Читать книгу That Wasn’t the Plan - Reg Sherren - Страница 31

That shuttle launch was, in fact, a little like the spectacle around Brian Mulroney in the spring of 1990. Mulroney’s Meech Lake Accord negotiations were running into launch trouble too. All of the leaders of the provinces and territories were needed to achieve constitutional change, but there were holdouts. One of them was Newfoundland premier Clyde Wells.

The accord had been negotiated back in 1987, but it still had to be ratified. In theory, it was supposed to give the provinces greater control over Supreme Court appointments and immigration. It also afforded a veto over constitutional changes and gave the provinces increased power in federal funding decisions in areas such as education and health care.

But the big problem for Clyde Wells was that the accord also recognized Quebec as a distinct society within Canada. Wells argued that Quebec would wind up with greater legislative powers than other provinces, making future constitutional reform nearly impossible and possibly undermining federal funding to poorer provinces like Newfoundland and Labrador.

Mulroney argued that refusing to sign the accord would threaten national unity by possibly re-igniting separatist tensions in Quebec. Wells said, “Put it to a referendum.” Mulroney refused. If the agreement wasn’t ratified by Parliament and the provinces in 1990, it was dead. By the end of May all players converged on Ottawa for a few days to try to hammer out a deal. The stakes seemed astronomical.

I got the nod to shadow Mr. Wells, now a key player and under enormous pressure. We booked into the Château Laurier hotel and the games began.

The talks were being held right across the street in the conference centre. It was quite the spectacle. All the media cameras—dozens of them—were set up in a long line down one side of the entranceway. Don Newman from CBC Newsworld (now CBC News Network), itself less than a year old, was there to broadcast live to the entire country on the brand-new all-news channel. Newman had figured out a way to stand out. Rather than screaming to get his questions heard in a crowd with dozens of aggressive reporters, he had set up his own PA system with an amplifier for his microphone. He made it darn near impossible for the politicians to ignore him.

And you could tell when Mulroney was about to make an entrance. Just before he was to arrive, a school bus drove up full of immaculately dressed children, each with a little Canadian flag, who were placed on the far side across from the cameras. They would be in the prime minister’s background, waving their little red-and-white flags whenever he walked in.

Before politics, Brian Mulroney was the head of the Iron Ore Company of Canada, which was owned, ironically, by three American companies that operated the mine in Labrador City. It was five kilometres away from where my father helped manage Wabush Mines. They knew each other. There were stories about infamous drinking parties at the Wabush Mines suite in the Sir Wilfred Grenfell Hotel, even one story about a member of the United Steelworkers Union who burst in one night and quickly “engaged” Mr. Mulroney, and not in a friendly way. My father said he had to haul the guy off Mulroney. A staunch Liberal at the time, my dad also joked that he should have let them finish their business.

Now, Mulroney was the prime minister, and he was determined to drive his Meech Lake Accord forward. I had managed to secure exclusive access to Premier Wells, away from the action, usually in his hotel suite. His communications director at the time was Judy Foote. She would go on to be a federal cabinet minister and lieutenant governor of Newfoundland and Labrador. But right now she was the voice on the other end of the phone. She would call without warning, and we would rush upstairs to get a few minutes to speak with the premier. These stories focused more on what was happening behind the scenes, and you could sense the tremendous pressure Mr. Wells was under.

We were under some pressure ourselves. We were a two-man team, no sound person, no producer, no big crew like the others had, just me and my sidekick Sterling Snow. He was the perfect man for the job. Strong and stubborn, he had no trouble getting the shots we needed. Late one evening after a long day of shooting, I was screening some tape Sterling had shot over by the Canadian Museum of History, across the river in Hull (now Gatineau). The premiers had gathered for dinner, and outside two gentlemen were arguing about the two solitudes, Quebec and Canada. Quite a crowd had gathered around them.

