Dave Barrett was magic onstage.
“He could play an audience like a violin, and they sang back to him,” said a former colleague, Bob Williams.
But Barrett was far more than just a gifted campaigner. Another former B.C. premier, Glen Clark, marvels at how much Barrett accomplished in his three years of power between 1972 and 1975.
“I think he’s the most underestimated or underrated individual that I can imagine in British Columbia,” said Clark.
“People don’t realize, but they passed a new law every three days that they were in government. I talked to him one time about what his biggest accomplishments were, and he didn’t say the agricultural land reserve or ICBC, he said protecting Cypress Bowl from development.
“I didn’t even realize he’d done Cypress Bowl. Robson Square, the SeaBus, the highest minimum wage in Canada at the time. Mincom, minimum income standards for seniors. The first daycare program in the history of British Columbia. More (social) housing built ever than in any other period in British Columbia — government housing, co-op housing, public housing.
“It was just extraordinary, the pace of progressive change in such a short period of time.”
Barrett died Friday at 87 after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s. The current premier, New Democrat John Horgan, lauded him as a giant.
“His visionary leadership and unflinching commitment to the well-being of ordinary people around the province led to lasting change,” Horgan said in a statement.
“In just one short term, his government delivered our first modern ambulance service, the Agricultural Land Reserve and public auto insurance. We are all better off, thanks to his tireless work and immeasurable contributions to public life.”
Williams was a key figure in the Barrett cabinet.
“We loved the guy,” said Williams. “There’s been nobody like him in our history. He was a wonderful, joyous figure. It was a pleasure to work every day in that government. I think he helped create the most innovative government in the history of this province.”
Barrett also may have been the only B.C. premier to do a jig on a cabinet table.
“All the stories of the fun and the depth of the guy are true,” said Williams. “It’s true, he did get on the cabinet table and dance in his socks. He did.
“He (also) saw past the nature of bureaucracies, and felt he was standing on the shoulders of historic socialists who had created enough of an atmosphere for us to come into power.
“So there were no holds barred, everyone was able to do a great deal of work. People have said ‘Isn’t it crazy, they tried to do so much.’ It wasn’t crazy. We and he did so much, and it was a great moment in the province’s history.”
Barrett is credited with modernizing B.C.’s civil service after two decades of government by W.A.C. Bennett and Social Credit.
“He told me the civil service were not allowed to use long-distance phone calls when (the NDP became) government,” said Clark. “The NDP government in that period were looking at bidding on the Olympics. They asked the bureaucrats, ‘Do some research on this. We haven’t decided, but we’re thinking about bidding on the Olympics.’
“A few days went by and he asked them ‘What have you found out?’ And they said ‘We’re waiting for answers to our letters.’ (Socred premier) W.A.C. Bennett had not authorized them to use long-distance phone calls. … It was an old, antiquated bureaucracy.”
That said, Clark thinks that may have been to Barrett’s advantage.
“Maybe that was one of the freedoms they had to make change,” he said. “Today there’s so many checks and balances and bureaucracy (that) to try and bring in a piece of legislation, it would take months. Building a rapid transit line, my goodness, it seems to take forever to get anything done.
“They were unencumbered by a bureaucracy — they built it,” he said of the Barrett government.
Williams said Barrett came by his socialist nature naturally — he was a working class kid from East Van whose father looked after people.
“His dad Sam Barrett had the Green Grocer down where Sunrise market is now, right opposite Oppenheimer Park,” said Williams. “The amount of groceries that went out of the store free was amazing.”
Clark said Barrett’s legendary sense of humour helped make things “understandable” for people.
“He was so quick and had such a great wit,” said Clark. “He could take radical progressive ideas and make them real for people. I remember a speech I was at maybe 10 or 15 years ago, and he was talking about the people who want to deregulate, how the business community wants less regulations, (as well as) right-wing governments across Canada.
