It really was, as many have suggested, the passing of a political titan.
Brian Mulroney died Thursday at 84 and the tributes and memories came in from around the world.
I have many memories, having covered him since the early eighties before he became leader of the Progressive Conservatives. Good times and tough times, but the most poignant was this.
Standing together on a second-floor Johannesburg balcony watching the pre-funeral procession of Nelson Mandela pass by beneath us. It was December of 2013. Mulroney was, and always will be, a revered hero in South Africa. It’s entirely possible that Mandela would have stayed, and died, in prison and apartheid would have continued, had Mulroney not pressured the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan to join the voices of those calling for change. He believed in the cause to his core and he never let that belief go until he succeeded. What he did was not just a tribute to Mandela, it was a tribute to the country he loved – Canada.
As I stood next to him on that balcony more than a decade ago, I was struck by the moments of history we had both witnessed – both in Canada and around the world. He as a participant, I as an observer. The Prime Minister and the Journalist.
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