DIONNE o@ca.on.manitoulin.howland.little_current.manitoulin_expositor 2003-01-22 published
Sarah Leanora
DIONNE
In loving memory of Sarah Leanora
DIONNE at Manitoulin Health Centre on
Monday,
January 20, 2003 age 72 years. Dear wife of Gerald
DIONNE of Little
Current. Loving mother of Allan and Phillip, both at home. Will be missed by
sisters Lorraine, Sally and Muriel. Predeceased by brother George and
parents Alex and Thelma
MAHUGH.
Please call Island Funeral Home for funeral
and visitation details. 368-2490.
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DIONNE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-08-14 published
O'CONNELL,
The
Honourable
Martin, Ph.D. (Privy Councilor)
Born on August 1, 1916 in Victoria, Martin
O'CONNELL passed away
in Toronto, on Monday, August 11, 2003. He died peacefully with
his family at his side after a fight with Parkinson's disease.
Martin believed in serving the public, giving back to his country
and advancing the cause of those who where not as fortunate.
Throughout his full and varied life the principals of honesty,
fairness, justice and humility, treating others with dignity
and respect, always guided him as he set about distinguishing
himself as a man to be honoured.
He leaves his wife
Helen
Alice
O'CONNELL (born
DIONNE) with whom
he celebrated 58 years of marriage. Their love and dedication
to each other was a model for all who knew them.
He also leaves his daughter Caryn (John
JOHNSTON) and their two
sons Nicholas and Kyle, his son John Martin (Martine
BOUCHARD)
and their two children Jean Christophe and Stéphanie. His children,
their spouses and grandchildren were the pride of his life.
A brother Monsignor Michael
O'CONNELL of Victoria and a sister
Ellen RICHERT (widowed) of Saskatoon survive him. A sister Dr.
Sheila O'CONNELL of Victoria and a brother Sgt. Johnny
O'CONNELL
who was killed in the battle for Caen in June 1944 predecease
him.
Martin O'CONNELL started his career as a public school teacher
in the British Columbia school system then completed a B.A. at
Queen's University. As a veteran of the second world war (Captain,
Royal Canadian Army Service Corp) he completed his education
at the University of Toronto with an M.A. then PhD in political
economy. His PhD dissertation studied the nationalism of Henri
BOURASSA. He learned French so that he could read the documents
and study the Bourassa archives in Ottawa and Montreal. Martin
served on the Senate of the University of Toronto.
He left the academic world for the financial one and joined Harris
and Partners in the late 1950's. In 1965, while on loan to Walter
GORDON then Minister of Finance and as one of the three ''Whiz
Kids'', he helped design policies, which ultimately led to the
Canada Pension Plan, Medicare, and the Municipal Loan Development
Fund.
Throughout the 1960's he served as the President of the Indian
and Eskimo Association. During this time, he wrote many policy
papers to improve aboriginal conditions and thus helped to bring
attention to the difficulty that indigenous peoples where suffering.
In 1965 he ran for Parliament and failed to win a seat in Greenwood,
he tried again in the federal riding of Scarborough East in 1968
and was elected. He was appointed Minister of State and later
Minister of Labour in the Trudeau cabinet. He was co-chairman
of the important hearings that shaped the immigration policies
of this country. Defeated in 1972 he served as the Prime Minister's
principal secretary throughout the minority years reshaping that
office to bring the Party closer to the grass roots of Canadian
society.
He was reelected in the 1974 election. He chaired the policy
committee of two national conventions of the Liberal party and
rejoined the cabinet as Minister of Labour late in that mandate.
Defeated in 1979 he retired from politics and became Chairman
of the Canadian Center For Occupational Health and Safety an
entity he created while Minister of Labour.
In 1993 he was the Co-Founder and first Co-Chairman of The Canadian
Foundation for the Preservation of Chinese Cultural and Historical
Treasures. He served actively in this role and experienced real
pleasure and pride in participating in this extraordinary work.
