William Grenville Davis, who died yesterday morning at the age of 92, was a key transitional figure in the political history of Ontario and Canada.
When “Brampton Billy,” as he was fondly known, became premier in 1971, his hometown was a rural town in the throes of becoming a city, his capital was still known as “Toronto the Good” – white, Anglo, heavily Protestant, and, to many newcomers, profoundly boring – and his country was still shedding the remnants of its colonial garments.
By the time he retired in 1985, Brampton had become a booming, multi-ethnic city, Toronto was turning into the vibrant world-class city it is today, and Canada had just freed itself from Britain’s embrace with its own constitution and Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Constitution Act and the charter would not have come into being without the support that Davis and his Progressive Conservative government gave Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
A small-town lawyer, Davis was only 29 when he was first elected to the Legislature in 1959 from deeply conservative Peel riding. Over the years, his politics evolved as the province changed. By the time he became premier, he was recognized as a Red Tory, a progressive on most social issues while generally conservative on fiscal matters.
If you will permit a personal comment or two, I first encountered Davis in October 1962. I was barely six months out of university, a very green general assignment reporter at the Globe and Mail, when I was summoned to the city desk by the assignment editor. “There’s no one else available, so I guess you’re it, Stevens. Here’s a cab slip. Get up to Queen’s Park right away. (Premier John) Robarts has just appointed a new education minister. Some guy named Davis. Nobody’s ever heard of him. Find him, interview him. We need a profile for the Bulldog (edition) tonight.”
I had never heard of him either. I’d never been inside Queen’s Park. But I managed to find his office, where Davis welcomed me. He was too kind or considerate to make mention of my inexperience. We talked for an hour – he talked while I mostly listened – about himself and his hopes for the education ministry. I wrote the profile and made the deadline for the Bulldog (in those days the evening street edition of the next morning’s paper). It was to be my very first op-ed page article.
If I reread it today, I’m sure I’d be embarrassed by its inadequacy. Although I knew little about provincial politics, I could recognize two things about the young MPP who, after just three years in the Legislature had been tapped to take over education, the premier’s old department. First, unlike some in the Robarts cabinet, he was not an ideologue. Second, he was suddenly on a fast track to somewhere. Would he shoot to the top? Or flame out?
I had no idea. And who could have foreseen his career trajectory? He changed the face of public education in Ontario, created regional school boards, established the community college system, built new universities, established the research-oriented Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and the educational broadcaster now known as TVOntario, and famously choosing people over cars, he stopped construction of the Spadina Expressway in Toronto.
Along the way, Davis turned down opportunities to seek the national leadership of his party. He was not without ambition, yet he recognized his own limits. He did not speak French, and he knew his style of provincial politics would not play well at all in the rough, hurly-burly arena of federal politics.
A moderate reformer, he was a consensus-builder, never a confrontation-seeker. He would disagree with Ottawa when he believed disagreement served the interests of Ontario, but he never permitted disagreement to fester into enmity.
He was often accused of being bland. So what? If, as he would say, “Bland works,” why should we complain. I’d choose bland over vitriol every time.
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens is an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail. His new book, Flora! A Woman in a Man’s World, co-authored with the late Flora MacDonald, is being published this fall by McGill-Queen’s University Press. His column appears Mondays. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens40@gmail.com.