Portraits from a Life - Softcover

Grafftey, Heward

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1550650777 ISBN 13: 9781550650778

Publisher: Véhicule Press, 1996

Synopsis

Talks about the people and places that have influenced the author's life. This work reveals the world of the English Montreal of his childhood in the 1930s and 1940s. It presents his encounters with Wilder Penfield, Conrad Black, Pierre-Elliott Trudeau, Ralph Nader, and his friendship with the novelist, Hugh MacLennan.

About this title

About the Author:

Heward Grafftey was a federal member of Parliament for eighteen years, first elected in 1958 when he was twenty-nine years old. At one time he was the only Progressive Conservative member in the Commons from Quebec. He was named Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance in 1962 and Minister of Science in 1979. In 1965, in opposition, he sponsored an all-party brief on motor vehicle highway deaths and injuries. He presently heads the non-profit Safety Sense Institute of Canada.Heward Grafftey is the author of The Senseless Sacrifice: A Black Paper on Medicine (M&S), Why Canadians Get the Politicians and Governments They Don't Want (Stoddart), and Portraits from a Life (Véhicule). He has also written five family reference books on safety. In 1982 he was made a Queen's Counsel.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Diefenbaker's famous feud with Kennedy is now well recorded. Things went from bad to worse when Kennedy dropped a note on the floor while conferring with Diefenbaker in his office. The note addressed to a presidential aide read: "How do you deal with this SOB?" Unfortunately, after the President departed, Diefenbaker picked up the note and read it. The stage was set for "everlasting enmity" between the Prime Minister and the President. Later on, Diefenbaker would say to me, while imitating Kennedy's New England accent, "I have nothing to learn from this young pup. He won't push me around." Diefenbaker's attitude, for me, was incomprehensible. That the relationship between Canada and the United States could so suffer because of such personal incompatibility seemed unbelievable.

About this edition

• Publisher: Véhicule Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 1550650777
• ISBN 13: 9781550650778
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224