His many Friends will want to celebrate the life of a man who
gave real meaning to the words service, integrity and honourable.
He is remembered as one who pursued a life that was full and
dedicated to improving the life of all Canadians. May he rest
in peace.
A private family funeral will be held. All Friends are welcome
to a celebration of Martin's life at the Granite Club on Bayview
Avenue, Toronto on Wednesday, August 20, 2003 from 3 p.m. to
5 p.m.
Donations can be made to The Honorable Martin and Helen O'Connell
Charitable Foundation can be sent in trust to his son John Martin
O'CONNELL at 200 Bay Street, Suite 3900, Toronto, Ontario M5J
2J2.
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DIONNE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-09-22 published
Quiet minister a Trudeau stalwart
Former Bay Street whiz kid helped revamp Canada's social safety
net and served as both secretary of state and labour minister
By Ron CSILLAG
Special to The Globe and Mail Monday, September
22, 2003 - Page R7
His children possess no qualms about pronouncing Martin
O'CONNELL
as having been a bit of a policy wonk. "Oh, totally," says his
son John.
"My dad wasn't interested in money -- odd, given his Bay Street
successes. Just policy, and formulating policy."
"He was a classic workaholic," concurs Mr.
O'CONNELL's daughter
Caryn. "He was just driven by his work. It's one of the things
that kept him going."
Rare is the politician remembered for self-effacing skills and
effectiveness rather than bombast. Mr.
O'CONNELL was indeed serious
and conscientious. He worked hard and achieved much. But of all
the cabinet ministers from the Pierre
TRUDEAU era, his name probably
rings the quietist bell for Canadians old enough to recall names
like Don Jamieson, Otto Lang and Marc Lalonde.
Mr. O'CONNELL, who died in Toronto on August 11 at 87 of complications
from Parkinson's disease, served as Canada's labour minister
on two separate occasions, and was Mr.
TRUDEAU's principal secretary
for two years when Trudeaumania had been replaced by the infuriation
of millions with Canada's philosopher-king.
How does one keep a low profile in federal politics, especially
in a contentious cabinet post? Mr.
O'CONNELL did it by guiding
the country with a steady hand through great labour turbulence
in the early 1970s, including convincing his boss to pass emergency
legislation that terminated work stoppages at the Vancouver and
Montreal dockyards.
"He was an exceptionally low-key guy. He liked it that way,"
recalls Barney
DANSON, who served as Minister of National Defence
in the Trudeau cabinet. Doubtless Mr.
TRUDEAU saw in Mr.
O'CONNELL
a kind of kinship. Both men were unflappable philosophers and
academics at heart who entered politics relatively late in life,
both sacrificing cushier lives to hasten Mr.
TRUDEAU's vaunted
"just society."
For Mr. O'CONNELL, the bug bit in 1965 when he and two other
Bay Street whiz kids were summoned to Ottawa by then finance
minister Walter
GORDON -- still stinging from a disastrous budget
two years earlier -- to help revamp Canada's social safety net.
The group ultimately designed policies that led to the Canada
Pension Plan, the Municipal Loan Development Fund and medicare.
Martin Patrick
O'CONNELL was one of four children born in Victoria
to a mother from Ontario and a horticulturist father from County
Kerry in Ireland who farmed a few acres and raised livestock.
Mr. O'CONNELL taught elementary school for six years and completed
a B.A. at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, before beginning
a wartime stint in the Royal Canadian Army Service Corps and
Infantry Regiment. Haunted perhaps by the death of his brother
Johnny, cut down in the battle for Caen, France, in June, 1944,
Mr. O'CONNELL volunteered for action in the Pacific just as the
fighting ceased.
It was while in uniform that he met his future wife of 58 years,
Helen Alice
DIONNE.
The two met at the Art Gallery of Ontario
while Mr. O'CONNELL was on leave from his base, and Ms.
DIONNE
was volunteering at the museum.
