Editorial: I Didn't Know Jack

Jeff Green | Aug 25, 2011

Jack Layton: A Tribute

This Guy Knew Jack

I didn’t know Jack By Jeff Green

Anyone who has gone through a cancer death in their own family - and that is almost everyone it seems - took a deep breath when Jack Layton appeared in public a few weeks ago to announce he was taking a leave of absence from his duties as NDP leader.

Although no one wanted to say it, even in the media, there was widespread fear that he was dying of cancer, and indeed it turned out that was the case.

Somehow the death of Jack Layton, who is a stranger to most of us, is being taken like the death of a relative, not a close relative, but like the death of a well-loved uncle or 2nd cousin.

All of the disdain that many people have felt for Jack Layton over the years, the accusation that he looked and sounded like a used car salesman, that he was full of talk and calculation, that he was always in your face, always talking, is long gone, and it seems to me it disappeared at the beginning of this spring's federal election campaign.

We all know that Layton was the biggest winner in the campaign.

Sure, Stephen Harper won his majority, and may go on to transform Canada over the next four or eight years, but Harper's victory was the result of years and years of effort, which resulted in grudging acceptance by the population.

Particularly in Quebec, but across the rest of the country as well, people decided they liked Jack; they could trust Jack.

We all knew about Jack Layton's prostate cancer, and we knew that he had recently undergone a hip operation. Although we did not know what his prognosis really was, though I expect he and those closest to him likely did at least know he was seriously ill, there was something in this campaign, either in his demeanour or in our collective perception of him, that was different this time around

During the two leaders’ debates last spring, it seemed, to me at least, that Jack Layton had a different tone than the others, and certainly a different persona than what he projected during previous campaigns.

He was a bit less jumpy, a bit less nervous. While the others were fighting for their political lives, he came across as someone who was more relaxed, someone who had taken a step back. Even the quips he delivered at the expense of the other candidates came off with a bit less bite.

Jack Layton, the bull dog, had developed a sardonic wit.

I forget the line, but at one point in the French language debate he delivered a pretty good dig at either Stephen Harper or Michael Ignatieff. It was a good line, it might even have been a line that he had prepared in advance, on the chance he could get it in, and it stopped the debate for a second. Layton smiled, but it was not the smile of someone who thought he had delivered a knock out punch and was going to win the debate and sway masses of voters. It was the smile of someone who had delivered a good line well. He was just enjoying the moment. While Michael Ignatieff was fighting desperately for his political life and losing, and Stephen Harper was simply showing nerves of steel and sticking to his well-rehearsed message, Jack Layton was just enjoying the moment.

Watching that debate, I remember thinking, maybe for the first time since he became leader of he NDP, that I liked Jack Layton. He had finally been humanized for me.

I might be wrong but I think part of what happened during this last election was that people across the country had a similar kind of reaction, and this feeling was tied in, at least partially, to the fact that Layton had cancer and had just had hip surgery. Quebec commentators have likened the “Layton effect” in Quebec to the electrifying referendum campaign led by Lucien Bouchard in 1990 just months after Bouchard lost his leg to necrotizing fasciitis.

This week “Smiling Jack”, or “Le Bon Jack”, is being remembered as the best loved politician in this country in a generation.

His political friends and foes seem equally moved at his passing. The funny thing is that the man that the Toronto Star is calling “Toronto’s gift to Canada” was not always a popular politician. He lost handily to June Rowlands in the race for mayor of Toronto in 1993 and finished well back twice in federal elections in the same part of Toronto where he served as a Toronto city councilor for over a decade.

When he ran for NDP leader he was greeted with mistrust. He was seen as a stunt politician from Toronto, but managed to win that campaign. He delayed running for a seat after winning the NDP leadership, and in 2004 he barely won his Toronto seat even with the cachet of being a national party leader. If he had lost that election, his federal career might have ended then and there.

While Layton, and the NDP, showed steady improvement between 2003 and 2009, the 2011 campaign began with the party low in the polls and Layton looking like an aging battler fighting his last, losing campaign.

