My age betrays me. I have no anecdotes with Brian Mulroney, I did not experience his years in power. I only know him through his memoirs, books, documentaries, and people’s anecdotes.
Now there are two things that strike me when we talk about Brian Mulroney’s imprint.
There is of course the man – who exuded both natural authority and real benevolence, which is a happy combination for any politician. There was a distinctly Mulroney style and demeanor, which had more to do with human abilities than with the clash of ideas.
But above all, I believe that one of the reasons why Mulroney has entered our collective imagination is that he is part of the short list of Canadian politicians who have succeeded in Ottawa with Quebec.
No against Quebec, no without Quebec. But with Quebec.
I say this without contempt for others: he is a federal politician who has integrated Quebec into his political approach. We were not a negligible quantity or a source of distrust to him.
This in itself is already an immense legacy in Canadian politics.
Mulroney’s Solitudes
We read his memoirs – a brick of 1200 pages! – and we quickly understand that Brian Mulroney embodied, in his flesh, the concept of solitude.
Here is an Irishman among the English speakers. A Catholic among Protestants.
An English speaker among French speakers. A son of a worker among the greats of this world. A Quebecer among Canadians. A Canadian among Quebecers.
All of this inhabited him, lived within him and allowed him to go where others did not go.
Going where others did not go – or no longer go – takes us back of course to the Meech Lake Accord, to the reintegration of Quebec into Canada with “honor and enthusiasm”.
Mulroney had the audacity to attempt to repair this historic betrayal that was the 1982 repatriation, which remains there today like a spider on our constitutional ceiling.
His political legacy is multiple. Yes, gray areas exist, but above all it is a profoundly avant-garde assessment.
He set one of the most important milestones in the Canadian – and Quebec – economy today with the free trade agreement with the United States. A revolutionary and risky idea for the time.
He was also a conservative with a green conscience. The first to table a Green Plan among the G7 countries and to agree with the United States on acid rain.
His battle for freedoms, too, which we forget. Of course the one against apartheid in South Africa, where he stood up to Thatcher and Reagan. But he also amended the War Measures Act, after it was used so unfairly by Pierre Elliot Trudeau against the separatists in 1970.
Mulroney and Bouchard
Of all the tributes heard, that of Lucien Bouchard, his university friend whose political tragedy had forced him to move away to take a different path, is probably the most moving. The two had reconciled after thirty years.
We remain taken aback and touched to see a giant who greets the departure of his friend, another giant.