“He asked everybody in the audience to stand up and take out their medicare card. Then he said ‘All you people in the audience who don’t vote NDP, who believe in free enterprise and don’t believe in regulation, I want you to rip up that card, rip it up right now.
“’You don’t believe in socialized medicine, clearly, that’s evil. And we should take out all the traffic lights, that’s clearly government regulation. Why would we have the government intrude and tell people to stop or go?’”
Williams choked up a bit talking about his old comrade.
“He was a gift,” he said. “He was a pleasure, he was a treasure.”
jmackie@postmedia.com
VICTORIA — For a politician who exited the premier’s office more than 40 years ago, Dave Barrett left behind him a long and, in many ways, a still living legacy.
The lasting protection of agricultural land. Public auto insurance. Pharmacare. Neighbourhood pubs. The Cypress Bowl recreation area. Robson Square. The B.C. Day public holiday.
The list goes on. The Art of the Impossible, a sympathetic account of the Barrett years, written five years ago by journalist Rod Mickleburgh and Geoff Meggs, chief of staff to the current premier, closed with a “partial and subjective list” of the Barrett accomplishments that ran to 97 items.
The Barrett government passed more than 400 pieces of legislature during its brief 3½-year term in office. Not all were good ideas and some were evidence of a government that tried to do too much, too soon.
Barrett would say that in coming to office after 20 years of increasingly ossified Social Credit government, the province’s first New Democratic Party administration had to realize that “we’re here for a good time, not a long time.”
But that’s a bit of historical revisionism. Premier Barrett tried very hard for a second term in the fall of 1975, legislating a cooling-off period for 50,000 workers in four separate labour disputes, then calling a snap election.
Labour didn’t like it and some unions sat on their hands. Still Barrett actually increased his vote count over the previous 1972 election by almost 60,000 votes, a considerable achievement given all the controversies that erupted during his term of office.
The NDP nevertheless lost 20 seats because the right of centre opposition, split three ways in 1972, combined under the leadership of Socred premier Bill Bennett, son of W.A.C. Bennett, whom Barrett had driven from office three years earlier.
Then a remarkable thing happened. Though Bennett and the Socreds rode to office by opposing many of Barrett’s actions, they proceeded to pay grudging tribute to the departed NDP premier by leaving many of his accomplishments more or less intact. The Insurance Corp. of B.C. and the agricultural land reserve were foremost among them.
Barrett, ever the street-fighter, kept at it. Having lost his Coquitlam seat in the legislature by a mere 18 votes in the December 1975 election, he arranged for a New Democrat Bob Williams to resign his in the safe enclave of Vancouver East and returned to the legislature in a byelection.
In the rematch with Bennett in 1979, Barrett came within a tantalizing 30,000 votes and five seats of returning to the premier’s office. The 46 per cent of the popular vote captured by the New Democrats in that election remains the high water mark for the party in any B.C. election, including the subsequent three occasions when it formed government.
Impressive as the 1979 result was in terms of a personal achievement for Barrett, it also set the stage for him to make a second try at a comeback four years later. Again, he held his vote, but so did Bennett, emerging with his third straight win over his NDP opponent. Barrett had to wear the defeat, having handed Bennett the edge with an ill-advised speech against fiscal restraint.
After that, Barrett had to go and did. As a last service to the party, he carried his defiance of the re-elected Bennett’s restraint program to such lengths that at one point he was physically dragged from the legislative chamber for defying the chair of the proceedings. He then gave up his seat to Williams who had been waiting, not all that patiently, to return to the house for the better part of a decade.
Barrett dabbled briefly in radio before getting elected to parliament in 1988. He also sought the national leadership of the NDP, losing to Audrey McLaughlin — and the country thereby missed a helluva show.
In the unforgiving modern-day arena, where defeated leaders seldom get a first shot at a comeback, never mind a second, it seems incredible that the New Democrats stuck with Barrett long enough for him to lose three in a row.
