Heaven just got a hell of a hockey player

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/05/2018 (3006 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I never met Gord Brown, but I’m pretty sure I would have liked him.

Brown was the longtime Conservative MP for the eastern Ontario riding of Leeds-Grenville-Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes.

At least he was until Wednesday when he died of an apparent heart attack in his Parliament Hill office.

Brown was only 57 years old, which means he was four years younger than me.

He was a hockey fanatic and served as captain of the Conservative party hockey team, which means he was definitely in better shape than me.

Party sources were quoted as saying he had played hockey early Wednesday before coming to work in his Parliament Hill office, which is where he was found.

What hit me was that, by all accounts, he brought a personal touch to politics, frequently showing other MPs, regardless of party affiliation, videos of one of his two sons playing hockey.

In the wake of his sudden death, politicians of every stripe fought back tears and stood in the House of Commons to share stories of how this man had made their personal and professional lives better.

The central point of their stories was that Gord Brown wasn’t just a really good politician; he was a really good man, a doting father, a loving husband, a “happy warrior.”

As I sat in an armchair on Wednesday, watching my daughter playing with our three dogs and reading about Brown’s death on my smartphone, two thoughts popped into my brain.

The first thought was that politicians, despite some evidence to the contrary, are also human beings.

People, and I will include journalists in that category, tend to forget about politicians’ basic humanity, because we expect them to have broad shoulders and take the pointed jabs we smart-mouthed columnists dish out.

In polls, modern politicians tend to rank near the bottom of most-trusted professions, narrowly edging journalists, telemarketers and the ShamWow guy on TV infomercials.

It was Gord Brown’s humanity, not his political leanings, that grabbed my heart on Wednesday and gave it a good squeeze. It was his humanity that shone through in the emotional tributes that flowed from every party.

“He was just a good man,” veteran Tory MP Tony Clement said, his eyes brimming with tears. “He was always there for all of us. I’m just at a loss for words. I’ll miss him every minute of every day.”

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer lauded the “happy warrior” who always had words of comfort and support for his colleagues.

“He made it a priority to get to know every member of our team, not just as a colleague, but as a person, too… because he recognized the challenges that this life can place on members; it can be very, very difficult. And he wanted to make sure our caucus supported each other, not just on a professional level, but on a human level, too,” Scheer said.

On Brown’s desk in the House of Commons a photo of him was placed alongside a blue hockey jersey and a bouquet of flowers.

Hockey clearly was on the mind of Liberal MP Adam Vaughan, who tweeted: “He never let partisanship get in the way of friendship. Even on the ice! RIP.”

Which brings us to the second notion that struck me after hearing that Brown had died in his office — the scary idea that his job had killed him.

I wasn’t the only one pondering the serious health risks of being a politician, a life filled with the unique stress of living and working in a fish bowl, a career where almost every person you meet thinks they know your job better than you do.

Clement, a close friend of Brown’s for more than 35 years, said this: “I’m not trying to be morbid, but it’s a death trap for people sometimes. It takes years off your life, and I know we do it willingly, but sometimes the price is very high.”

Clement wasn’t looking for sympathy over how hard it is being a politician; he was just stating a fact.

Which is when it occurred to me that no job — even one where you save lives, even one where you protect democracy, even one where you make the world a better place — is worth the cost of your life.

When he collapsed in his office on the Hill, Brown brought to 322 the number of MPs who have died in office since 1868. His death came almost two years after Jim Hillyer, another Tory MP, died of a heart attack in his Parliament Hill office.

It’s important that Brown was a politician and that he devoted much of his life to public service, as an MP, as a town councillor in Gananoque, Ont., and as president of the 1000 Islands-Gananoque Chamber of Commerce.

But it’s even more important that he was, in the words of NDP MP Nathan Cullen, an “incredibly decent man.”

Like I said, I never met Gord Brown, but I’ll remember him as a father, a husband, a decent Canadian guy who excelled at being human. And if there’s a hockey team in heaven, they’ve just added one hell of a player.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca