Murdoch keeps spirits up, looks back over his years in politics – Owen Sound Sun Times

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During his more than 30 years in local and provincial politics, “Bognor” Bill Murdoch was never short of things to say.

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So it was Wednesday, when Murdoch held court from his bed in Chapman House, sounding strong and philosophical, though looking physically diminished. He’s been in hospice one week.

“Might have come to the end of the road, hey? Who knows,” he told a visitor.

“With you, who knows,” the visitor quipped.

“Well, I really don’t know. But we’re prepared for it.”

He talked about his years as Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound’s maverick MPP; a Progressive Conservative whose put his constituents before his party, all while displaying a keen ability to find the spotlight.

Murdoch’s Montreal Canadiens jerseys, signed by Habs greats, and other hockey memorabilia occupy the wall opposite his bed. He has a collection of 800 jerseys.

Hospice staff came and went. One smiled and asked him how much lunch he’d eaten. Family and friends have been visiting to wish him well.

He’s had a two-year fight with bouts of cancer and when he entered a coma in Owen Sound hospital, he was moved to the hospice. But Murdoch surprised everyone by waking up, hungry for a meal and hopeful.

It’s been 11 years since the 77-year-old left provincial politics. But the four-term MPP was never far. He’s been was on the air hosting the Open Line radio show on CFOS 560 AM. On Friday, people will be invited to call in with memories of him and he plans to listen in.

He helped found the Bruce Grey Music Hall of Fame, which fire destroyed this past January, along with the legion in Hepworth. Murdoch mentioned a concert fundraiser is coming up for it.

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And Murdoch added his voice in 2017 to the ultimately successful pleas of fellow past Grey County wardens to keep Grey Gables a Grey County long-term care facility.

Murdoch lost his first run at the riding in 1987 to Liberal Ron Lipsett. But he won in 1990, beating Lipsett who placed third behind New Democrat Peggy Hutchinson. Murdoch handily won the following three provincial elections and chose not to run in 2011.

He was a passionate fighter who chose an independent path at Queen’s Park, where he felt power was too centralized and too many decisions were made for the elected members like him.

The premier picks the ministers, their associates and chairs of committees, which Murdoch has said caucus should do. And he’s suggested people should elect candidates who vow to do what the voters want, not what the premier tells them to.

“There’s not the democracy that we think we have in Canada. We elect dictators. There’s no doubt about it,” he said when he announced his retirement.

Wednesday he said it’s getting worse. Nothing personal, but the premier’s appointment of Rick Byers as the party’s nominee in this riding offended Murdoch’s guiding principle that locals should decide, he said. Byers won the election in June.

Murdoch also resented the expectations of party allegiance and said MPPs should only have to toe the party line on financial votes. He never was given a cabinet post and it’s easy to imagine why. But he was told why by then-premier Mike Harris.

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“Mike sat down with me, he said Bill, I can’t put you in cabinet. I’d like to but you won’t do what you’re told,” Murdoch recounted Wednesday. “So I said, ‘I know. I’ll do what I think’s right for my riding.’”

Murdoch has admitted he probably attended the legislature the least of any MPP then because he said he saw no point in being there when he could be attending constituency events and serving local needs.

Sometimes his positions were controversial.

He was a ceaseless opponent of the Niagara Escarpment Commission because it overrode local say. It’s become “less intrusive,” perhaps because of the years of pushback, he said. Groups should buy land to protect it, and he joined and supports one which is doing this.

His popular opposition to industrial wind farms was based again on government overriding local decision-making.

An though he fought for an inquiry in to the Walkerton water disaster, opposition parties called for his resignation in 2003 when he suggested his Tory government bore no responsibility for the disaster and refused to apologize.

The Bognor beef farmer was an outspoken critic of his own government. And he despised the “Toronto mentality” in which unelected “bureaucrats” decided what’s best for rural ridings like his.

Some called it grandstanding and said he’d have achieved more for the riding by going along with his party. But that wouldn’t have been Murdoch’s way.

Murdoch says he understood media play an important part in the game of politics and he took advantage, whether he liked the media or not.

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“You played the game the way you had to play it. I think. And I wasn’t always right either. I’d be the first to admit that.”

He was temporarily kicked out of caucus in 2008 after he opposed then-PC Leader John Tory’s support for funding private religious schools, suggesting Tory should find a new job. Yet he said he liked Tory.

In 2003, he threatened to embarrass Tim Hudak, then the consumer and business services minister, by calling for his resignation in the legislature the next day if government plans to close land registry offices in the morning happened — and they didn’t.

During his time in Mike Harris’ government, he stood up and demanded the resignation of a government minister, Bob Runciman, who tried to close Owen Sound Jail. Ultimately it was closed.

The inquiry into the Walkerton water tragedy was achieved after a standoff with the premier. At first Harris wanted a committee to study it, Murdoch has said. When the opposition demanded an inquiry, Murdoch told the Tories he would vote with the Liberals and NDP, which would look bad for the government.

Shortly before the vote on the Liberal motion, which was defeated, Murdoch was again urged to side with his party and was told Harris would call an inquiry the next morning if he did. Both men kept their ends of the agreement.

“I’m not bragging. But that’s why Mike broke. Because he couldn’t have a member from the area vote against him,” Murdoch said Wednesday.

Murdoch said he got what he wanted from Harris concerning Walkerton, including the Walkerton Clean Water Training Centre, which opened under the Liberal government. But he was irked that he wasn’t invited to help open it.

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In fairness, Murdoch didn’t only target his party members.

He called Dalton McGuinty, when he was Ontario’s Liberal premier, a liar, in the legislature, for not consulting widely as promised about the new harmonized sales tax. Murdoch was tossed out then, too, but wouldn’t leave for two days.

And many times he directed his wrath at The Sun Times, even calling for a boycott of the paper after a Sun Times editorial endorsed another candidate.

Before provincial politics, Murdoch served 12 years on the former Sydenham Township council. By the mid- ’80s, concerns had grown about the many rural lot severances granted by Grey County’s planning approvals committee, which Murdoch chaired.

It ultimately led to the province assuming temporary planning authority in the county in 1991 and criticizing Grey’s planning procedures. At the time, Murdoch blamed a “Toronto mentality” for the takeover and “socialism to the very limit.”

His private involvement as a development partner in Sydenham Mills, a 25-lot luxury subdivision proposed for a hardwood bush lot in the township, which the Ontario Municipal Board ultimately rejected in 1990, also stirred up concerns.

It pitted provincial ministries and environmentalists against Murdoch, who was reeve of Sydenham at the time, and his development partners.

Though not especially religious, Murdoch remains open to a miracle, he said. He doesn’t want to die but acknowledges he doesn’t have much say about it. He feels badly for his family but they’ll move on, and so will the world, he said.

“The disease, whatever it is, is in my lung. They can’t operate. And we’ve quit any medication.” They’re keeping him comfortable, he said. “I know they feed me well.”

“I think he’s remarkable,” said his wife Sue. “And all the support we’ve seen, really over the last two years that he’s been ill, is amazing. And since we came here, just incredible.”

“But that’s a tribute to him, because he has a way with people,” she said, her voice catching at the thought.