Jack Horner, Globe & Mail obit
marilyn...@aol.com
it out with his opponents. In the end, he shot down his own career by
going over to his arch-enemies, the Liberals.
By TOM HAWTHORN
Special to The Globe and Mail
Monday, November 22, 2004 \
VICTORIA -- Jack Horner's emotions were as open as the Alberta prairie
on which he raised his cattle. The rancher from Pollockville was a
pugnacious presence in the House of Commons for more than two decades.
Fellow members were wary of his burly physique as well as his wicked
tongue.
Cactus Jack, as he was called, revelled in his reputation as a bluff,
outspoken maverick who freely spoke his mind.
"I wasn't a Mr. Nicey who apple-polished to win favours," he wrote in
his 1980 autobiography, suitably titled My Own Brand. "I was tough,
hard-nosed, and didn't take no for an answer."
He got as good as he gave, however, as others called him a jackass, a
lightweight, and a partisan, hot-tempered redneck.
Mr. Horner arrived in Ottawa as part of John Diefenbaker's Progressive
Conservative sweep of 1958. He remained loyal to the chief as one of
the legendary "Diefenbaker cowboys" through the party's internecine
warfare of the 1960s.
After his patron was overthrown, Mr. Horner became a burr under the
saddle of Conservative leadership. He described Robert Stanfield as "a
very, very sad choice." As for Joe Clark, whom he had once dismissed
with the rancher's insult of calling him a sheep herder, he said: "I
didn't like him. More important, I didn't respect him."
His own ill-fated challenge for the party leadership in 1976 was best
captured by a tussle he had on the convention floor with a television
reporter.
Mr. Horner was branded a traitor and a Judas by fellow Conservatives
when he did the unthinkable by joining the Liberals in exchange for a
seat in Pierre Trudeau's cabinet. Still in the House at the time, Mr.
Diefenbaker noted slyly that "the sheriff has joined the rustlers."
In the end, Mr. Horner would be punished by the voters of the Alberta
constituency of Crowfoot for his apostasy.
So robust was his image as a cattleman beholden to no one, Mr. Horner's
history as a Senator's son and a scion of a political dynasty was often
forgotten.
John Henry Horner was born at Blaine Lake, Sask., on July 20, 1927. He
was the fifth child in a family that would grow to include six boys and
three girls. He came from a clan which traced its roots to the great
events of Canadian history. His mother's uncle had been a prisoner of
Louis Riel's provisional government, while his own uncle had been
killed in action at Vimy Ridge.
His schoolteacher mother, the former May Victoria Macarthur, was a
banker's daughter from Prince Albert. His father, Ralph Horner, was a
twice-failed provincial Conservative candidate in Saskatchewan. Prime
Minister R.B. Bennett named him a director of the Canadian National
Railways in 1931. Two years later, Mr. Horner was appointed to the
Senate.
As a boy during the Depression, Jack Horner remembered local farmers of
Russian descent visiting the family home to beg his father to stop bank
foreclosures. He realized later they thought a Conservative Senator
held sway over the actions of Eastern banks.
At age 18, Jack Horner moved to Alberta to manage a ranch bought by his
father outside Calgary. The profit from selling that property in 1947
was used to buy 3,000 acres near Pollockville in east-central Alberta.
The Horners leased another 12,000 acres in an area depopulated during
the Dirty Thirties.
"The whole countryside was so desolate, so far away from anything," he
wrote in My Own Brand. "It was such a dispiriting experience: The dusty
roads; the land as dry as could be; the crops, just terrible."
He gave himself 10 years to make something of the ranch. After marrying
Leola Funnell, a school teacher from Sunnynook, on April 11, 1950, Mr.
Horner established roots on land which would be his home for the rest
of his life. The ranch was located in the Acadia constituency, a Social
Credit bastion held since 1935 by Victor Quelch, a farmer who was
awarded the Military Cross for bravery in the First World War. Mr.
Quelch won his sixth consecutive election in 1957, but decided to
retire when the general election was called.
The Conservative round-up counted 208 members of Parliament in the
Diefenbaker sweep of 1958.
Among the Tory greenhorns were Mr. Horner; his older brother Hugh, a
doctor from Barrhead elected in Jasper-Edson; and, cousin Albert, who
represented the Saskatchewan riding of The Battlefords.
His father's presence in the Red Chamber meant four Horners strode the
halls of Parliament.
He presented himself as a friend of farmers, a foe of railways, an
advocate of capital punishment, a critic of generous unemployment
payments, an opponent of the right to strike in essential services, and
at all times a staunch free enterpriser. He railed against any changes
to the Crow's Nest Pass rate that might hurt farmers. He was alert to
any threat of socialism, whether from the Co-operative Commonwealth
Federation, Opposition Liberals, or the Red Tories in his own party.
