One of the greatest newspaper columnists and party activists of his generation was in Nova Scotia on this date in 2000 to deliver the annual Allan J. MacEachen Lecture at St. FX University. Dalton Camp, who spent a life at the centre of the Progress Conservative party both in the Martimes and federally for most of his life, argued in his address that Canadians were turning away from participation in national political parties at their country’s peril.
“(But) the time will come again when the country will need them, as they have always needed them, whenever the country is in crisis,” Camp said. “It only takes a collapse in the stock market, or a crisis in national unity, before the country wakes up and looks to the party system and to its leadership. That’s why I think we all should continue to invest our time and our energy and thought in the business of politics.”
“It was always good to me. Even when we were jousting with Allan, and pretending we’d won the odd round, it was still the best game in town,” he continued. “It was fun. It was enjoyable. And the one thing, the blessed thing you got out of it was that if you were in politics you got to know the country, you got to know your neighbours, to know who you were living with and working with. There is no substitute for that experience.”
Amen to that. You can read Camp’s lecture in full at this link:
https://www.stfx.ca/department/political-science/reflections-contemporary-politics-canada
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.