That it all turned around was remarkable, the orange crush, the orange wave, the rally in Montreal, the victory speech, all of it. And that he would be dead less then three months after suddenly becoming the most loved figure in Canadian politics for a generation is nothing less than stunning.

What we have learned this week, from hearing from his friends and political colleagues, was that Jack Layton was the real deal; that he really did have boundless energy and he really did try to help people when he could; that he worked behind the scenes with people who did not want to be seen in public with him to make political change happen.

He was a politician who, underneath all the bravado, was fighting for years and years on some of the great causes of our times: AIDS and homophobia, homelessness, Aboriginal rights and environmental causes.

And for all those years I thought Jack Layton was too cocky, too showy, too aggressive, too much of a salesman and not enough of a statesman.

Maybe it was just the moustache, or maybe I just really didn’t know Jack.

Michael Leibson: This guy knew Jack By Jeff Green

Michael Leibson is a composer and music teacher who lives on the Bennett Road near Maberly.

In the 1990s he was living in the Beaches region of Toronto, near Lake Ontario, and he found out that someone had applied for a permit from the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR), to extract aggregate from the bottom of Lake Ontario right near his home.

The plan was to suck the aggregate into a vacuum tube and load it onto barges day and night. The permit would have been good for 20 years.

Leibson had not been a political activist before, but he started organizing his neighbours to fight against the proposed industry, which would be within sight, and hearing range of their houses.

After doing a bit of research, Michel Leibson found out that the water intake for most of Toronto’s drinking water was less than 500 metres from the location where the extraction was slated to take place. He also found out that a host of potential environmental impacts to the project had not been looked at by the company that was planning to extract the resource, or by the MNR.

The citizens’ group went to an environmental committee of Toronto City Council, and Leibson laid out their concerns. That’s when he met Jack Layton, who was a member of Toronto City Council at the time.

“The next thing I knew, he was giving me political advice, and he would invite me into his home, where there were always people coming and going. The place was like a village. With his wife Olivia, he opened up his house, all his resources, to whoever needed something.”

It took time for Micheal Leibson to get used to Jack Layton’s personality, however.

“His positivity irritated me a little bit at first, but in the end he charmed me. There was something likeable about him. I do think Jack had a very healthy ego and there certainly was showman in him, but he also really enjoyed people.”

As the political campaign that Michael Leibson found himself at the centre of gained steam, and Toronto City Council and Mayor Barbara Hall, and the Public Health Unit all came on side, Leibson realised that Layton, although not calling the shots, was gently pushing in to carry out the campaign in a certain way.

“He didn’t tell me what to do, but I realised that he had a management style. I was not doing his bidding but I was coming to learn from his experience with political struggles. It was really something.”

One anecdote that Michel Leibson recalled from that time bears repeating.

“I had set up a press conference to talk about what was being proposed and what the implications might be if it went ahead. Jack suggested we hold the press conference outside the water treatment plant on the lake. Just before it started he said ‘I’m going to do something a little unorthodox. I hope it’s ok’. So we started the press conference. I had a music stand set up as a podium and I spoke, then I introduced some scientists who talked, and then it was time to introduce the politicians.

It was not a summer day, but Jack came out wearing only a bathing suit. He walked out into the water carrying a glass container and filled it with water. He came back on shore and, still in his bathing suit, he waved the container in the faces of the reporters and the cameras, and said ‘This is what we are talking about, folks - your drinking water’.”

The citizens’ group eventually won the battle and the project was halted, but not before Leibson, again at Layton’s urging, met with a number of Ontario Conservative party politicians to explain the issues involved.

“I really didn’t want to meet with Conservatives; they were the enemy, but Jack said I really should. In the end it was the Conservatives who cancelled the project,”

Michael Leibson also gave Jack Layton guitar lessons for a time. He intends to go to Toronto for Layton’s funeral on Saturday.

“Jack was a guy who thrived on being around people, and he really walked the walk. I would like to honour him as a person. He was just a beautiful guy.”