Mr. Speaker, in joining with other parties in the House today, I want to also extend to Mr. Pickersgill's family, his wife, his children, his grandchildren, my personal condolences and the condolences of our party.
Anyone familiar with the history of Canada and the history of the House of Commons knows that Mr. Pickersgill was a giant. He, like all of us in this place, was a partisan and it should be stressed that he enjoyed partisanship and every dimension of it. I say this as a Progressive Conservative who represents a political party that was on the receiving end of that partisanship throughout his career.
Many members in this place know the distinguished writer Doug Fisher. He is a very distinguished member of the press gallery, someone who himself was a member at one point and sat in the House of Commons. Mr. Fisher called him “the liveliest, most cunning and partisan politician I have observed”. What a compliment.
In that light perhaps I might observe the admission that Mr. Pickersgill made in his own autobiography that his middle name was Whitney. His middle name was given to him in commemoration of the Tory premier of Ontario, James Pliny Whitney who swept to power in Ontario in the year of Mr. Pickersgill's birth.
Mr. Pickersgill not only practised politics, he wrote about them. I have particularly noted his account of the revival of the Liberal Party, a book he wrote entitled The Road Back . Apart from the story of the rebuilding and renewal of his party, one is struck by the wonderful material that Mr. Pickersgill and his contemporaries on both sides of the House also provided for many of the great political cartoonists in Canada in that period.
In his last book Seeing Canada Whole , he summed up his public and private life. The title therefore has great meaning, seeing Canada whole. He played an important part in the entry of Newfoundland and Labrador into Confederation.
At the end of his life, Mr. Pickersgill was still working passionately to help Canada keep whole with his active support in particular of the Meech Lake accord. In fact he joined with the Hon. Robert Stanfield to urge adoption of this accord in testimony that he offered in front of the Senate of Canada. This testimony will forever remain a very significant part of the public record in this country. His defence of his position in his book is instructive and an inspiration to those who do not know, or easily forget or sweep away what has been the history of this great country.
How did he see his own parliamentary career? His assessment is that he achieved a few things, or at least contributed to a few things that he felt may not have happened otherwise. One was the provision of unemployment insurance for fishermen. The other one was the provision of a place in Canada for 35,000 Hungarian refugees who became exemplary citizens. He also said, “I was never bored by Parliament. I would try again”. If only we could have persuaded him to run again, I am sure he would have been elected.
His assessment though is far too modest. I think we all recognize today that Canada has truly lost a giant.