Jacques Poitras - The Right Fight: Bernard Lord and the Conservative Dilemma

The Right Fight: Bernard Lord and the Conservative Dilemma — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The Right Fight: Bernard Lord and the Conservative Dilemma" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...95

The RIGHT FIGHT

BERNARD LORD and the CONSERVATIVE DILEMMA

JACQUES POITRAS

Copyright Jacques Poitras, 2004.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or used in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or
any retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a
licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). To
contact Access Copyright, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call 1-800-893-5777.

Edited by Barry Norris.
Author photo by Ton Meeg.
Cover and book design by Paul Vienneau.
Printed in Canada by Friesens.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Cover photographs: Front: Bernard Lord, Francine Dion; Richard Hatfield, October
1970, Provincial Archives of New Brunswick Richard Hatfield Photograph
Collection, P282-12; Bernard Lord and Brian Mulroney, August 28, 2002, Noel
Chenier/The Telegraph-Journal; Danny Cameron, September 1992, courtesy of
Danny Cameron. Back: Richard Hatfield and Percy Mockler, February 1985,
courtesy of Percy Mockler; Bernard Lord, Stephen Harper and Brian Mulroney,
May 2004, The Moncton Times-Transcript; Dennis Cochrane, 1991, courtesy of
Dennis Cochrane. Published by permission.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Poitras, Jacques, 1968
The right fight : Bernard Lord and the Conservative
dilemma / Jacques Poitras.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-86492-376-7

1. Lord, Bernard, 1965- 2. Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick.

3. Conservatism New Brunswick. 4. New Brunswick Politics and government. I. Title.

FC2478.2.P64 2004 971.5105 C2004-904074-X

Published with the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the
Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development
Program, and the New Brunswick Culture and Sports Secretariat.

Goose Lane Editions
Suite 330, 500 Beaverbrook Court
Fredericton, New Brunswick
CANADA E3B 5X4
www.gooselane.com

To Giselle and Sophie

I suspect that one hundred years from now, those who occupy this Legislature will still have to fight for equality. It may never be realized, but at least this Legislature will know that as of this time, it is the will of the people of New Brunswick that we work in that direction and we strive for that equality. Premier Richard Hatfield, Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick, July 16, 1981

The dimmer a partys prospects, the more numerous are its factions. Dalton Camp, Gentlemen, Players and Politicians, 1970

Bernard Lord and Brian Mulroney, St. Thomas University, Fredericton, August 28, 2002. NOEL CHENIER/THE TELEGRAPH-JOURNAL

Prologue
ELECTION DAY, 1991

LYNN MASON AWOKE EARLY on the morning of September 23, 1991. Summer was gone, and the air felt cool as he readied himself for what he knew would be a long day. He left his house on Preston Street, an ordinary, tree-lined lane of homes on Frederictons north side, and set out for campaign headquarters.

Masons polling station was around the corner from his house, at the Church of Christ on Bloor Street, but he had known it would be busy today, so hed cast his ballot in the advance poll. When he reached the headquarters, in a small strip mall called York Plaza on Main Street, it was already filling up with volunteers. Mason soft-spoken but intensely serious began giving orders to the scrutineers, the men and women who would camp out at every polling station in the riding of Fredericton North to ensure all the ballots were counted properly. Mason had worked hard leading up to the campaign, especially once the election had been called, on signs, advertising and anything that needed to be done. He wasnt going to let that effort go to waste now, on election day.

Mason had needed one scrutineer for each of Fredericton Norths sixty-five polling stations, and hed had no trouble finding them because the members of the Confederation of Regions party were on a mission. They were incensed, Mason says today. They saw a need for this party, and there was no difficulty getting people involved.

Mason was incensed, too. Hed come to COR to advance his pet issue a solution to the mismanagement of government-owned woodlands by the forestry industry and found an organization prepared to listen. Hed often voted Conservative in the past, but he liked the sound of this upstart party. For one thing, COR ran itself from the bottom up, its ideology reflecting its grassroots membership. Masons philosophy of forest management had even found its way into CORs election platform.

