Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to represent the New Democratic caucus in remembering Lorne as a member of parliament and as an alderman in the city of Prince George.
I learned a great deal from Lorne McCuish. He was elected in 1979 and I was elected in 1980. He taught me a great deal about how a member of parliament ought to operate, particularly in the constituency. We shared a hallway. I spent many an evening with Lorne McCuish. We talked about politics and work in the House of Commons and in various committees.
He was from Prince George and I am from Kamloops which meant that we spent many a flight together flying across Canada. I can recall countless evenings in Vancouver. In those days we were required to stay over because there were no same day flight connections to our respective communities from Ottawa.
As others have indicated, I remember Lorne as a very humourous individual. He always wanted to play a joke. The first time I saw him play a joke was when we were flying from Ottawa to Vancouver. I asked him how he avoided getting into conversations with people he did not want to talk to. Sometimes you sit beside a person who for whatever reason you would just as soon forget having a conversation with. He told me a secret. I do not know if he ever did it but I thought it was very funny. He said that I should take 10 inches of cord with me and when I decided I did not want to talk to somebody I should hang it out of my mouth. He said that nobody would ever talk to a person with a cord hanging out of his mouth and I suspect he was probably right. He would say things like that continuously. He was a man of great humour.
I was talking with him one day about doing constituency work. As others have indicated, he would take one week out of six and go back to his constituency, a very vast area. He held what he called availability sessions for people to come out and meet Lorne. He was a very approachable individual. He asked me to come along and join him for one of these visits, which I did. We got in a little trout fishing at the same time.
I remember walking with Lorne down the streets of Vanderhoof and Fort St. James. He knew every single person by name. If he did not know them he would sort of mumble and they would think he knew their names. I thought that was a rather ingenious approach.
He was very popular and popular for an interesting reason. He was prepared to say no to people if he could not help them. He did not pretend he could help them. Nor did he slough it off. Delegations would come from our part of central British Columbia. To be fair I would try to be kind of nice to those folks but he would just say “No, we cannot help you. We are not able to do anything. We are not even particularly interested in trying to help you with that problem because we do not believe in it”. I had not met anybody like that. It was very refreshing. It demonstrated that you do not always have to agree with people for them to respect you or for them to vote for you.
I can think of a great number of things I learned from Lorne McCuish. On top of that he was a very genuine, nice person. He often spoke of his family very warmly. I know he wanted to spend more time with his family. When he decided not to seek re-election it was because he had decided it was appropriate to spend time with his family and he actually meant it. A lot of people just say that. In the Lorne McCuish style he meant that he wanted to spend more time with his children, his wife and his young grandchildren.
On behalf of the New Democratic caucus, I extend sincere condolences to Lorne's family, in particular his wife, his children and his four grandchildren. We remember him fondly. He added a great deal of humanity to this place and I know his constituents loved him.