Читать книгу That Wasn’t the Plan - Reg Sherren - Страница 27

As fishing catches continued to decline and the protests grew, the political will to do something slowly started to shift. It was a big story for me as a journalist, but it had personal implications as well. Although I had grown up in Labrador, I spent most of the summers of my young life on the Ramea Islands, just off Newfoundland’s south coast. My mother’s people were fishing people. Her father, my grandfather, was a fishing schooner captain at the age of sixteen.

For a fellow who was born and raised a Newfoundlander, it was sad to watch the demise unfolding in slow motion. The fishing industry had defined Newfoundland for centuries, either through policies exacted by the rich fish merchants, who mostly formed the government in St. John’s, or later through policies set and enforced by the crowd in Ottawa.

Politics drove everything. Some would argue it drove the fishery under. Strangely enough for a young Newfoundland fellow born and raised on the west coast of the island and in Labrador, I had never seen the provincial seat of power up close. Never been to town. Now here I was, face first in codfish and politics. And a new wave was rising, preparing to wash in a completely new era.

When I arrived in 1987, the Liberal opposition leader at the time was Leo Barry. But the word was that Barry was on the way out and a new fellow, who was really an old fellow, was waiting in the wings. His name was Clyde Wells, and he had sat in the House of Assembly before. Back in the 1960s he had been a member of then-premier Joey Smallwood’s cabinet. But he and another Liberal at the time, a fellow named John Crosbie (yes, that John Crosbie), were not happy campers.

They had suspected shenanigans around the financing of the Come By Chance oil refinery and left the government, choosing to sit as independent Liberals. John Crosbie went on to become a federal Conservative, eventually even making a run for the leadership. Wells left politics, went back to his law practice and was considered one of the finest constitutional minds in the country. Now he was coming back.

I was dispatched to the Confederation Building to try and sort it all out. The Liberals under Barry were having a hard go of it, and Brian Peckford’s PCs weren’t making it any more comfortable for them. The opposition offices were in disrepair. Water was drip-drip-dripping from the ceiling.

When I looked into their conference room, there, sitting among the water buckets on the table, was Rex Murphy (yes, that Rex Murphy). I remembered Rex from my high school days, when he had cohosted the very same CBC supper-hour show, Here & Now, that I was currently working for. I recalled watching him and thinking he was brilliant. Now that I reflect on it, he probably had an influence on me in one way or another.

I went in and introduced myself, telling him I’d been a fan of his work on the show some years before. Lately he had been working with the provincial Liberals—doing some research for them, as I recall. But he said he wasn’t sure what the future would bring as this new fellow Wells was on his way back, and he didn’t see eye to eye with him.

When I returned to the station, I mentioned to boss Ed Coady that I had seen Rex. I said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we got Rex in here doing commentaries or something?” Ed wasn’t too sure about that idea. “He’s too close to the Liberals,” he said. But not long after that, Ed Coady announced during a morning story meeting that Rex Murphy would be joining Here & Now, doing commentaries. Rex went on to become one of the country’s top commentators.

And it was just as well. Clyde Wells did indeed become the leader of the opposition and Brian Peckford’s government was beginning to wobble, in no small part because of make-work schemes like the Sprung Greenhouse.

Phil Sprung was a Calgary businessman and entrepreneur. He had quite a sales pitch. Combining his unique soft-sided buildings with some sort of hydroponic magic, Phil claimed he could grow healthy, fresh produce faster than almost anyone on the planet. And Brian Peckford believed him.

With the government’s help, Phil set up shop in Mount Pearl outside of St. John’s. The bills started to grow. Cucumbers grew too, but they were fewer and farther between than was ever promised, and the jobs, the export markets, the profits—they never materialized.

As I covered the whole debacle, I could sense it might be the rock to bring down Goliath. The Conservatives had been in power over a decade and a half, and Peckford was now increasingly being seen as arrogant and out of touch.

I remember interviewing a fellow from out around the bay about the state of the situation. He was a fisherman, spoke with a thick accent and didn’t pull any punches. He summed it all up: “Lord Jesus bye, I suppose we could grow bananas at the North Pole if we wanted to, but what the frig would they cost?”

It got a little worse when word leaked that Peckford had ignored the advice of some senior civil servants, who had warned him the Sprung Greenhouse numbers just didn’t add up.

I waited hours and hours in the lobby of the House of Assembly for the good premier to leave his bunker up on the eighth floor. I knew he was still up in his office and he had only two ways to leave: the main bank of elevators or the private elevator installed right next to the front door. I guessed which one he would eventually use—the one he thought would provide the quickest escape.

The elevator light went on, meaning someone was on the way down. The camera started rolling. The doors opened and it was quite the picture. There was Brian Peckford, wearing a huge, full-length fur coat and smoking a cigar. I said, “Mr. Premier, your senior people were telling you to back away from the Sprung Greenhouse because it was a bad deal. Why didn’t you listen to them?” He looked right at me and replied, “If I listened to them, I would never get anything done!” Then he reached over to push the button. The elevator doors closed, and he went back up to his office. He was going up and his government was on the way down.

Shortly afterward, he resigned. In the end the final taxpayers’ bill for growing cucumbers in Mount Pearl came in at over $22 million. I still wonder what it might cost to grow bananas at the North Pole.