Staff at Watershed Sentinel Books had a chance to work with Rafe Mair on his last great rant.
The former politician/radio personality — who had been assisting with editing his book, Politically Incorrect: How Canada Lost Its Way and the Simple Path Home — died at age 85 on Thanksgiving Day. The book is due out Nov. 2.
“It was actually just fun, it wasn’t work at all,” said Delores Broten, editor at the Comox-based Watershed Sentinel Books. “He was a marvellous man, and had a great sense of humour. Quite a character, too. When we were editing, we’d look at things and say, ‘Well, this isn’t exactly the world’s most proper English, but perhaps we should let it go as a ‘Rafeism’.”
In about 20 pages, Mair (who had served as minister responsible for constitutional affairs) goes through the history of constitutions and why they matter. He then discusses his roles in the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords, and works his way into ‘the Mair solution’ for fixing parliament.
“What he advocates is that MPs have a secret vote so that they’re not totally at the mercy of the prime minister, which they are now,” Broten said.
In the foreword to Politically Incorrect, Mark Hume states: “Mair argues that by failing to come to grips with the underlying structural issues that still exist in Canada, the future of the nation is at stake…. He is an older lion now than when he was a broadcasting giant, but the roar hasn’t left him.”
After years of practising law, Mair ventured into politics in 1975.
He was a Kamloops MLA as a member of the B.C. Social Credit Party.
Mair’s popular radio show, which ran for nearly two decades on CKNW in Vancouver, provided him a platform to debate politics, environmental issues and other topics.
In Broten’s opinion, he was instrumental in stopping the Kemano II completion in northern B.C. in the 1990s.
“People were fighting that, but nobody in Vancouver was paying any attention because it’s way up north,” she said. “Finally Rafe picked up on it, and he started beating the drums. It was when Rafe brought the issue to the Lower Mainland that it really got traction.”
Broten notes that Mair paid a visit to Courtenay when the contentious Raven coal mine proposal was still a going concern.
“I so much wanted him to hold this new book in his hands, because he was passionate about it, as he was passionate about so much,” she said.