CKNW Editorial
for September 27, 1999

I am always grateful to the Sun’s Vaughn Palmer not just for his brilliant political analysis but for the research he does for those of us who must cover far more than BC politics. Sometimes that research evidently takes Vaughn into the realm of reading fiction such as Gordon Wilson’s 1996 book called A Civilized Revolution. Now I haven’t read Mr Wilson’s book – but then I somehow doubt that he’s read mine. But I have read The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber. Thurber was a marvelous wit of that marvelous pre-war era that produced Dorthy Parker, Robert Benchley, Alexander Woolcott, George Kaufman, Edna Furber and others, all of whom inhabited the pages of the New Yorker.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty isn’t really a book … it’s a story that can be found in the A Thurber Carnival of which I have a copy once owned by my Mom who got me reading things like that when I was very young. Walter Mitty was a man who day dreamed himself into living great situations. He was played by Danny Kaye in the Movie and in that there is the marvelous scene where Mitty, looking into his furnace, becomes one of the “few”, a spitfire pilot in the Battle of Britain.

Well, evidently we have a Walter Mitty in our presence in the form of our own Gordon Wilson and, after this column, which so clearly poaches on Vaughn’s research and good nature, perhaps he will evermore be known as  “Walter”.

I will quote from the master’s column of last Saturday. In describing “Walter” Wilson’s book he says “a pivotal passage says Wilson was deeply inspired by the now ‘immortal’ ‘I have a dream speech’ of Martin Luther King. The book describes how the author joined the multitudes one steamy August afternoon to hear that remarkable black leader articulate a vision of equality among all people of all colors. King moved tens of thousands of souls that day – including Gordon Wilson’s.”

There is, it seems, a problem with all this, At the time, August 28, 1963, Gordon was a broth of a school boy in short pants living in Kenya, two years away from coming to North America. Now I suppose we shouldn’t be to hard on the lad – at least he hasn’t conjured up a valiant World War II record as Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan did. And perhaps he was sitting round the old campfire, fighting off lions and other fierce creatures of the night and was truly transported to that steamy night in Washington DC.

But there are, it seems, other awkward moments in the book. We’ll join Vaughn in giving “Walter” the benefit of the doubt when he says he also attended the famous Woodstock rock festival but the book contains some very awkward passages about dramatically reducing the size of the public service. No doubt this is a praiseworthy objective except one wonders what John Shields and others from the Government Employees Union who support Mr Wilson for leader will now say.

This sort of thing can be mildly embarrassing such as Pat McGeer’s book in the sixties called Politics in Paradise where he trashes the Social Credit Party he later joined. But Pat, with his keen wit and thick skin never let that bother him as he put in ten years as a top notch minister under Bill Bennett. But “Walter” Wilson’s book is more serious – he proposes to be premier based upon the catechism therein contained. This is, evidently, still the textbook of his beliefs because not three weeks ago he told this audience just that. “I’m an open book”, I think was his play on words, as he urged us to read his book and make our judgments on what his policies as leader would be.

Is this a big deal?

I think so. We laugh, but the fact is that these sorts of statements are not merely embellishments of stories which have some truth to them. This is the use of a self serving falsehood to gain power. It makes Mr Wilson, for all his talents, like the clock that strikes 13 – hard to rely upon in any future statements he makes.

“Walter” Wilson may, when others in the New Democratic Party make Vaughn Palmers noteworthy sacrifice of actually reading his book, find his path to power strewn not with roses, but skunk cabbage.