MEGARRY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-07-10 published
Member of Legislative Assembly and mayor of Yellowknife built
consensus and unity in Northwest Territories
With a personality as big as Northwest Territories, he used persuasion
to find a seat for Northerners at the constitutional table and
to include native people in diamond-mining projects
By Sandra MARTIN,
Page
S10
If ever a man meshed with a time and a place, it was Michael
BALLANTYNE, a traveller who roamed the world's troubled spots
and then made his mark in Yellowknife as mayor, territorial politician
and executive at the Diavik Diamond Mine during a dynamic political
and human-rights era. He was an active participant in the evolution
of responsible government in the Northwest Territories, the settling
of land claims, and the creation of Nunavut as a separate territory
with its own political administration.
He was a Paul Bunyanesque figure, complete with black beard and
booming voice. A towering 6 feet 6 inches in his socks, with
an equally impressive girth, he weighed in at about 250 pounds
and had a personality as big as Northwest Territories. Instead
of wielding an axe, he used his persuasive tongue and expansive
empathy to build consensus among disparate stakeholders. "He
loved what he did," said his wife, Penny
BALLANTYNE. "
The more
complex the problem, the more excited he got. He liked nothing
better than something that seemed to have no solution and then
he would figure it out."
"He was a politician who reached out to everyone," said Dennis
Patterson, premier of Northwest Territories from 1987 to 1991,
mentioning Mr.
BALLANTYNE's "pivotal" role in settling land claims
and in building a society in which aboriginal and non-natives
could participate fully in public affairs. "He believed in inclusive
politics and he was a friend to all, even in a climate of mistrust
of the capital and a climate of fear that Yellowknife residents
would do everything they could to undermine the self-determination
aspirations of the Inuit [in what is now Nunavut]."
Along the way, as mayor of Yellowknife, Mr.
BALLANTYNE convinced
The Globe and Mail to act as chief fundraiser for the Northern
Arts and Cultural Centre, the only fully equipped live performance
theatre in Northwest Territories, and to spend a bundle air freighting
in copies of the newspaper long before on-line editions made
it possible to read the paper anywhere. "It cost us, but it made
them all feel good," said former Globe publisher Roy
MEGARRY.
"He was a take-charge guy, very vocal, incredibly friendly, bursting
with life and enthused about everything," said Mr.
MEGARRY. "He
was a great, great Canadian, and a warm human being with great
concern for the rest of humanity. He exhibited that not just
in Vietnam and
in Cambodia, but also in the territories, where
there is a lot of poverty, especially among the native population.
"He devoted his life to doing the things that really counted
and had meaning in this world and not enough people are aware
of him."
Michael Alan
BALLANTYNE, who was born in Toronto in the last
year of the Second World War, was the eldest of five sons in
a military family. His father, Ernest Alan
BALLANTYNE, was a
military engineer and his mother, Barbara Joyce (née
STEVENS,)
was a nurse. He grew up living the itinerant life of a military
brat, attending many schools - three in one year was the record
- throughout Canada, and on postings to the United States and
Germany. He graduated from Laurentian High School in Ottawa and
enrolled in political science at Carleton University. In 1963,
he was tired of political theory and eager for realpolitik. As
he told an interviewer 20 years later, "I was convinced I was
at a university full of wimps in a nation of turkeys who never
looked beyond their noses at the world around them."
At 18, he headed to the southern United States to join the civil-rights
movement and help register black voters in rural Alabama. As
a "white" sympathizer, he was badly beaten and had his nose broken
by police, was thrown in jail, and told "you aren't in Canada
now, boy." That was his "big awakening," according to his wife,
Penny BALLANTYNE, about "how lucky we have it in Canada and how
little we know about the reality of other people's struggle."
Later that summer, he went north to join Martin Luther King's
march on Washington and was in the throng at the Lincoln Memorial
on August 28, 1963, when the Baptist minister let his voice ring
out with the words "I have a dream."
For much of the next decade, Mr.