Mr. Horner handled himself in debates like the rambunctious defenceman
he had been for the Hanna Hornets hockey team back home in Alberta. He
so incensed Frank Howard that the CCF MP called him a "dirty liar" in
the House.
Reporters quickly discovered the rancher was good for a quote on a slow
news day. He accused the CBC of wasting taxpayer dollars by importing
crackpots for Front Page Challenge. He also described press gallery
reporters as vultures who "flock in and feast on the bones" of
politicians.
The attempts within the Conservative party to depose Mr. Diefenbaker
infuriated Mr. Horner, whose aggressive behaviour at a national party
convention in 1966 has become legend. The rancher threw a punch at Roy
McMurtry, according to Geoffrey Steven's 2003 biography of Dalton Camp,
an instigator of the dump-Diefenbaker movement.
At the same meeting, a young Brian Mulroney was accosted in a hotel
hallway by Mr. Horner, who was "livid with rage and teetering on the
edge of violence," according to a 1991 Mulroney biography by the
journalist John Sawatsky.
Mr. Horner never forgave those he blamed for usurping his political
hero. Mr. Stanfield won the party leadership in 1967 at a convention
during which Mr. Horner voted twice for Mr. Diefenbaker, once for
George Hees and twice for Duff Roblin. Afterwards, Mr. Horner engaged
in a campaign that undercut his leader's credibility. Mr. Horner forced
a recorded vote on the Official Languages Act, as he and Mr.
Diefenbaker joined 15 other Tories in voting against bilingualism and
embarrassing the Conservative leadership.
In 1976, he entered the fractious contest to replace Mr. Stanfield. He
was unsparing in criticism of his 10 rivals but finished fourth in both
the first and second ballots. It was a tremendous disappointment.
During heated negotiations with his supporters over strategy, Mr.
Horner grabbed at an eavesdropping microphone, knocking over a
reporter. In the end, Mr. Horner gave his support to Claude Wagner of
Quebec. After Joe Clark narrowly defeated Mr. Wagner, Mr. Horner
refused to shake hands with his Alberta rival. The rancher never made
peace with a leader he considered an effete city slicker.
John Crosbie joined a disfunctional Conservative caucus after winning a
Newfoundland byelection in October, 1976, describing Mr. Horner in his
memoirs as a "big buck from Alberta."
"Everybody in the caucus was scared to death of him and what he might
or might not do," Mr. Crosbie wrote.
When Mr. Clark failed to intervene on his side in a constituency
squabble, Mr. Horner engaged in a public flirtation with his long-time
enemies.
At 24 Sussex Dr., Mr. Horner met Mr. Trudeau over drinks -- he taking
scotch and water, the prime minister pernod. They settled on possible
portfolios and soon the Alberta rancher bolted from the party of his
birthright to the hated Liberals.
His timing was as poor as his reward was rich. Mr. Horner became
industry, trade and commerce minister, handling all Liberal patronage
as the sole Alberta representative in Cabinet, even as his home
province had come to despise his bedfellows. His infamously sharp
tongue did not always serve his needs in his new role. At a press
conference in Peking, Mr. Horner mangled figures on the load capacity
of a mining vehicle, a circumstance which one clever headline writer
described as: Horner ton-tied on truck.
In the 1979 general election, Mr. Horner was trounced by former
Conservative caucus mate Arnold Malone, who took 25,202 votes to Mr.
Horner's 5,947.
"Jack Horner is not worried about the future," Mr. Horner later told a
reporter. "He is a great individual and can do almost anything."
Anything did not include winning election in Alberta as a Liberal in
1980, as Mr. Malone repeated the drubbing in that year's general
election. A few months after his second defeat, Mr. Trudeau found a job
for his convert. "To the surprise of no one, Mr. Horner has got his
appointment," the Globe and Mail noted in an editorial. "He is to be a
director of the Crown-owned Canadian National Railways, which also runs
in both directions."
Mr. Horner later became chairman of the railway, before spending three
years as administrator of the Prairie Grain Agency. He returned to his
ranch for good in 1988.
John Henry (Jack) Horner was born in Blaine Lake, Sask., on July 20,
1927. He died at age 77 in Calgary on Nov. 18, 2004. He was 77. He
leaves his wife, Leola; sons Brent and Craig ; a sister, Kathleen, and
brothers Norval, Byron, Bennett and Bill. He was predeceased by sisters
Jean and Ruth, and brother Hugh, as well as by a son, Blaine, who was
killed in a hunting accident.