It was Prime Minister Diefenbaker who got me into politics. I listened to his speeches, I went to one of his rallies, and I joined the Opposition Liberal Party. It wasn’t Dief’s dim and grandiose visions, his preference of rhetoric to reality that turned me off so much as his style. He had a ghastly nasal drone like an old-time preacher on downers – even when he told jokes it sounded like a bad sermon. I should add that many years later I sat beside Dief at a Vancouver Bar Association dinner and he was a delightful conversationalist, witty and relaxed. I guess one of the first lessons of politics is to distinguish between public and private personae. People don’t have to be anything like how they sound on platform.

In the Pearson-Diefenbaker era I waved a few Liberal placards, but my life in politics really took off when Mr. Pearson resigned and my wife and I went to the Ottawa leadership convention of 1967. We didn’t go as official delegates – we were on holiday in the Eastern States and went for fun and interest. But as soon as we arrived at the convention (which was held in the Civic Hockey arena) we met some B.C. delegates we knew, and it turned out that certain ridings hadn’t been able to send a full slate of delegates. So casuals like ourselves soon sported such signs as “Delegate for Peace River North”, “Alternate for Atlin”, etc.; we were the people’s whether they knew it or not.