BALLANTYNE travelled and worked
around the world in Africa, South America, Europe and Asia. He
took a break in 1969 and went to Yellowknife in the Northwest
Territories to visit his parents, who had settled there after
his father had retired as a colonel from the army and taken on
the job as inaugural director of industry in the territorial
government. He found a job building houses in the boom that followed
Yellowknife's designation as the capital of Northwest Territories
in 1967.
By the end of a year, Mr.
BALLANTYNE had enough money to head
off again. Wherever he went, political upheaval seemed to find
him. As the Vietnam War ground on, he worked for Save the Children
in Cambodia and Vietnam, and travelled up the mighty Mekong River,
arriving in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, as it fell to
Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in April, 1975.
He brought searing images of poverty, child soldiers and war
zones back to Yellowknife in 1976 where he found a job driving
a front loader in The Giant Mine and soon became active in the
Canadian Aluminum Smelter and Allied Workers, the union representing
the workers at the mine. Working on the executive of Canadian
Aluminum Smelter and Allied Workers whetted his appetite for
politics and he ran successfully for Yellowknife city council
in 1978.
As a neophyte politician, Mr.
BALLANTYNE's style resonated with
young people, but he also created a bridge with older, more traditional
politicians. After travelling the world, he had found his métier
in the North, the place "where you come to live out all your
fantasies," as he told an interviewer a decade later.
"Mike was always attracted to what he called the 'interesting
edges' of life," according to John Parker, commissioner of Northwest
Territories from 1979 to 1989. "He liked people and events and
he saw in the territories developing government, and developing
populations and developing industry. He was a great people person."
In 1980, the mayor of Yellowknife retired and Mr.
BALLANTYNE
easily won the election to succeed him. An ebullient booster
of his adopted town, he not only persuaded The Globe to steamroller
a fundraising campaign for Northern Arts and Cultural Centre,
he talked the territorial government into donating the slated-for-demolition
gymnasium, including heating and maintenance costs, of the Sir
John Franklin Territorial High School as the foundation of the
new theatre complex.
After two terms as mayor, Mr.
BALLANTYNE was elected a member
of the Legislative Assembly for Yellowknife North, a seat he
held for the next 12 years. The political system in Northwest
Territories is built on a consensus model rather than an adversarial
party system. Individuals run for office in a territorial election,
and then the winners vote by secret ballot to select a cabinet
from among themselves. After two years in the assembly, Mr.
BALLANTYNE's
fellow Member of Legislative Assemblys selected him for cabinet,
where he served in a number of portfolios, including finance
and justice, during "a very complex geo-political" time when
the territorial government was a virtual "United Nations" of
diverse interests and nationalities, according to former premier
Dennis
Patterson. "
Making our government work fell to Mike
BALLANTYNE
because he was government house leader. He was the guy who sniffed
the air with ordinary Member of Legislative Assemblys, established
links with the all powerful committees, and became the intelligence,
the adviser, the catalyst and the advocate of compromise to make
sure that consensus government worked."
He was justice minister during the Meech Lake era. An accord
was reached in June, 1987, between Prime Minister Brian Mulroney
and the premiers of the 10 provinces, but many Northerners, including
Mr. BALLANTYNE, objected to clauses in the proposed treaty that
gave provinces, but not territories, a veto over Senate reform
and the creation of new provinces, and denied Northwest Territories
residents the opportunity to sit in the Senate or on the Supreme
Court. He argued that these provisions made Northerners "second-class
citizens" and violated their equality rights under the Charter
of Rights and Freedoms, and he mounted a legal challenge against
the federal government. The case came to naught when the provincial
legislatures failed to ratify the accord, but Mr.
BALLANTYNE
emphatically brought the interests of the North to the constitutional
table. He didn't do his own networking connections any harm,
either.
"He was very astute, very good at consensus-building and identifying
common interests," said John Vertes, senior judge of the Supreme
Court of Northwest Territories. The two men met in the late 1970s
when Mr. Vertes was a young lawyer and Mr.
BALLANTYNE was a member
of the Yellowknife city council. Once met, never forgotten, but
their biggest professional link came when Mr.
BALLANTYNE was
minister of justice in the 1980s.