But the explanation resides with the other memorable aspect of the Barrett legacy, namely his powerful and ultimately personal hold on his own party and his share of the electorate.
No one who heard a Dave Barrett give a political speech full bore, all stops pulled, ever forgot it. He was a master of the populist style, able to segue from unforgiving denunciations of his opponents to withering ridicule in an instant, never unsure of himself, never less than formidable.
He could be funny as hell too as when opponents called him a Marxist and he fired back “Groucho, Harpo or Chico?”
I only covered Barrett in his last year in the legislature, but I got to see him in action several times over the years when he was called out to speak at party conventions or help out in provincial campaigns. “An old ghost” he would style himself, but there was nothing ephemeral about his energy level.
Sadly, near the end, he had faded from public life, plagued by similar mental decline as rival Bill Bennett, who passed two years ago.
But at his best he left a bigger mark on the province than many who served longer, but with less passion, vigour and determination.
vpalmer@postmedia.com
Dave Barrett, a wisecracking and flamboyant left-wing populist from east Vancouver who became B.C.’s first NDP premier, died this morning after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s disease.
He was 87.
“He cared deeply about this province and devoted much of his life to trying to make it a better and fairer place to live,” his family said in a statement Friday afternoon. “His love of the province was surpassed only by his devotion to his family.”
Barrett had a big impact on B.C. during his short three-year term in office, creating the Insurance Corp. of B.C. and the Agricultural Land Reserve, which were kept in place by the Social Credit and B.C. Liberal governments that followed.
The 26th premier of British Columbia led the province for three years between 1972 and 1975.
It was a time of tumultuous change, with the NDP passing a new law on average every three days while in power.
His government’s reforms ranged from setting up a labour relations board and launching Pharmacare to banning pay toilets and spanking in schools. He lowered the drinking age to 19, increased the minimum wage, preserved Cypress Bowl for recreation and established the air ambulance service.
Barrett, who laced his social democratic politics with more than a dollop of humour, called himself “fat li’l Dave” after reporters in the legislative press gallery called him the “little fat guy.”
Barrett once told a reporter, with faux indignation: “(My opponents) have called me everything over the years. They’ve even called me fat.
“They’ve called me a Marxist. I say which one, Groucho, Chico or Harpo? I’ve always got reaction. I can deal with whatever anyone throws my way.”
Barrett’s shoot-from-the-hip style on the stump endeared him to the NDP faithful while angering his Socred opponents, who regarded him as the leader of the “socialist hordes.”
In his later career, as a candidate for the federal NDP leadership, Barrett summed up his style this way: “In my political career I’ve always been blunt, very blunt. As a consequence, either people love me or they hate me. There’s not much middle ground. That’s really how I operate.”
While Barrett had his detractors, his gregarious personality endeared him to many British Columbians, including those who normally wouldn’t vote NDP.
His likability was noted by Patrick Kinsella, a key strategist for Socred premier Bill Bennett, when he talked about political marketing to a group of Simon Fraser University students in 1984.
“Most of the things about a leader that you like, David Barrett was it. He was friendly. He had good relationships with the media. … He was frankly the guy that you would take to a Canucks game or take home to dinner. Bill Bennett, on the other hand, was perceived to be not a guy you would take to a Canucks game.”
Despite his personal appeal, Barrett lost to Bennett and the Social Credit in three straight elections, in 1975, 1979 and 1983. After losing his seat in 1975, he quickly re-appeared in the legislature through a 1976 byelection.
Barrett appeared to have a strong chance of a return to power in the early stages of the 1983 provincial election. But his combative style backfired when reporters asked what he would do with the Socred restraint program if he became premier.
Barrett said he would phase it out as quickly as possible — a response that helped the Socreds define him as a socialist willing to use tax dollars to help his friends in the trade union movement.
Barrett would later write that he should have fudged his response and simply called for a review of the controversial program.
The youngest son of a fruit and vegetable peddler, Barrett grew up on McSpadden Avenue, off Commercial Drive, in east Vancouver. His family was Jewish but his household was not religious.
