My friend, Richard Thomas, Green giant from Muskoka

Commentary from Larry Solway

  In a world of trudging, plodding non-entities we need heroes. We need charismatic people, the kind who enter a room, and brighten it just by being there.
  In America they spent billions in advertising and spin-doctoring and for heaven's sakes clothes-grooming to get American to choose between two of the most uninspiring people ever to stride across the national stage. It was a beauty contest where the winner came in second.
  One of my heroes flitted briefly across the stage last week. He got 13 percent of the vote in an otherwise ho-hum by-election that sent Tory Frank Miller's apparently lacklustre son to Queen's Park to fill the seat vacated by the departure of Ernie Eves. I'm one of those people who believe Ernie was not going to hang around and be blamed for the inevitable spillover of the American recession into Ontario.
 

Thomas single-handedly brought an audience to CKFH, a moribund station owned by Foster Hewitt doing a late night show where he crooned poetry with the best radio voice since Orson Welles

  What gave Richard Thomas, representing the Green Party, such a startling number of votes? Some argue that The Greens have a message to send: that present governments are complicit in the degradation of the environment, and that opposition parties don't inspire. Does it suggest that we of The Left should pay more attention to the environment, not just make political hay over issues like the water in Walkerton or trees in Temagami or garbage in Kirkland Lake?
  It was the combination of Green politics and the charisma of Richard Thomas that got him all those votes. I am an unabashed fan. To know him or to hear him is to be inspired. I always was.
  Most people know Thomas as the bearded grandpa a few years ago in the Schneider TV commercials. Some may recognize his voice on other commercials. He can get all the TV and radio voice work he wants just be offering himself. But he prefers to walk his own walk in the countryside near Huntsville.
  There will be some who remember how he startled and shocked the provincial Liberals a few years appearing out of nowhere and making it through first and second ballot in the battle for leadership. He put a huge scare into the Liberal establishment.
  Some will remember his tilting-at-windmills battle with the Federal government over what the law called an illegal still. He converted his old Volvo to use alcohol. He distilled it from an inedible relative of the turnip which grew in agriculture-poor Muskoka. The Mounties closed him down because the alcohol was illegal and not of drinkable quality. He wasn't drinking it, he was running his car with it. It was classic Man against The Establishment. Richard Thomas fought and lost. And worse, we forgot.
  He was a hero of mine from the old radio days. He single-handedly brought an audience to CKFH, a moribund station owned by Foster Hewitt doing a late night show where he crooned poetry with the best radio voice since Orson Welles. I remember his baroque music morning show on CJRT. I remember him writing a children's show for CBC, because for part of the run I climbed into a fur costume to play the role of Zarathustra, The Bear. I persuaded him to join CHUM FM when it began as a Fine Arts Radio station.
  I remember his half-mad stories about living in a second-hand hearse he tried to drive to South America but had to abandon in the jungles of Nicaragua.
  There are probably a hundred stories about Richard. I wish I knew them all. So was I surprised that he scored big in a by-election that needed three visit by Mike Harris to put the Tories in the win column? Not a bit. But I warn the environmentalists not go look at his showing as a victory for The Greens. It may have been, but only partly. The win is because we still need heroes. Richard Thomas is, was, and will always be - one of mine.

Larry Solway is a veteran writer and media worker who enjoys living in Toronto.

Where has the charisma gone in politics? Is it time for us to find more charismatic leadership regardless of politics? Is the closest we have come to charisma the guy in the wet suit riding a personal watercraft? Tell Straight Goods and see what others are saying in response to Larry's column.

Posted: March 26, 2001

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