Mason liked COR for another reason. The party was opposed to official bilingualism. The expenditures involved were what pissed me off, he said. Hed watched Conservative premier Richard Hatfield blow huge amounts of cash on initiatives aimed at the one-third of New Brunswickers who were French-speaking. Hatfield had even flirted with the idea of duality setting up separate, parallel government operations in each language. Only four per cent of francophones couldnt speak English, Mason reasoned, so why couldnt all the others go to school and work and deal with the government in the language of the majority? I really dont believe in splitting cultures, Mason says. English should be taught throughout the province, and the exact opposite of that was legislated bilingualism. It was politics more than anything else, not a benefit to the French community.

The new Liberal government of Frank McKenna had done no better, in Masons view. McKenna had added another seven billion dollars to New Brunswicks public debt, and I know for a fact two-thirds of that went to subsidizing bilingualism, Mason says. The Liberals were under pressure to write into the Constitution a piece of legislation, passed by Hatfields government, that guaranteed the equality of the two linguistic communities. If that happened, the wasteful duality that so enraged Mason would become permanent. For those who felt as Mason did, it had to be stopped.

Across English New Brunswick, people whod voted Conservative all their lives had concluded that the party had abandoned them. Their party, which had always spoken for the English-speaking majority, had bent to the Acadian vote. To fight back, they had created the Confederation of Regions party.

Mason had walked into CORs provincial office on Main Street one day, curious. He liked what the people there told him, not just about language or his ability to influence party policy, but about education, health care and a range of other issues. Soon, Mason was on the board of directors of the Fredericton North COR association, organizing a growing political machine of eleven hundred members. He got to know the partys provincial president, Ed Allen, a former Conservative MLA and cabinet minister, CORs biggest catch among the thousands of defecting Tories.

Now Allens name was on the ballot in Fredericton North, not for the PCs but for COR. Lynn Masons job was to get him elected.

* * *

Don Parents job on election day as much as it surprised him was to make sure Ed Allen did not get elected.

Parent was a teacher and a Conservative who had loyally worked on Allens campaigns over the years. Now, on September 23, 1991, Parent could hardly believe that he was on the ballot against his old ally. But that was the kind of campaign it had been. A week after Frank McKenna had kicked off the campaign, the Tories of Fredericton North had come to Parent, desperate. The party was in bad shape. Many of its volunteers had followed Allen to COR. They couldnt find a candidate. But COR was a fringe group, certain to lose, they told Parent. And the incumbent Liberal MLA, Jim Wilson, was vulnerable. They persuaded Parent that he could win.

Next page

1234567...95

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «The Right Fight: Bernard Lord and the Conservative Dilemma»

Look at similar books to The Right Fight: Bernard Lord and the Conservative Dilemma. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Brian Jacques

Redwall #01 - Lord Brocktree

Bernard Cornwell

Sea Lord

Jacques Poitras

Irving vs. Irving: Canadas Feuding Billionaires and the Stories They Wont Tell

Jacques Poitras

Imaginary Line: Life on an Unfinished Border

Guy Poitras

The Ordeal of Hegemony: The United States and Latin America

Bernard C Melewski

Inside the Green Lobby: The Fight to Save the Adirondack Park

Jacques Pépin

Jacques Pépin Quick & Simple

Rivette Jacques

Jacques Rivette

Derrida Jacques

Jacques Derrida opening lines

Bale Tim

British Conservative Leaders

Jacques Poitras

Pipe Dreams: The Fight for Canada’s Energy Future

Eugene D. Genovese

The slaveholders dilemma: freedom and progress in southern conservative thought, 1820-1860

Discussion, reviews of the book The Right Fight: Bernard Lord and the Conservative Dilemma and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.