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A Scrapbook of Allan Williams Moments

The bold, brilliant Socred minister handled the hottest files. I had the good luck to be there by his side.

Bob Exell 8 Mar 2011TheTyee.ca

Bob Exell is a writer and editor who worked for several Canadian newspapers as well as the Canadian Press in Toronto and New York. He was executive assistant to a Conservative cabinet minister in Ontario before moving to Vancouver in 1975. He became Allan Williams' executive assistant in 1976. Exell was assistant deputy minister of intergovernmental relations when he left the government in 1986. He lives in Vancouver and Lasqueti Island, B.C.

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Allan Williams: Labour minister, A.G., under Bill Bennett.

January 12, 1976: I am with Allan Williams in a Terrace hotel, meeting with Judd Buchanan, the federal minister of Indian affairs. In the morning we are to drive to New Aiyansh -- Nisga'a country. Williams has been minister of labour and minister responsible for Indian matters in the Social Credit government for little more than three weeks. I have been his executive assistant for one week.

As the new minister of labour, Williams has taken on the most contentious issue in British Columbia at that time -- four widespread strikes which had prompted NDP Premier Dave Barrett to impose a back-to-work cooling off period and to call an election. Barrett's folly.

Now Williams was about to take on the second most contentious issue as well: Indian land claims.

His own man

I met Allan during the November/December campaign of 1975.

At the time I lived in his riding, West Vancouver-Howe Sound, and a mutual friend, knowing my background as a writer, thought I might be useful to him in the campaign. A former Liberal and reluctant convert to Social Credit, Williams wanted to talk about education. He was more than adept at speaking off the cuff but he needed a prepared handout.

During four years as a politico in the Ontario government and later as a PR guy I'd written a million speeches, often for those -- politicians and others -- who had no real clue as to what they wanted to say. But Williams more or less dictated it to me and I had merely to flesh it out as a short speech. Impressive for a politician, I thought.

With the text in hand he asked me to go with him to a meeting with Garde Gardom, another former Liberal campaigning for the Socreds in his Vancouver riding.

"Gardom," he said, showing him the short speech, "look at this." I was dumbfounded to learn that neither of them had ever had a speech written for them before. This was not the big blue machine I knew in Toronto.

I saw little of Williams during the remainder of the campaign. He had suggested to the campaign manager, the late Dan Campbell, that I join the campaign staff as a speechwriter. Which I did.

But shortly after the election he called me and offered me the job of his executive assistant. We worked together for the next seven years. It was during that time that I was to learn there was integrity in politics. And Allan Williams personified it.

First steps

I knew nothing of Indian affairs in British Columbia. Several of the reserves of the Squamish band were in Allan's riding. He was up to speed not only on the issue of comprehensive land claims but another issue as well, the so-called cut-off lands -- parcels taken by governments illegally from Indian reserves years before. It had long been a source of antagonism between the federal and provincial governments, for the cut-off lands were in provincial hands, and the feds were lobbying for their return. Dave Barrett had appointed a commission to "study" (read "stall") the issue.

Which brings us back to that Terrace hotel room on Jan. 12, 1976. At that meeting, Judd Buchanan broached the issue with the new minister from B.C. Buchanan was literally left speechless when Williams told him that he would dissolve the Barrett commission, accept as provincial responsibility the return of the lands, and agree to negotiate the details with the feds and the bands. And he followed through. (I know, because I was the negotiator up until the time I left the government in 1986.)

Williams was to speak to the Nisga'a tribal council the next day, and again he wanted prepared remarks. I took out pen and pad and listened.

Which brought the two of us to that Terrace hotel room on Jan. 12, 1976. Williams was to speak to the Nisga'a tribal council the next day, and again he wanted prepared remarks. I took out pen and pad and listened. At the hotel desk I borrowed a typewriter and set the words to paper. Naive, I was totally unaware of the fact that this was the lead-up to a momentous occasion for the Nisga'a, whose long struggle for the recognition of their land claim was at last to bear some fruit with the province. In fact, Williams and Garde Gardom, the attorney general and, later, minister of intergovernmental relations, were never able to convince the Bennett cabinet to throw their full support behind the resolution of comprehensive claims. Many years were to pass before the Nisga'a claim was finally settled. But the first steps had been taken. Williams had set the process in motion.

