You could feel the sorrowful news coursing through Greater Victoria on Tuesday afternoon, when the official word moved that John Horgan had died a few hours earlier.
John from Langford. Our guy. The Reynolds grad who was born and raised in Greater Victoria, worked as waiter downtown as a kid, and died here, at Royal Jubilee Hospital.
Years ago, he was yelling at the TV about something the government did when his wife Ellie asked him: “Why don’t you do something about it?”
So he got into politics and became premier of B.C., the first from Vancouver Island since the 1940s.
He was an unfiltered heart-on-his-sleeve man who was wide open about his motivations and ideas. He telegraphed every move he ever made, with little artifice or guile. You could tell what he was feeling nearly every time he walked into a room.
And what he was thinking was mostly common-sense ideas about making B.C. better, and doing the right thing.
Looking back at it from this time of sadness and regret, it was a very unlikely career.
Lots of people get into politics out of agitation or upset, so nothing unusual there. And he was an NDP staffer in the 1990s, so he knew the ropes.
But his move up the ladder was unlikely. When Christy Clark beat Adrian Dix in the 2013 election, his party was gutted.
When Dix quit the leadership, Horgan, then a second-term MLA, was one of a handful of names kicked about as a successor. He’d finished third in an earlier leadership race.
He rejected the idea. “Too old. We need new blood.” But the party was so dispirited that nobody else was interested either. So he took it over reluctantly, by default.
His stint as opposition leader was an exercise in frustration, which he couldn’t help but share with anyone nearby on occasion.
He picked up the nickname “Angry John.” Staffers would accompany him to media scrums bracing themselves for blow-ups.
He once dressed down three reporters in a row for their questions, interpretations or outlooks, then finished with: “I think you’ve got enough to screw me. Go ahead.”
It’s remarkable how quickly that vanished when he took over as premier in 2017.
He was in the minority group of politicians who power changes for the better. He positively blossomed as premier.
Horgan as premier was mostly a friendly, open-hearted regular guy who looked out for everyone as best he could.
One of his first complaints about the new job was regret about not being able to bus to work anymore, because he missed chatting with passengers about everything under the sun.
That final rung on the ladder, from opposition leader to premier, was extraordinary, since it developed after a dead-heat election after which Clark’s government collapsed.
It collapsed because of the NDP agreement that was built partly on the wildly improbable friendship that developed between Horgan and then-Green leader Andrew Weaver.
They had traded barbs on occasion but in the scheming that developed amid the opportunity to defeat the B.C. Liberals, a strategic alliance turned into a genuine friendship.
It held over three uncertain years while he set out to undo 16 years of Liberal policy while relying on Green support for all the key votes.
He once told the legislature: “No one is more surprised than he and I that we get on as well as we do.”
Horgan cleaned up politics immeasurably by ending the unseemly big money era that had lasted for generations.
He regretfully concluded he had no choice but to proceed with the Site C power project, one of those examples where his conflicted emotions were obvious to all. It was surely the most miserable mega-project announcement of all time.
While pursuing his agenda, he also grappled with an extraordinary series of crises. Severe wildfires, epic floods, a burgeoning drug crisis and a global pandemic all landed on his desk. Every season brought some new fresh hell for his government to deal with.
He decided after COVID-19 broke to back away from the cameras mostly and let the experts handle it. Politicians elsewhere spent weeks on end delivering medical updates that were just talking points put in front of them.
Horgan let the experts handle the messaging, to his credit. He ran the government on all other fronts through that time, all the while enduring 35 radiation treatments for cancer.
He snuck a sneak election into the mix in 2020, just to demonstrate he hadn’t lost his political smarts.
It violated the sanctity of the confidence agreement with the Greens and offended provincial law on fixed dates for election. That bothered almost no one. He won it with ease, becoming the first re-elected NDP premier.
His character shone through at one moment during his abbreviated second term. A cascading series of backroom decisions emanating from the Royal BC Museum led to the conclusion that tearing the place down, closing the city’s main tourist attraction for seven years and spending $785 million building a new one was a good idea.
It wasn’t.
Horgan mustered all the enthusiasm he could while announcing it, but the idea crashed and burned within days.
Flops like that can define a leader’s career, but Horgan stepped up two weeks later to take full responsibility and abandon the idea.
“We thought we had it right. Clearly, we did not … I made the wrong call.”
It was a rare example of a leader admitting they blew it. All the consternation and outrage faded away.
His ability to park his ego showed up later in a big way, as well. He quit while he was ahead. It was partly a health issue, as he acknowledged his energy was flagging.
“I had every intention of carrying on,” he said at the time. “I loved the work, but the cancer diagnosis and subsequent surgery and treatment was rigorous.”
Still, it was a graceful exit, which is more than a lot of leaders manage.
After some walks on the beach with his wife, Ellie, they concluded: “Let’s do more of this and less of that.”
Resigning political leadership at the right time is a tough move. He deserves as much credit for taking his leave as he does for taking on the job.
John Horgan’s five years as premier will get better and better as time goes on. It won’t just be the legacy initiatives that he started. It’ll be because of the man he was.
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