Harper pulled a Stanfield?
Though it was a much different set of circumstances which surrounded former Moncton Mayor Leonard Jones back in 1974, it could be the argued that there are some similar parallels between [his] situation and the one Bill Casey is facing at the moment in Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit. I think the message is clear in both cases, people don't like being dictated to or told how to vote. Check out the great article by Al Hollingsworth:
In the early 1960s, Moncton began a transition that continues today. The establishment of the Université de Moncton changed life forever in the Hub City. U de M evolved from St. Joseph’s College in Memramcook. Until that time, young high school graduates seeking to continue their education had to leave their community in order to do so.It may appear pretty tame from the outside looking in, however, if an open nomination meeting isn't granted to the riding association's board when Plett meets with Armstrong this sunday in Wentworth, it will be interesting to see who the conservative's bring in to run against the all but unbeatable Casey, and more importantly, how will he or she be treated by local tories?
The coming of U de M, a bilingual college, was welcomed and praised by both French and English. It didn’t take long for that to change. Soon after the college was built, it became a French speaking institution, much to the chagrin of the city’s mayor, Leonard Jones. First elected as a councilor in 1957, he served as mayor of Moncton between 1963 and 1974.
Jones was a fierce opponent of the Official Languages Act, dead against the use of the French language in city business, and determined to continue to conduct council meetings exclusively in English. This stance pitted him against New Brunswick Premier Louis Robichaud, who was concurrently developing legislation that would recognize the equality of the French language within the province. Robichaud is credited with the opening of the new university campus in 1964. The colourful mayor didn’t mince words. Jones had a running battle with the students, especially the Quebec natives who chose to enroll at U de M. More militant than the locals, they marched on city hall to protest hiring methods and the general running of the city.
Two students decided to deliver a severed pig’s head to the mayor and his family. The students were eventually caught and charged. When it was discovered that one of them had a criminal record, police placed the mayor and his family under constant protection.
In the previous election, held in 1972, the PC candidate Charlie Thomas won the seat recording 22, 657 (remember this figure) votes. When the 1974 vote was called, Jones decided that the only way to change things was to go to Ottawa. So he challenged Thomas for the nomination and won. Enter Bob Stanfield.
Jones, branded by many as a bigot, was viewed by Stanfield as an unacceptable candidate for the Tories, and he refused to sign the nomination papers. Thomas was declared the candidate. It gets better.
Undaunted, Jones decided to run as an independent candidate. Not only did he run, he won big time. In 1974, the results were as follows:
Independent (Leonard Jones) votes: 20,671
Liberal (Leonide Cyr) votes: 16,199
PC (Charlie Thomas) votes: 6,456
Clearly, Jones was not alone in his anti- French stance, as more than 20,000 Monctonians, 46% of the voters, marked their “X” beside his name. Jones, who died in 1998, served as an MP until 1979. Thankfully, his political life ended in 1978 when he decided not to run for a second term.
As suggested earlier, this Harper/Casey confrontation looks pretty tame by comparison.
7 Comments:
Very diferent circumstances. One guy was standing up for a signed agreement that was ripped up. The other was protesting a law which was accepted by all.
Sounds an awful lot like Dion and Trudeau in Quebec though.
bill: Regardless, Casey will win no matter what banner he runs under.
anon: not sure what you mean?
I think bill is wrong to say that Bilingualism was accepted by "all" in the early 1970s. The fact that U de M did not become bilingual, as promised, hurt many people in anglophone Moncton. These people donated money to the institution, hoping their children could be educated in Moncton, rather than Fredericton, Sackville, or out of province. Unilingual anglos were very unsure of the future in those years.
On the other side, I had a social studies teacher in high school who went to U de M in those years, and marched in the protests against Leonard Jones. The stories he told us demonstrate that there were MANY people who not only supported Jones, but didn't think he was going far enough. He was even hit with the famous "speak white" bomb from the counter-protesters. Geez, the CoR party won provincial seats in the 1990s using Leonard Jones' platform. The law certainly wasn't "accepted by all"
As far as Bill Casey is concerned, this is just an epilogue to the PC-Reform battles. Why would Stephen Harper give two cents about what an old Maritime Red Tory like Bill Casey thinks? It's just a shame that nobody in caucus will speak up for the man who spoke up for Nova Scotia.
People in Canada naively assume that their MP is elected to represent them. As Bill Casey has shown, an MP is expected to represent his party over his constituents. I thought Stephen Harper and Canada's New Government were supposed to change that.
As a final note, most Nova Scotians old enough to remember would laugh if you compared Bob Stanfield to Steve Harper.
These people donated money to the institution, hoping their children could be educated in Moncton, rather than Fredericton, Sackville, or out of province. Unilingual anglos were very unsure of the future in those years.
I think that all would have been solved if the education proposal had of found some way to merge certain departments at Mount Allison, UNB and STU and placed satelite universities across the province. Moncton's anglophone population desparately needs a university in their city that can provide a top flight education for those who would like to remain close to home.
Bill Casey voted against his own party’s budget. In every single BPD (British Parliamentary Democracy) country on planet Earth a vote against the budget is a vote of non-confidence in the government. This means he voted that he has no confidence in the ability of his party to form the government and run the country. No party would allow a member to stay in caucus who did such a thing: not the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party, the Green Party, the BQ, the NDP or any other party. If he has no confidence in the Conservative Party’s ability to govern, he can’t be a Conservative. It’s just that simple. The riding association has no authority to re-nominate Bill Casey and if they won’t choose someone else then the Party has a right to overrule them. It works this way for all partys.
This issue has nothing to do with Harper’s temper: it has everything to do with how BPD has worked for hundreds of years.
I don't think I said anything about a said leaders temper or the Westminster tradition on $$$ bills?
However, the one thing I do know is that "all politics are local" (quoting from Tip O'Neil) and that will be the only unwritten law, not BPD, that will play out in the Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit riding.
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