Graham a model of grace, modesty

Bill Graham was one of few politicians in the post-Sept. 11 world who did not partake the anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bigotry that spread like wild

Bill Graham was as Canadian as they make them — modest, decent, pleasant, kind, humane, straightforward, uncomplicated, generous, giving, loving.

The former Liberal cabinet minister — who died Sunday — carried those attributes into politics, and maintained them even as Canadian politics got nasty, with the importation of American tactics of treating opponents as enemies to be destroyed, not adversaries to debate.

A son of privilege – elite education; bilingual before bilingualism became federal policy; world traveller; an expert in international law well before globalization; etc. — Graham could easily have turned into a prima donna. But not he. He wasn’t the show-off type.

As a columnist, I was highly critical of his policies as defence minister, especially the Canadian mission in Kandahar, and also of Ottawa joining the Americans and Afghans in blaming Pakistan for our own failures in Afghanistan. My argument was that as guilty as Pakistan was on various counts, it had more historic, strategic, political, tribal and cultural reasons to be involved with its neighbour than the U.S. or Canada ever did — initially to go after Osama bin Laden but ending up waging full-bore war on a destitute people who had nothing to do with Sept. 11.

Yet Graham remained gracious whenever we talked. I had a suspicion that his heart was not in that Afghan mission — he was duty-bound to support Prime Minister Paul Martin, who had caved into American pressure to go to Kandahar in 2005. But there was no point in probing that with Graham, either on or off the record — he could’ve given only one answer at the time.

Sure enough, Graham said this in his 2016 memoir, “The Call of the World”:

“More knowledge of Afghanistan’s porous borders and a better understanding of its tribal conflicts would have been useful when I became defence minister. They would have given me the context to appreciate what President (Pervez) Musharraf meant when he spoke of Pakistan’s inability to control the Northwest Frontier. And I might have raised more concerns when assessing Canada’s commitment to send our soldiers into an environment that was unlike anything they had encountered before.”

Typical Graham — taking responsibility and not blaming others.

Less well-known is that Graham carried no animosity toward any people that I know of. He was one of few politicians in the post-Sept. 11 world who did not partake the anti-Muslim and anti-Arab bigotry that spread like wildfire — or was fanned into one.

Outside of politics, Graham was highly supportive of freedom of speech. I happened to be president of PEN Canada, 2003-05, when Canada was elected chair of PEN International’s Exile Network, which helped free jailed or otherwise persecuted writers from around the world and helped settle them in Europe and North America. To that end, we organized a North American conference in Ottawa with Graham and representatives of potential partners from across Canada. Canada ended up leading the world by finding placements for 27 such writers in universities, colleges, and other institutions. Canada was held up as a model and emulated across Europe, thanks, in part, to Graham.

In retirement, as chancellor of Trinity College, his alma mater at the U of T, Graham had taken to inviting interesting speakers and holding a conversation with the guest on stage. One such discussion was with his lifelong friend, John Ralston Saul, the philosopher (whose wife Adrienne Clarkson had been a college mate of Graham at Trinity).

Two of Canada’s best public intellectuals held the most flawless and engrossing of conversations I had ever heard or have since. So engrossed was the audience there was not a murmur or a cough for the hour or so that it lasted. Later I asked Bill if he had made sure that it was recorded. “Nah,” he said, as though that’d have meant giving himself too much importance.