He spent the decade after the war at the University of Toronto,
earning graduate degrees in economics and political science and
lecturing on Plato, John Stuart Mill and liberal democratic principles.
He had learned French for his doctoral thesis on Henri Bourassa,
one of the first scholarly studies in English on the fiery Quebec
journalist and Canadian nationalist.
Academia gave way to Bay Street, where Mr.
O'CONNELL spent 11
years in investing and bond underwriting while heading the volunteer
Indian and Eskimo Association of Canada, as it was then called,
where he represented aboriginal concerns to governments and encouraged
the devolution of federal powers to native groups.
He had run and lost in 1965 in the federal seat of Greenwood
in Toronto but was swept up in the 1968 Trudeau whirlwind, winning
the seat of Scarborough East. In 1971, he was named Secretary
of State, and was appointed Labour Minister the following year,
just before Mr.
TRUDEAU called an election that ended in a minority
Liberal government. Mr.
O'CONNELL, like 46 other Grit members
of parliament, was defeated.
But he bounced back as Mr.
TRUDEAU's principal secretary for
those two lean minority years between 1972 and 1974. Mr.
O'CONNELL
laid the groundwork for Mr.
TRUDEAU's first official visit to
the People's Republic of China in 1973 and was instrumental in
establishing diplomatic relations with Beijing. (His interest
in China would later find expression in his role as co-chair
of the Canadian Foundation for the Preservation of Chinese Cultural
and Historical Treasures.)
Mr. O'CONNELL also reshaped the Prime Minister's Office in an
effort to bring the party closer to the grassroots of Canadian
society.
The 1974 general election returned a majority Liberal government
and Mr. O'CONNELL as the Member of Parliament for Scarborough
East. In 1978, he was back as Labour Minister.
Around the cabinet table, "he wasn't terribly assertive," recalls
Mr. DANSON. "He only spoke when he knew what he was talking about."
During question period, "he was logical and solid. He was never
asked the same question twice. He exuded integrity."
Mr. O'CONNELL lost to Tory Gordon
GILCHRIST in the 1979 and 1980
elections (the latter by 511 votes) and he took no pleasure in
Mr. GILCHRIST's resignation of the seat in 1984 after a tax-evasion
conviction.
Mr. O'CONNELL took a stab at the presidency of the Liberal Party,
losing by two just votes. Despite the lack of backing by old
Friends, he took the losses gracefully, saying they were part
of politics. "They all say that," remarked Mr.
O'CONNELL's long-time
friend David
GOLDBERG. "He took it stoically, but hard."
He bid politics farewell and returned to the private sector as
a consultant to government agencies and corporations. The only
time his name was ever remotely linked to controversy was in
1983. He was acting as a consultant to multinational drug companies
when he was hired by the government to consult on legislation
the companies wanted repealed. Mr.
O'CONNELL disclosed his role
with the drug companies immediately, and Ottawa explained he
was tapped precisely because he knew his way around the industry.
He was a taciturn man but prescient when he pronounced, in 1984,
that tobacco smoke was a legitimate health problem in the workplace.
As head of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety,
Mr. O'CONNELL commented on the recently changed Canada Labour
Code: "My own feeling is that the right to refuse work is an
essential right, ... personally, I wouldn't think it would be
an abuse [of the legislation] to refuse work because of tobacco
smoke.''
Mr. O'CONNELL's daughter Caryn recalls somewhat ruefully that
as a child she would sometimes hesitate to tell her Friends'
parents about what her father did for a living, fearing a typical
tirade about Mr.
TRUDEAU.
"But my Dad really was different," she recalls. "He may not have
been as colourful [as other politicians] but he taught us to
play fair and to accept defeat. He taught us the values of honesty,
tolerance, patience and the concept of justice. But we never
felt pressured. He never force-fed us. I think he was the rare
person who entered politics to do good."
Mr. O'CONNELL leaves his wife, children, a brother, sister, four
grandchildren and something rare indeed: a good name.
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