There were plenty of socialists in his working-class neighbourhood, including his parents. His father Sam Barrett was a Fabian socialist and his mother Rose Gordon was a Communist who voted for the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation.
He later recalled that as a child, he was in a parade protesting fascist intervention in the Spanish Civil War. His parents split up just before Barrett’s 20th birthday.
After graduating from Britannia secondary, Barrett went to Seattle University, a Jesuit school, in 1948. He graduated in 1953 and married Shirley Hackman shortly after his return to Vancouver that year. Their first son Daniel was born in 1954. The young couple later moved to St. Louis, Mo., where Barrett earned a master’s degree in social work at St. Louis University.
Returning to B.C. in 1957, Barrett and his wife had two more children — Joe, born in 1956, and Jane, born in 1960.
Barrett worked at the Haney Correctional Institute as a social worker. Through his work there, he came in contact with CCF activists who persuaded him to seek provincial office.
At the time, civil servants were not allowed to run for public office, and in 1959, Barrett was fired from the prison when it became known he was seeking the CCF nomination in Dewdney.
A year later, he won the election and became an MLA for the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, which later became the provincial New Democratic Party.
Barrett became leader of that party in 1969 and three years later secured the provincial NDP its first victory against the Socreds under W.A.C. Bennett.
On a trip to Ottawa, the newly elected premier said to then-prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau: “I didn’t come here to B.S.”
Barrett’s full-throttle denunciations of Social Credit were often laced with humour. The Socreds broadcast a television commercial in which a man wearing a business suit was shown to be wearing red underwear — the obvious message being that New Democrats were socialists hiding their true intentions.
Barrett told a crowd soon afterwards that he figured out who was behind the ad. “I didn’t come here to discuss the colour of my underwear,” he told the rally. “I’ll leave that to your imagination. But I understand that Grace McCarthy is behind this idea.”
After a pause, Barrett said: “I want to assure the people of British Columbia that Grace McCarthy is one woman who will never see the colour of my underwear.”
David Mitchell, a former B.C. Liberal MLA and political analyst, said Barrett “exemplified a pugnacious form of leadership that was very much aligned with the populist political traditions of British Columbia.”
Mitchell, executive director of the Public Policy Forum, said Barrett “demonstrated a passion for social justice, championing the cause of ordinary British Columbians and railing against the elites of the province.”
Mitchell said Barrett’s NDP government was so bold in its ambitions that its three-year period in office “can be considered the equivalent of a decade of governance in British Columbia.”
In 1983, during a round-the-clock debate over Bennett’s spending restraint program, Barrett was physically hauled off the floor of the legislature after refusing an order by the Speaker to leave. He was then banned from the legislature for several months.
While the event was one of the rowdiest in B.C.’s political history, it did not detract from his legacy.
Apart from creating the Agriculture Land Reserve and ICBC, he left behind important legislative reforms, including the introduction of question period and Hansard, an official record of legislative debate and proceedings, into the legislature.
His government also introduced French immersion in B.C. schools.
But some of his policies were deeply divisive and controversial, like the implementation of a mineral royalties tax, which inflamed the mining industry.
But Barrett told a reporter in 1989 that none of the 367 bills passed while he was premier was radical:
“None of the things we did, not one, was radical. Not one. And in the light of history that’s even more evident.”
After serving as leader of the Opposition in the B.C. legislature from 1976 until his party’s defeat in the 1983 election, he announced his resignation as leader of the provincial NDP.
He lectured for several years at some of North America’s top universities, including McGill and Harvard, and served a short stint as a radio talk show host, then returned to politics and ran successfully for the federal NDP.
He was elected as an MP for the riding of Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca in 1988. During the race, he advocated a pro-choice view on abortion and improved child care services, including programs for street kids. His plan for Ottawa was to bring down the free trade agreement.
