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Ian Mulgrew: The Picture of Dorian Gray Waddell

"The best damn Liberal in the NDP. Always a fighter for the little guy, and he was nice to his mother too!"

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Ian Waddell must have a grey-haired, wrinkled portrait hidden in an attic — no one at 75 can appear as spry and boyish as the lawyer-turned-activist-turned-politician-turned-cultural warrior, writer, filmmaker and bon vivant.

No one.

A veritable miniature Oscar Wilde, Waddell has barely arrived from the Island and already is going a mile a minute about his former legislative assistant who was running for city council in Nanaimo.

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He hopes his autobiography inspires more of that — Take the Torch: A Political Memoir.

“You’ve got the third copy,” he noted before continuing without a breath. “I’m Scots and going on the ferry is free, but it takes four hours.”

He laughs, it gives him time to talk, talk, talk … he cannot help himself.

“I start with my hobbyhorse, which is the Aboriginals, this is what Jack Woodward and I decided to do, I think you’ll like this, I’ll read the first paragraph…”

(And he did.)

Waddell was first elected to the House of Commons in 1979 and represented Vancouver-Kingsway until 1988, when he ran and was elected in Port Moody-Coquitlam. He ran for the NDP leadership in 1989 and lost.

Waddell also lost his federal seat in 1993, but ran provincially and represented Vancouver-Fraserview from 1996-2001, becoming Minister of Small Business, Tourism and Culture under Premier Glen Clark.

His greatest claim to fame was in 1981 when he drafted the First Nations amendment to the Constitution with future Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien.

As former Liberal minister Sheila Copps quipped: “The best damn Liberal in the NDP. Always a fighter for the little guy, and he was nice to his mother (Isabel) too!”

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Full disclosure: Waddell admitted he campaigned for Lester Pearson and was a member of the Liberal club at the University of Toronto.

Like the man in person, Waddell’s story is a tonic to the Age of Cynicism and Trump — a celebration of engagement and caring.

“This was an amazing country, you had opportunity,” insisted the man who arrived in Ontario with his family in 1947. “I think we may have lost that. One of the big challenges for me in writing the book was for me to not say what should be done, but rather what we did — what worked, how we made a difference. You can still make a difference, especially through the law.”

Waddell examines six issues that were key in his life and career — store-front law and the first class-action in Canada, the Berger Commission on the northern pipeline, the divisive National Energy Program, the constitutional amendment on Aboriginal rights, the International Court of Justice, and the cultural wars.

“Tommy Douglas had a great way about him and he told me sometimes you have to tell stories against yourself. So there’s a story of me kicking off the ball at the Grey Cup — usually the minister turned down the opportunity because everyone booed. I didn’t think they’d boo this tiny, perfect minister. I thought I could avoid the boos. My assistant was horrified. Just let me read you this one …”

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Waddell was fortunate — the network broke for commercial as he appeared.

In writing the book, Waddell said he was trying to pass on some of the lessons he learned along the magical path that he has trod, what he learned about setting goals for social change and the methods to get there.

“You might find some of my ‘methods’ strange,” he confided.

“They go from debating, protesting and marching, to ‘biting dogs’ at press conferences (following the old adage ‘dog bites man is not a story; man bites dog is a headline’), writing op-ed pieces for newspapers, getting elected, taking on prime ministers, dictators and kings, grabbing maces, lobbying diplomats in the lobby of the United Nations, and bucking your own party. Even writing novels.”

From fly-fishing on a wild river near Mackenzie to prancing through the staid corridors of power, the Glasgow-born Waddell was a political sprite turning up in the unlikeliest of places with incorrigible enthusiasm.

Today, he fears individual members lack the ability to make the contributions he did — they have been devalued, and control lies within the hands of the party leadership.

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“We came out of movements — the women’s movement, the environmental movement, Greenpeace right here, the gay movement, the civil rights movement. We were all part of those movements and committed to that, and that was above the partisan thing. I was appalled by the reports saying members had to be whipped. If Ed Broadbent had come to me, or Svend Robinson, or Pauline Jewett, or Jim Fulton, (and said) ‘If you don’t follow the party line, I won’t sign your nomination papers,’ we would have said, ‘F— off, we’ll go somewhere else!'”

Since leaving politics, Waddell has been writing and dabbling in film — The Drop: Why Young People Don’t Vote won a Hollywood Film Festival best producer award in 2016.

“It looks bad, it looks awful,” he observed of the landscape. “I put it down to a failure of American liberals. They are at fault not defining themselves. One, making my film made me realize that kids today, they are the smartest generation ever. Those kids in Florida who came out for gun control, one of them will be a future president. Is America a misogynist, stupid society? I have always thought of the U.S. as being a bit better. Those kids can make change, and they will.”

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Still, this is a B.C. story filled with the characters of our history — from the Gastown Riots to the Olympics. But most of all, the life of those times.

“I’ve got to show you something,” Waddell said, beginning to unbutton his shirt, “Here I am, in my car” — he pointed to a black-and-white photo in the book with his mum — “the Red Shark.”

A reference to gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson?

He nodded, continuing to unbutton his shirt.

“Look what I found in Nanaimo yesterday,” he said, pulling open the shirt to reveal a t-shirt celebrating the drug-addled author.

Waddell cackled with glee: “My mother used to say, ‘Well, yir no in a wheelchair.'”

It’s hard to believe in this day of hyper-partisanship that a Prime Minister would say of a political opponent as Brian Mulroney did of Waddell: “Always prepared, always effective, always thoughtful, and always acting in Canada’s national interest.”

His memoir reflects that. Perhaps it will inspire a return to a more humanist approach.

imulgrew@postmedia.com

twitter.com/ianmulgrew


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