The correct wording

More mundane tasks were at hand in Victoria. Allan was determined that all of his well-wishers receive personal notes -- not a form letter -- to their letters of congratulations. We went over them, and he would tell me if he knew the writer, and what should be said to him or her. In one of the first that I drafted, I began. "I was delighted to receive your..."

That was not Allan's style. He called me in. "I am never 'delighted,'" he said. "I am always 'pleased.'" He wrote many himself. I copied his style.

A prestigious club in his riding -- one with dues and an initiation fee -- wrote to offer him a free membership. I drafted a reply saying it was not possible to accept their invitation. Allan signed it without question or comment.

Allan Williams was a serious man, serious about public service. He gave up a law practice during what would have been his best earning years to devote his time to the province. Appointed labour minister during a time of serious labour unrest, he was determined to make an impact. Not that he might not have preferred another portfolio -- attorney general, perhaps -- but within the Bennett cabinet he was the obvious choice for the job. Smart. Level-headed. Able to think it through and to be persuasive when there was panic all around and when the hawks in the cabinet were lobbying him to bring in a so-called "right-to-work" bill to emasculate the unions.

Bill Bennett was not among them. "The premier's not stupid," Allan told me, which was as much a comment on some of his cabinet colleagues as it was on the premier.

Minister of labour

The late Fred Moonen, a forest industry lobbyist at the Legislature, lived in West Vancouver and was a personal friend of Allan's. He remembered meeting with him shortly after Allan got the call from Bennett asking him to accept the labour portfolio. Allan was grim and stone-faced.

"What's the problem," Moonen asked, "you get labour?"

Williams did not reply.

I would sit in on meetings with Allan, his deputy minister, Jim Matkin, and the union leaders of the day as they thrashed out the province's industrial relations problems ("challenges," they would be called today.) It was a subject I knew nothing about but was fascinated to see in action. More often than not the issues weren't in the contract details but rather the politics within the unions. Allan was adroit in recognizing this. Time and again, after a verbal free-for-all in which he would give away little, he would sum up. And almost always he would introduce an element of surprise -- an angle that had occurred to him during the course of the discussion -- something the others hadn't considered. It wasn't for effect. It was just the way he thought. Out of the box, as it later came to be called.

In the early years of his ministry, we worked every night the Legislature was in session. After the house rose at 6 p.m. the two of us headed to the Victoria's Union Club for dinner. To the bar for a single martini. Downstairs to the dining room. Back to the office by 8 p.m. Few, if any, ministers' offices would be open when we left at 11 p.m. We'd go for a beer. I'd buy. Allan always bought dinner.

The labour years took a toll on him. With the election call of 1979, I felt he should pack it in and return to his law practice to make up for the earnings losses of the previous four years. "You going to run again?" I asked.

"One more kick at the can," he said.

I wished he hadn't. He was appointed attorney general and was dealt the Clifford Olson affair. When the issue arose of a payment of $100,000 to Olson's wife in return to information on the whereabouts of the bodies of the children Olson killed, it was not one that could be taken to cabinet. It was a decision the attorney general had to make as the chief law officer of the Crown.

He made it. He agonized over it. And he was second guessed by lesser people. It was the correct decision, of course. But I do not believe he ever enjoyed politics after that, and he chose not to run again in 1983.

A destiny spelled out

His full name was Louis Allan Williams.

Walking to the Union Club one night after he had been appointed chief law officer of the Crown (attorney general), I told him I was amused by the fact his initials spelled LAW.

Yes, he said, and went on to tell me his first name was actually spelled A-L-L-E-N. It was only after he applied for a birth certificate to get his first passport that he learned of the spelling variant.

He has asked his mother why she hadn't corrected him, but evidently she had just never given it any thought.

By then he was known to all as Allan. So that's how he left it.

Allan Williams died last week at the age of 88.  [Tyee]

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