Camp, Dalton

ENCAENIA, MAY, 1994
DALTON K. CAMP
to be Doctor of Letters

Dalton Camp is one of the sharpest political minds ever to come out of this province. That does not mean that people agree on how to describe him. Political guru or political hatchet-man, philosopher of the political process or manipulative back-room boy, party builder or giant killer? A balanced appraisal of his long and fascinating career in politics has yet to be written, although he has already outlived most of his critics, now replaced by loyal readers of his occasional newspaper column and by listeners of Morningside's political panel. He is one of Canada's wise men.

It is, in fact, easy to sing his praises. He was, and is, one of us, born and educated in New Brunswick. He has always retained a residence in the province, and now lives here full-time in what we can only euphemistically call retirement. He attended the University of New Brunswick when it was filled with mature and serious-minded young veterans of the Second World War, and Dalton Camp wrote mature and serious political and social analysis as the editor of The Brunswickan. It was good enough, at least, to convince Premier John B. McNair that he should be invited to join the Liberal Party. Despite a warning from University President, Milton Gregg, that "Politics can be a terrible waste of time," Camp succumbed to politics. He became a spokesman for the Young Liberals of Canada, a youthful booster of John McNair, and a delegate to the Liberal Leadership Convention of 1948. The Liberals chose St. Laurent at that convention; Camp voted for "Chubby" Power, the fringe candidate who promised to reform Parliament, the electoral process, and importantly, the Liberal Party itself. For young Camp, the convention was like the road to Damascus: within a year, he had cut his ties forever with a party that he believed had no interest in reforming itself and had cast his lot with the disorganized Opposition.

Throughout his long association with the Conservative Party, Camp has been a Red Tory, a reformer and a democrat, living proof, for those who need it, that the name "Progressive Conservative" is not an oxymoron. After joining in the wilderness years of the late forties, he made his first mark in the 1952 New Brunswick election when Hugh John Flemming's successful slogan was "Let's Clean House." Camp wrote brilliant advertising copy, including a scathing column signed "L. C. House" which completely disarmed the McNair Liberals. Afterward, as a young Toronto-based advertising man, he rose nationally with the populist John Diefenbaker, who in the early years, seemed to Dalton Camp like a breath of prairie air. By the end of the fifties, Diefenbaker was prime minister, Flemming was still premier, and Dalton Camp had gained recognition as one of the brightest political strategists in the country. In 1963, he was national chairman of the party's campaign committee. In 1964, he was elected party president. By 1966, however, he was beginning to see in the Conservatives what he had long before observed in the Liberals, and the prairie wind, once fresh and promising, now promised only drought. It was time for a change. Camp versus Diefenbaker was one of the great showdowns in Canadian politics. But for Dalton Camp, it was as much a question of party renewal as his hopeful vote for Chubby Power had been in 1948.

Anyone who has read Camp knows that what has always fascinated him is power: the search for it, the use of it, and the abuse of it. He has observed that the Canadian political process seldom deals with issues of global consequence; rather, it is about individual human personalities and how they deal with the challenges and opportunities as well as the temptations of power. Some, in Camp's view, have measured up, and others not. What is remarkable about his analysis, however, is that his praise has never been reserved for the leaders or members of one party. He has the ability to deal with people with whom he is politically and philosophically opposed, and to do so with gentleness, humanity, and a genuine sense of kinship When, at the end of a radio interview last week, Elizabeth Weir told him that it was always a pleasure, she spoke for the hundreds of politicos whom he has interviewed, and the thousands of us who have listened to him.

Dalton Camp is a humanist. He has sought to understand the human condition in politics, and what he has found he has described with a rare transparency and good humour. He is today one of Canada's leading political thinkers, recognized for his inimitable wit and insight, but more profoundly for his wisdom. What his political commentary reveals is an immense sympathy for the practitioners of politics, human beings struggling with themselves and with the awesome reality of power. In Dalton Camp's eyes, it is a matter of character. And as he himself has put it: "To experience the politics of Canada is not only to discover one's country, but equally to discover one's self." How wonderful to know that the capacity to see politics in this way also grows in New Brunswick.

From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 3