The late John Napier Turner, our 17th Prime Minister, and a man I was so very privileged to have as a friend and mentor, was a true House of Commons man. He truly loved Parliament and the cut and thrust of debate in the House. Mr. Turner was first elected to the Commons in 1962 and his parliamentary service would also include terms in the 1970s, 1980s and in the early 1990s.
As is always the practice at these unveiling ceremonies, the past PM being “hanged” delivers a highly anticipated address. Below you will find Mr. Turner’s speech that day in Centre Block.
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Portrait of Rt. Hon. John Turner/caption
The Rt. Hon. John N. Turner: My first observation is that my time in the high office, mentioned by the Prime Minister (Mr. Chretien), hardly justifies a portrait, aside my distinguished predecessors, but as the two Speakers have pointed out, I would perhaps justify my being among them by reason of my almost 25 years sitting in this House of Commons. I believe also that I’m the only member in history (along with Mackenzie King) to have represented three different provinces in the House of Commons ...
I wanted to thank the Prime Minister not only for his presence, but for his generous words. We’ve known each other and worked together, good times and bad times for a long time, and I congratulated him on his three straight mandates.
It was my supporters in the three ridings who called me to account in the town hall meetings that we’ve had every three months, in Montreal, then here in Ottawa and in Vancouver, we used to draw 2500 people every three months, and Ted Rogers told me that on Rogers Cable, there were 750,000 people who watched those town hall meetings, Vancouver Quadra was like California North, and everybody with an idea, everybody with a grudge, everybody with a dream, was up there, taking me on. As a matter of fact, sometimes the only way I could win an argument would be by saying, “Look Mr., you’ve expressed yourself very well and I’ve got two things to say to you: It’s still my meeting, and secondly, if you want someone who agrees one hundred percent with you, run against me in the next election.”
More important, my wife Geills is here. She was always the best campaigner in the family, door to door, across the country, young people, old people -- the Prime Minister mentioned the North -- she was the unofficial photographer for the Inuit people, for years and years and they wanted her back at their annual reunions. And Geills is head of the family, and my four children who are here today, Elizabeth, Michael, David and Andrew, led as normal a life as possible, during those turbulent years, thanks to Geills. Although there was time to time moments that they could have done without, so far, the scars don’t show too deeply and they’re all living very successful lives and I’m very proud of them. And they shared the public experience with me. My sister Brenda’s here. She was my earliest supporter, still a fervent member of the party until this day …
The greatest honour, and I’m tempted to say this by what the Speaker has mentioned, and I may refer tonight to some of his apprenticeship, because Speaker Milliken has been preparing for this job since he was a student in high school. The current Queen’s alumni magazine, the current issue of Queen’s alumni magazine, has a two-page article on our Speaker (written by Arthur Milnes), describing how he once wrote a paper in third year on Question period, and I advise any Member of Parliament to pick that up at Queen’s library because it has some interesting things to say.
The greatest honour our fellow citizens can bestow upon a Canadian is election to this place, the House of Commons. Parliament is the forum of our nation. It is just not a legislative machine, it is a place for drama, it is a place for debate, both here and in the Senate, where the main issues of the day should be debated and resolved.
As one outside of the system at the moment, but who gets around the country a good deal, Canadians would hope that some of the major issues would be debated a little more forcefully here in Ottawa, the erosion of our sovereignty, our environment, energy, our heritage, these issues demand the attention of members and of Senators.
I see Herb Gray here, Herb and I were elected on June 18, 1962. He is the Dean of the House of Commons. At that meeting, Herb will remember, that I spoke about the eroding of the independence of members of Parliament in 1964. I’m not jumping on any recent bandwagon. And what I’m doing now is reciting some of the words I said in Parliament and said to those students and then across the country to other universities. I think that, once again, I would urge that the committee system be strengthened here in the House of Commons, that the breadth of subject of a future Bill be studied by committees before it becomes firm under government committed, that once it becomes a Bill it be returned to a committee for a thorough broad-spectrum view by all parties of the House of Commons.
I urge again, as I did in 1964, that the whip be withdrawn from members of Parliament except on the Throne Speech, on a budget …, and as I can say to the Prime Minister -- on matters of critical national policy. But members of Parliament, when we examine the British system, the English system, members of Parliaments were elected by their constituencies, they met at Westminster, and they chose a Prime Minister. And a Member of Parliament is at the basis of our system, the member of the Parliament is the link between the people of his country …
And so, I, say again, Mr. Speaker, give these Members a voice, let them speak their minds, let them speak their consciousness. And let them represent the interests of their constituents. One final word, I urge the members of the House, from all sides, to reclaim the dignity and independence that beget our system, after the Norman conquest, and with so much in evidence during the early years of our Confederation.
