Daniel Veniez created a familial am- bience. Possibly it was the presence of a stranger who talked about mutual friends in his native New Brunswick. Whatever the stimuli this recent Friday in Vancouver, Bernard Vaicourt, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, spoke from the heart with such emotion and conviction that a room service waiter was whispered quickly out of the room. Until he and his motorcycle crashed at high speed into a tele- phone pole in the summer of 1989, Valcourt had been one of the brightest lights on the federal scene. An MP at 32, a cabinet minister by the age of 34 and an increas- ingly close friend of the Prime Minister, the future for the young lawyer seemed certain. The lights went out — literally and figura- tively — in the wake of the near fatal accident. When he emerged from a 12- day coma, suffering from a frac- tured skull and a broken jaw, his mouth wired shut and without the sight of his right eye, he would soon learn that the newspapers had been replete with stories speculating on his level of intox- ication at the time of the accident. Grateful just to be alive, he delivered his resignation 4s Minister of Consumer and Cor- porate Affairs co Brian Mulroney in August 1989. The Prime ‘wlinister accepted the resignation, Gary Bannerman CPEN LINES but he then invited Valcourt to Harrington Lake to recover. “Prime Minister, | have embar- rassed you enough,’’ Valcourt said, as he declined the gesture. But Mulroney was adamant. “*Your health is important. Don’t worry about anything else.”’ Harrington Lake was followed by six months of physical and mental hell. About his political career, at the time he could only conclude, ‘‘I had everything ... and J screwed it up.”’ Bernard Valcourt was raised in the tiny 100-per-cent French village of St. Queutin, just across the border from Madawaska in neighboring Restigouche County, famed for its salmon fishing rivers. When he went off to study law at the University of New Brunswick, lacking even rudimen- tary English, his family had grave doubts as to the wisdom of the move. But he persevered. Along with 211 other Conser- vatives in the sweep of 1984, the young lawyer entered the House of Commons. Before he couid find his way around the Parlia- ment buildings he became a Parliamentary Secretary, but he had caught the eye of the Prime Minister. In 1986, he joined the cabinet as ‘‘Minister of State’’ for Small Business and, a year later, to a similar capacity as junior minister for Indian Affairs. ‘*Why me among the 211?,’" he said he asked himself at the time. Valcourt said he never deluded himself as to why he was quick to enter cabinet: ‘‘I was a fran- cophone, but not from Quebec. ... and I also worked hard. He became a real Minister — Consumer and Corporate Affairs — in January 1989. Months later, his career went with him in the back of an ambulance. Reappointed to the federal cab- inet over a year ago, before hie had been completely healed, Ber- nard Valcourt was less of a firebrand than he had been. ““I've always thought that there must be a degree of equilibrium in things,”’ he says. He explains that triumph and tragedy, success and failure, must always emerge with a sense of balance about them. Spending time with Valcourt, his injured right eye aimed vacant- ly into space, and the wires still running through his teeth, you sense it’s too soon to assess his potential. The thoughtfulness is endearing and even mesmerizing. Hon. Bernard Valcourt, P.C., is not going to be afraid of furniture being trashed in an unimportant office. a | GIRTHRIGHT | ali 987-7313 » Free Pregnancy Test « i 229 Lonsdale North Vancouver 687-7223 ‘dependable private care in home or hospital 24 Hours a Day 987-0861 in Vancouver Call ; Campaign to Elect s David Schreck ¢ health economist e UBC Ph. © Ph.D ¢ 1979-88 General Manager of CU&C Health Services Society lt’s time to say “enough”! It’s time for a change! Call David Schreck and talk about the issues that concern you. 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