In Sterling’s camera shot a head suddenly appeared, blocking his view. On the audio track you could hear Sterling say, “Hey buddy, you’re in my shot.” The head did not move. Again Sterling said, “Look, buddy, move—you’re in my shot.” Still no movement. Finally, Sterling said, “Hey buddy, you see this elbow? It’s going right in the side of your head in a minute!” The head moved out of the shot. You didn’t mess with Sterling.

This political roller coaster was becoming quite a ride. The gathering was supposed to last a couple of days, but it was stretching to five. We would videotape all day and sometimes late into the evening. Then I’d screen the tape and write a script, usually finishing at two or three in the morning. I would then wash my socks and underwear in the sink, grab maybe twenty winks, then go right back to taping in the morning. Just after lunch I would visit our mobile truck, edit the story, record a five-minute satellite debrief with the studio in St. John’s, then go do it all over again. At one point I gave up the washing and took a small break to go buy more underwear.

In the middle of this constitutional crisis, I got a call from the hotel’s manager. She had a crisis of her own. She politely informed me that we would have to leave the hotel—a convention had been booked in and they needed the space. Fair enough—we were now a day or two past our reservation. But I could not leave. I explained to her that I was a journalist covering Clyde Wells, the premier of Newfoundland, and at a moment’s notice I needed to scramble up the back staircase to do an interview. I simply had to stay.

She said it was unfortunate, but she wasn’t changing her mind. We would have to leave. I said, “Well, I’m not leaving and neither is my cameraman, so what are you going to do about it?” Somewhere in the back of my head I had this notion that if you were occupying a room and had done nothing wrong, they could not force you to leave.

“I’m going to call the police,” she said. I invited her to go right ahead, saying I’d tape the whole thing, showing how she had treated the only news crew from Newfoundland during this historic debate. “You don’t have to be like that,” she said. I said again, “Look, I am not leaving, and neither is my cameraman. You call me back when you figure what you’re going to do.” Then I hung up.

Sterling turned to me and sighed. “My son, you got skin on you like a pig.” All the other news teams were kicked out of the Château Laurier. We were not. But they moved us around—a lot. One evening I returned and picked up the key to my room, only to find myself in a huge corner suite, complete with a gourmet kitchen big enough for several chefs to cook in. Like we had time to eat.

After one particularly long day, when it looked as if Clyde Wells would indeed scuttle the deal, we were sitting at the bar downstairs, having a rare beer. Sterling was seated to my left, and to my right was this little fellow from Le Devoir, the big French-language newspaper. The room was full of politicians with their aides and consultants.

The little fellow kept going on about Clyde Wells and how he was ruining the country. I was tired of it all. Finally I said, “Look, I know everybody has their opinion about this, but I wish you would be quiet because I’m sick of listening to yours.” With this, Sterling piped up and said, “Now, Reg bye, that’s how we got into this mess in the first place. We have to talk things through.” With that, our little French friend said, “As far as I am concerned, Newfoundland is nothing. It’s like the Bangladesh of Canada.”

Sterling stood bolt upright, reached across me, and grabbed this fellow by the collar. He also said a few choice words I will not repeat here before I managed to get him off the guy. People were turning to see what the fuss was about. Our French friend scurried away. We decided to scurry away too.

The next morning, I was down in the lobby by six o’clock. Sterling was already there, stomping around. “That little so-and-so,” he said. “He put me right off my cornflakes. I just wanted to see if I could spot him.” Oh, the fun we were having.

In the end they pretended there was a deal, when really there wasn’t, and everyone defaulted to their respective legislatures for a final vote. Turned out it wasn’t necessary. Before Newfoundland cast even one vote, former chief and member of the Manitoba legislature Elijah Harper rose in his place and torpedoed the good ship Meech Lake on behalf of an Aboriginal community that felt completely left out of the process. His explanation?

Well, I was opposed to the Meech Lake Accord because we weren’t included in the Constitution. We were to recognize Quebec as a distinct society, whereas we as Aboriginal people were completely left out. We were the First Peoples here—First Nations of Canada—we were the ones that made treaties with the settlers that came from Europe. These settler people and their governments didn’t recognize us as a Nation, as a government, and that is why we opposed the Meech Lake Accord.