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.
Portrait of Rt. Hon. John Turner/caption
The Rt. Hon. John N. Turner: My first observation is that my time in the high office, mentioned by the Prime Minister (Mr. Chretien), hardly justifies a portrait, aside my distinguished predecessors, but as the two Speakers have pointed out, I would perhaps justify my being among them by reason of my almost 25 years sitting in this House of Commons. I believe also that I’m the only member in history (along with Mackenzie King) to have represented three different provinces in the House of Commons ...
I wanted to thank the Prime Minister not only for his presence, but for his generous words. We’ve known each other and worked together, good times and bad times for a long time, and I congratulated him on his three straight mandates.
It was my supporters in the three ridings who called me to account in the town hall meetings that we’ve had every three months, in Montreal, then here in Ottawa and in Vancouver, we used to draw 2500 people every three months, and Ted Rogers told me that on Rogers Cable, there were 750,000 people who watched those town hall meetings, Vancouver Quadra was like California North, and everybody with an idea, everybody with a grudge, everybody with a dream, was up there, taking me on. As a matter of fact, sometimes the only way I could win an argument would be by saying, “Look Mr., you’ve expressed yourself very well and I’ve got two things to say to you: It’s still my meeting, and secondly, if you want someone who agrees one hundred percent with you, run against me in the next election.”
More important, my wife Geills is here. She was always the best campaigner in the family, door to door, across the country, young people, old people -- the Prime Minister mentioned the North -- she was the unofficial photographer for the Inuit people, for years and years and they wanted her back at their annual reunions. And Geills is head of the family, and my four children who are here today, Elizabeth, Michael, David and Andrew, led as normal a life as possible, during those turbulent years, thanks to Geills. Although there was time to time moments that they could have done without, so far, the scars don’t show too deeply and they’re all living very successful lives and I’m very proud of them. And they shared the public experience with me. My sister Brenda’s here. She was my earliest supporter, still a fervent member of the party until this day …
The greatest honour, and I’m tempted to say this by what the Speaker has mentioned, and I may refer tonight to some of his apprenticeship, because Speaker Milliken has been preparing for this job since he was a student in high school. The current Queen’s alumni magazine, the current issue of Queen’s alumni magazine, has a two-page article on our Speaker (written by Arthur Milnes), describing how he once wrote a paper in third year on Question period, and I advise any Member of Parliament to pick that up at Queen’s library because it has some interesting things to say.
The greatest honour our fellow citizens can bestow upon a Canadian is election to this place, the House of Commons. Parliament is the forum of our nation. It is just not a legislative machine, it is a place for drama, it is a place for debate, both here and in the Senate, where the main issues of the day should be debated and resolved.
As one outside of the system at the moment, but who gets around the country a good deal, Canadians would hope that some of the major issues would be debated a little more forcefully here in Ottawa, the erosion of our sovereignty, our environment, energy, our heritage, these issues demand the attention of members and of Senators.
I see Herb Gray here, Herb and I were elected on June 18, 1962. He is the Dean of the House of Commons. At that meeting, Herb will remember, that I spoke about the eroding of the independence of members of Parliament in 1964. I’m not jumping on any recent bandwagon. And what I’m doing now is reciting some of the words I said in Parliament and said to those students and then across the country to other universities. I think that, once again, I would urge that the committee system be strengthened here in the House of Commons, that the breadth of subject of a future Bill be studied by committees before it becomes firm under government committed, that once it becomes a Bill it be returned to a committee for a thorough broad-spectrum view by all parties of the House of Commons.
I urge again, as I did in 1964, that the whip be withdrawn from members of Parliament except on the Throne Speech, on a budget …, and as I can say to the Prime Minister -- on matters of critical national policy. But members of Parliament, when we examine the British system, the English system, members of Parliaments were elected by their constituencies, they met at Westminster, and they chose a Prime Minister. And a Member of Parliament is at the basis of our system, the member of the Parliament is the link between the people of his country …
And so, I, say again, Mr. Speaker, give these Members a voice, let them speak their minds, let them speak their consciousness. And let them represent the interests of their constituents. One final word, I urge the members of the House, from all sides, to reclaim the dignity and independence that beget our system, after the Norman conquest, and with so much in evidence during the early years of our Confederation.
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.