Mr. Speaker, in rising to mark the passing of Lorne McCuish my colleagues in the Progressive Conservative caucus extend our sympathy to Mrs. McCuish and to her children and grandchildren.
Their loss of a husband, father and grandfather is difficult. I hope they will draw comfort and pride from the public service that Mr. McCuish rendered to the people of Prince George—Bulkley Valley during his career in municipal government and his service to the people of Canada through his election to the House of Commons.
The measure of a member of parliament is not something easily expressed. The consistently positive election results for Mr. McCuish say much about him and the gratitude of his community for his efforts.
The constituents of Prince George—Bulkley Valley from 1979 to 1988 were the beneficiaries of his feisty, tell it like it is style of politics. I am sure Mr. Speaker remembers that. He possessed a wonderful mischievous personality and was not the least bit squeamish about using it on anyone from big business to his caucus colleagues.
Some of those mischievous pranks are legend in this House and I am sure Mr. Speaker has some memories of them. He had a wonderful sense of humour. We recall one of the famous incidents. I believe that Lorne at one time was a member of the consumer affairs committee. His granddaughter and he one day counted the raisins in the bran flakes because the company that produced these bran flakes was talking about two scoops of raisins. It is a famous story. Lorne said “We opened a lot of boxes of these but we never did find two scoops”. Apparently a few days later a truckload of Raisin Bran arrived at his parliamentary office. That is just one of the many things he did. Some of them I cannot mention in the House but he did have a great sense of humour.
Lorne loved his work. He realized that to love his work he had to have fun at it. He did have fun at politics.
Lorne represented a very large riding, 322,000 square kilometres. He was like the travelling representative. He always visited the remote corners of his riding to make sure he was in touch with his constituents, and in touch with them he was.
In expressing our gratitude for the public service of Lorne McCuish we would like to say thank you to his family for its understanding and for sharing him with the House and with the people of Canada.