John Horgan, the People’s Politician

B.C. premiers have had a rough go of it in recent decades. Each in turn seem to come a cropper, resulting in resignations, defeats, parody, ridicule.

Not John Horgan. Of all our province's recent leaders, he fared best. After taking the premier's office by the narrowest of margins (and relying on Green Party support) in May 2017, the NDP leader remained consistently popular, forced out not by scandal or plunging polls but by health concerns as his cancer diagnosis demanded his full attention.

This morning, at Victoria’s Royal Jubilee Hospital, Horgan died. He was 65.

I first met Horgan at Caffè Artigiano on Hornby Street in Vancouver. Horgan had the politician's memory, and when I interviewed him years later in his BC legislature office he still recalled my wisecrack that day: “Hey, you don't seem so angry.”

That was the tag that had been attached to Horgan back when he was Opposition leader — Hulk Horgan, angry guy.

That day, sitting comfortably in the premier's office and looking anything but cranky, Horgan told me that the anger came with that particular job.

“Because the expectation for the leader of the Opposition, and [then-BC Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson] is experiencing this right now, you are obliged to condemn the government day after day. And over time that becomes very difficult for the soul, because as human beings we are innately optimistic. We want to be hopeful each day,” he said.

“The leader of the Opposition is paid fortnightly by the Queen to be grumpy, and angry and belligerent. The worst day in government is better than the best day in Opposition.”

Horgan believed in the NDP philosophy. “I think the brand matters, the values matter.” He drew my attention to a framed picture on his office wall, an old ’40s-era campaign poster of the CCF, forerunner to the NDP. It read: “Humanity First; People Before Profits.”

“I got involved in politics through the social gospel,” he said. “But the day you are elected you have to deal with the issues that are in front of you. Not in front of your neighbour or the neighbour beside that neighbour, but in front of you.”

Horgan said he loved leading a team. “I grew up playing basketball and lacrosse. I didn't learn to skate till I was an adult. Team sports — I'm terrible at tennis, not bad at bocce. But I'm a team sport guy.”

It was in fact sports — or at least a coach — that changed his personal trajectory.

“My basketball coach when I was in high school — I was failing out in Grade 9, hanging out behind the band room doing things that were illegal then. And my basketball coach said 'What are you doing? There's way more here than you think there is.' And he pulled me back on track and he and the whole group of teachers and the principal kind of invested in me. I ended up becoming the student body president in Grade 12 and I got a couple of university degrees and I'm the premier of B.C. If you'd asked my Grade 9 teacher 'What is John Horgan gonna do?' none of that would have been on their radar. I owe a lot to the public education system and the people in it.”

Horgan's father died when he was just 18 months old, and he credited his mother with developing his political philosophy.

“She got a job with the municipality of Saanich,” he said. “She was a CUPE member. My father was not a trade unionist. Quite the contrary. He was an Irish immigrant who could sell anything to anyone. A salesman and a talker and he didn't see any benefits from unions in his life.”

“But my mom was getting grief from her boss and ended up telling him to go to hell, and she was storming out of the office, and as she was going out the union rep said 'Don't leave mad — tell me what happened and we'll see what we can do.' The supervisor ended up being dismissed and my mom was a strong union supporter ever since. So that was instilled in me — if everybody hangs together there's a better outcome. She instilled in me values of co-operation and respect for people.”

Horgan did not have to affect the stance of a working man. Even in a suit, Horgan looked like he ought to be wearing a hard hat. It was probably a key to his popularity — there was no need from him to ape the common touch like a performer learning a routine. Horgan was a working man.

He was also a talker. “I do like to talk,” he said. “I talk a lot. I think I'm made for radio. I can string sentences together. Talking for half an hour is dead simple for me. CFAX hosts would love to get me as a guest because, 'Horgan he'll just talk the whole time.’"

Once he was on Vaughn Palmer's Voice of BC when Palmer had no voice. “You could barely hear him,” Horgan said. “He said to me in a whisper, ‘Just go, John. Talk!’ I think that's my destiny.”

Horgan was also, famously, a Star Trek fan. “When I was in Opposition, I was on the rose-garden side [of the legislature building],” Horgan says, “and I would hang out the window and heckle people. My greatest engagement was with Christy [Clark]. One day she was walking down the path. She was wearing a red outfit. I said, ‘If this was an away mission, you wouldn't be coming home.’”

This jibe requires a bit of Star Trek knowledge — as fans of the show understand, anonymous ensigns who wear red uniforms are frequently killed off early in an episode. Clark got it. “She immediately turned around,” Horgan recalls, “and said, ‘My phaser’s on stun, because I like ya.’”

“I thought, Good for you. I gave her full marks for a quick retort.”

Horgan's ideal world, like Star Trek, was one where everyone, regardless of uniform, worked for the common good.