@ ~ Friday, June 25, 1993 - North Shore News

No one is qualifiec

MONTREAL — Today Kim Campbell becomes Canada’s
first British Columbia-born, British Columbia-based prime
minister. Why is my joy bounded? Why is my delight

trammellied?

t have earnestly searched what
passes for my sou! for the answer.
And I have hit upon it.

Stand by for one of the Great
Truths for which I am justly
famous, though not as famous as
I deserve to be.

Here it is, in italics:

No one you know ts qualified to
be prime minister.

This is a simple truth. So simple
§ should close my writing
machine, slip out to Le Flambard
for lunch, and Jet this paper’s
superb advertising department fill
up the rest of my space with
money-spinning exhortations to
buy something.

But it is also profound truth. So
profound that I better elaborate.

Anyway, there is drenching rain
here in Montreal as 1 write. My
motto is: if you can’t keep busy,
keep dry. (Another profound
truth.)

{ begin by declaring that I don't
pretend to know this particular
prime minister well. Thousands in
B.C. know her as well as | do.
But I know her far better than
I've known any other prime
minister in Canadian history.

And that’s the problem

When you grew up, reader,
assuming you have, you read
about Canada's prime ministers in
school.

Like Sir John A. Macdonald,
even if you still haven't learned to
spell his name correctly.

Like Sir Wilfrid Laurier —
whose first name is spelled wrong
as often as it’s spelled right.

(If it appears here as
“*Wilfred,”’’ I am leaving the
country, having first fired a tac-

Trevor
Lautens

GARDEN OF BIASES

tical nuclear weapon at the erring
printer.)

And, faults and failures and all,
such leaders were great. They were
statesmen, They were invariably
dressed like — well, like their
statues, They looked important,
They strode around.

We do not think of them ever
idly picking their teeth, or shop-
ping for spinach, or once being
children and eating with their
hands like other children.

It’s true: image sells. Even to-
day, with its fashionable cynicism,
the prominent in any field, even if
they’re widely despised, are not
easily imagined as ordinary — do-
ing quite ordinary things most of
the time.

As Hollywood once shrewdly
knew and disastrously forgot:
Distance docs indeed lend en-
chantment.

Do Some Sight Seeing
This Summer.

Come in and ask about our “prescription” sunglasses.

S

Dougias Optical Dispensary Ltd.
1685 Marine Drive in West Vancouver 925-21.10

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And the more and the longer
you've known the famed and the
great, the more astonishing it
seems that they have become
famous and great (or rich). You
knew them ‘‘when,."'

Perhaps they showed some
youthful abilities but you can't
accept that they have become
‘*great.’’ The great are either dead
or live somewhere else.

ic is easy, for example, to imag-
ine a portly English gent with im-
posing moustaches putting down
his Times of London with an in-
dignant rattle of teacups and say-
ing to his elegant wife:

“Good Lord! See this, my
dear? They've made that twit
Churchill prime minister! Bungled
every public job he’s ever had!

“Why, I knew him at school.
Silly little sod! Couldn't even kick
a soccer ball! And stupid!

“Dozens of boys in his form
were smarter and far better quali-
fied to become prime minister
than that wretched little snob.

“And what a dreadful family —
awful mother, American of
course! Murk my words, England
won't have its finest hour with
him in charge!"'

Or imagine, centuries earlier, a

to be prime

Macedonian sitting around in
whatever Macedonians sat around
in at the time:

“See what they're calling this
fellow? Alexander the Great!
Haw, haw! Great, is he? Well, !
knew him when he was a little
squirt. Couldn’t ride worth a
damn!

“‘Now I see he’s charging
around on that horse of his,
Bucephala — tomfool name fora
horse, if you ask me — probably
still falling off all over the place.
Winning an empire. Indeed!

“tt won't last, | tell you. The
newspapers have puffed him up,
that’s what itis. Remind me to
cancel ours, i'm getting a hernia
from carrying out all those stone
tablets.””

‘Twas ever thus. And still is.

In the case of our new prime
minister, | have a dozen recol-
lections worth litte or nothing ---
if she weren't the PM.

They reck of ordinariness.

in 1983, away from honest
journalism for a few years, |
worked briefly with her in her
first bid for a legislative seat.

Interviewed her in her False
Creek flat. Was impressed and
amused, then as now, by her

private wit, her driving personali-
ty. But didn’t for a moment con-
sider her prime ministerial stuff.

One morning we arranged to
exchange some material at Dunbar
and 16th — she was hurrying out
to UBC to write a law exam.

She pulled over in a rustbucket
car disgustingly full of typical
student trash and papers. (Willa
solemn bronze plaque be placed
there sore day to commemorate
the occasion? Hardly.)

Now that same Kim Campbell
will be off hobnobbing with other
world leaders, chatting at the G-7.

She'll scorch around in an en-
tourage of dark blue sedans full
of security men — not junk-food
containers and student papers.

That prime ministerial fleet of
cars almost ran over my peasant
toes as they importantly screeched
to a stop in front of the Tory
convention centre in Ottawa a
week or two ago — bearing a
formerly famous couple named
Brian and Mila Mulroney.

Remember them?

Yep, the glamor’s gone. No one
you know is qualified to be prinie
minister.

Because Lear Jets Are Just
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