He held the riding until 1993, when he was defeated by Reform candidate Keith Martin.
He ran for the leadership of the federal NDP in 1989, losing narrowly on the fourth ballot to Audrey McLaughlin. His candidacy drew public attention to what several columnists called a “dull” race, with his critical views on Meech Lake, western alienation and a national obsession with Quebec.
After his departure from politics, he headed a public commission in 1999 investigating the leaky condo problem in Vancouver.
Barrett was made an officer of the Order of Canada in 2005 and named a member of the Order of B.C. in May of 2012.
In declining health in his final years, he withdrew from public life and spent them quietly with Shirley. He is survived by his wife and his three children.
With photo research by librarian Carolyn Soltau
Former B.C. premier Dave Barrett, who led the province's first New Democratic Party government, died Friday at the age of 87 in Victoria.
His short-lived government from September 1972 to December 1975 carried out reforms at a blistering pace including the creation of the Agricultural Land Reserve, the public auto insurance corporation ICBC, a provincial ambulance system and Pharmacare. It also brought in full Hansard transcripts of proceedings in the legislature.
After just three years in government, Barrett called a snap election and the Social Credit party swept back into power.
Former @bcndp Premier #DaveBarrett in full political form in the 1980s. @cbcnewsbc #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/fS9OjIipuc — @DanBurritt
Government in a hurry
In their recent book, The Art of the Impossible: Dave Barrett and the NDP in Power 1972-1975, authors Rod Mickleburgh and Geoff Meggs, recounted the story of how Barrett asked his ministers at their first cabinet meeting: "Are you here for a good time or a long time?"
"They were hoping to get a second term of course," Mickleburgh said in an interview. "But they said that is not our goal. Our goal is to change British Columbia and do what has to be done.
"The result was the most incredible government in the history of Canada based on how short a time they were in office and what they accomplished," he said.
Lots of gaffes
MIckleburgh said the 97 accomplishments listed in his book included the strongest labour code, consumer protections and human rights legislation in North America. Barrett's government also started the Seabus program, though it was his Social Credit successor Bill Bennett who completed it..
"An unparallelled record in government," Mickleburgh said, "Plus lots of gaffes. They weren't a perfect government."
First elected to the B.C. legislature in 1960, the former social worker from Vancouver who became known as the champion of the little guy would be elected to the assembly eight times.
David Mitchell, a former B.C. Liberal MLA and political analyst, said Barrett "epitomised the politics of personality, at a time when British Columbia was known for larger than life personalities."
"He was outgoing, funny, outrageous, flamboyant, always very quotable, but behind all of that flamboyance, he always had a very strong policy background. Those initiatives that the first NDP government in B.C. launched in the 1970s continue to this day all these years later."
One more piece of vintage @bcndp #DaveBarrett from our @cbcnewsbc archives. #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/GE4L8ang6F — @DanBurritt
Dragged from legislature
As Opposition leader, Barrett earned the distinction of being the first MLA dragged out of the legislative chamber in October 1983 during a convoluted procedural exchange on a hotly opposed government bill.
After leaving provincial politics, Barrett was elected as NDP member of parliament for the riding of Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca which he served from 1988 to 1993.
Barrett's son Dan said in a statement his father died after a long struggle with Alzheimer's disease.
He said his father cared deeply about the province and that he devoted much of his life trying to make it a better and fairer place to live. His love of the province was surpassed only by his devotion to his family, he added.
Barrett was living in a Victoria care facility in recent years.
Legendary sense of humour
B.C. Premier John Horgan said in a statement the province had lost "a giant" with deep commitment to helping ordinary people, a legendary sense of humour and the ability to command a room with his gift for public speaking.
"We are all better off, thanks to his tireless work and immeasurable contributions to public life," Horgan said.
"He was an inspiration to me and many other British Columbians, and I am grateful for his friendship and guidance over the years. His legacy will live on in our hearts," Horgan said.
With files from The Canadian Press and Susana da Silva.
