The late Jim Coutts is best remembered for his work as the legendary Principal Secretary to Pierre Trudeau. Indeed, the publication of the Coutts diaries (edited skillfully by Ron Graham, whose work in history over the decades makes him a legend in his own right) by Sutherland Press last year was one of the great publishing events in political history in recent memory.
Before his work for Pierre Trudeau, however, Mr. Coutts served while a young man as the Appointments Secretary to PM Lester Pearson. And on this date in 1977 he was interviewed about Mr. Pearson by the chronicler of 1960s Canadian politics that was Peter Stursburg. The pair met in Langevin Block for their discussion.
Coutts, of course, had stared his journey with Canada’s Liberal Party when he was only 14 and growing up in Alberta. He stood as a candidate for the Liberals and was so impressive, Pearson brought him to Ottawa. In his interview with Stursburg, Coutts described how he got his job in PMO.
“About two days after he (Pearson) was Prime Minister, he asked me to come down. And I thought the purpose of the meeting was to say what could be done in Alberta,” Coutts told his interviewer. “So, I wrote a very long memo saying, ‘This is the situation in Alberta and this is what we should be working on.’ And I came in to see him and said, ‘Well, here's the document I think you want.’ And he threw it in the out-basket and said, ‘Well, I certainly won't look at that.’ It was quite clear he didn't.”
Coutts then continued. “And he said, ‘What I want to talk about with you is about whether you'll work for me in my office.’ And I said, ‘Well, what would I
do? What would my job be?’ And he said, ‘I haven't any idea, but I've got eight empty offices out there and I have to fill them up. Would you like to sit in one of them?’ And he said, ‘Do you want to think about it for a little while?’ And I
said, ‘No, I want to do it.’ So that was the terms of reference and the job. And he said, ‘I think it will be the first office outside where people come in and you can help decide who comes in when, something like that.’”
And the rest, as they say, is history. You can read the Coutts’ interview in full at this link: https://parl-gc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/delivery/01CALP_INST:01CALP/12158084330002616?lang=en
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.