Were it not for him, I would never have experienced life as a young and idealist political assistant at Queen’s Park in the late 1980s. And after that, he recognized that partisanship was not one of my better qualities (as I loved political history and media even more) and he helped me secure a spot at Ryerson’s School of Journalism.

I was later to meet countless men and women of all party faiths who had also been helped by the Senator when starting out in their own  careers in media and politics and so many other fields.

I last saw him as he was entering his lengthy and final journey into dementia. It was at Rideau Hall and I was a reporter covering an Order of Canada ceremony. The Senator was amongst those (deservedly) being honoured. While he no longer knew me due to that most terrible of diseases, he was still able to share stories from the days he had played central roles in the premierships of Mike Pearson and Pierre Trudeau. 

I listened to them a final time.

But what mattered most to me was his children and his wonderful wife, Dorothy, were with him. That allowed me to tell them what this great man had done for me.

Senator Davey passed into history in 2011.

So, as we mark his 100th birthday at Art’s History today, I wanted to share with readers a tribute I wrote to him many years ago for TVO. You will find it below.

The Rainmaker and Me

 It was early evening one December night in 1983 and I was all of 17-years-old. The phone rang at my parent’s Scarborough home with Senator Keith Davey on the line.

Already a politically charged young man, I had put pen to paper and written to the Senator that fall after reading about him in a newspaper article. Summoning up my courage, I thundered in my letter about the unfairness of a Liberal fundraising dinner Davey was organizing. The main attraction at the coming Toronto event would be Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Speculation was rife that Trudeau would soon announce his resignation from politics.

The dinner was dubbed "The Last Supper" by the media and tickets cost $250 each.  Here was I, just a teenager who wanted to meet Prime Minister Trudeau. How was it fair, I thought, that connected lawyers and wealthy people could meet the 15th prime minister but me, making under $3 an hour at my part-time job as  busboy-waiter in Scarborough Town Centre, could not?            

Answering the telephone as my mother watched, I first heard a voice I would get to know well over the 15 or so years that followed. Senator Davey said he had received my letter.   He asked whether I would be able to get a night off work from my work at Scarborough Town Centre to come to the "Last Supper." 

"I'm going to meet the Prime Minister," I proudly told my mother afterwards. "That was Senator Keith Davey calling. He's arranging it all."  And so I did meet the nation’s PM the following night.

After that December 1983 event, Davey would check in with me about once a year. He'd quiz me about my studies and plans for university and pledge to stay in touch. Once I was in university, Davey helped me with essays I was writing and often invited me to lunch at the Park Plaza hotel in Toronto. I'd also drop in and see him at his East Block office on Parliament Hill whenever I was in Ottawa. 

My last day as an undergraduate was in June 1988. I needed an extra credit to graduate Queen's with my BA and stayed on for spring-summer session to get it. I packed up my apartment the night before my final exam and wrote the test the next morning. Then, I drove back home to Scarborough, having earned my degree but still with no idea at all what I was going to do. 

Enter Keith Davey. 

I was home perhaps 15 minutes when my parent's telephone rang. It was the Senator. "Arthur," he said, "I was thinking about you and your future today. Have you graduated from Queen's yet?" I laughed and told him I had indeed finished my university studies. That very morning. "Come and see me tomorrow," Davey said, before ringing off. 

We met in downtown Toronto the next day and he asked me if I would be interested in working in politics at Queen's Park. He didn't have to ask twice. By the following week, I had been interviewed by the Principal Secretary to Premier David Peterson, Gordon Ashworth and in turn met his assistant, Gordon MacCauley – I’m proud to say we are still friends today – and I started work for a MPP soon after.  

 Davey had had wise words before sending me off to be interviewed at Queen's Park. "Only work in politics for a couple of years. You never know what can happen there and I want you to find a stable career." 

And so it was that I worked for two years for a couple of MPPs and a cabinet minister. I met my future wife during that period as well. By the spring of 1990 I had also discovered that Davey was right, I was developing an interest in journalism. I enrolled at the University of King's College's journalism program in Halifax in the summer of 1990. But, after spending more than a week pounding the pavement there in search of an apartment I could afford, I gave up.

Packing up my car, I drove straight home to Toronto, sheepishly leaving a message for the Senator after I called him from a rest stop in Quebec. We met a couple of days later. And, Senator Davey had news. He had made some calls and I would be starting in the journalism program for university graduates at Ryerson that September. 

At my invitation, he once came to Ryerson and spoke to one of my classes about newspaper ownership. He also took a group of about six of my friends to lunch and offered to help them anyway he could. 

When I started at my first newspaper in Arnprior, I proudly mailed off my first article as a full-time reporter to him. Then, in the summer of 1995 my mother was dying of cancer at Sunnybrook Hospital. Only a few days before she died, the Senator called her without telling me. In the last conversation I was to have with mom, she told me of his call and how he said that he thought her son would do well in the future. He pledged that he'd look out for me and this meant so much to her. 

While I can never fully repay Senator Keith Davey, there is one way I do try to honour him. Nearing 60 years of age, I’ve learned because of his example, there is no higher calling than mentoring young people. 

My door is always open to them. 

As Senator Davey's was for me.