At that time, Northwest Territories included what would become
Nunavut, so it was a vast jurisdiction about one-third the size
of Canada with a small, but diverse and remotely located population.
Residents spoke 11 officially recognized languages. The courts
were based in Yellowknife, the capital and only city, and travelled
out to remote communities to hold criminal trials and to hear
cases, but many elders were precluded from serving on juries
in trials affecting their own communities because they did not
speak either English or French. Mr.
BALLANTYNE negotiated an
amendment to the legislation governing juries in Northwest Territories,
said Mr. Justice Vertes, to allow an aboriginal speaker (with
the help of specially trained court interpreters) to serve on
a jury, even if he or she didn't speak either of the two official
languages. This innovation expanded the jury pool, made it possible
to hold trials in isolated native communities, allowed locals
to participate in the process and inevitably engendered a greater
understanding of how the justice system functions. "This is unique
in the Western world," said Mr. Vertes. "They don't do this in
Australia, or in New Zealand, where Maori is an official language."
Also in the middle eighties, Mr.
BALLANTYNE met and married Penny
AUMOND.
Both had been married before. Together, they reared three
children, Erin, Alexandra and Nicholas. As a couple, the
BALLANTYNEs
were a striking physical contrast because she was more than a
foot shorter. "I may be 5 feet 3, but I was the only one who
could sit him down and read him the riot act," she said.
Having told his wife that he was going to choose his exit, he
became Speaker in 1991 (the same year that Nellie Cournoyer became
the first female premier of Northwest Territories) and left politics
two years later. He never became premier, primarily because he
represented the urban riding of Yellowknife (Northwest Territories's
only city) and in the buildup to the creation of Nunavut, the
unofficial consensus was that the premier should both be aboriginal
and from a non-urban riding in the eastern part of the territory.
Analysts might conclude that, for once, Mr.
BALLANTYNE was the
wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time, but a more likely
explanation is that he was more interested in political evolution
than in clawing at power for its own sake.
Coincidentally, there was another issue brewing in the North
that called out for his skill set: managing the competing interests
surrounding the discovery of rich diamond deposits in the Northwest
Territories in 1991, a discovery that has turned Canada into
one of the world's top producers of quality and politically "clean"
diamonds. He joined Aber (now Harry Winston Diamonds) as vice-president
Northwest Territories, with a mandate to oversee the construction
of the Diavik Diamond Mine, which opened in 2003, and to liaise
with the federal and territorial governments and native groups
over mineral and subsidiary rights. "We really needed a senior
person in Yellowknife who could meet head to head with the president
of the operating company and he stood out as the kind of guy
who could do this," said George Parker, former Northwest Territories
commissioner and now a director of Aber. "His familiarity with
the territorial government and with the federal agencies based
in Yellowknife were also very important factors. It was in Aber's
interest that the project proceed smoothly and obeyed the rules
and engaged Northern people, in particular aboriginal people,
and it was necessary for us to have a really strong spokesman."
From 2002 to 2005, Mr.
BALLANTYNE also held an appointment as
vice-president of Laurelton Diamonds (a subsidiary of Tiffany and
Company) to establish a diamond-cutting and polishing plant in
Yellowknife, so that the mine could support a secondary industry
in the North.
Mr. BALLANTYNE turned 55 in February, 2000. After a glowing medical
checkup, he took his family on their "first-ever" winter holiday
in Barbados. That's where he developed flu-like symptoms. Within
the month, he was in a coma in hospital in Edmonton, waiting
for a liver transplant. He had probably harboured a dormant form
of hepatitis since his travelling days, which had suddenly turned
voracious. "Miraculously," says Penny
BALLANTYNE, he was given
a donor liver. The new liver kept him from dying, but it was
not in perfect condition and so life became a struggle to stay
healthy. They bought and renovated an old house in Victoria,
where Ms. BALLANTYNE lived with their nearly grown children and
found a job as city manager while Mr.
BALLANTYNE commuted to
Yellowknife and kept promising to retire.
He was in Victoria's Royal Jubilee Hospital for about a month
this May and then he was transported by air ambulance to the
University of Alberta in Edmonton. The doctors were talking encouragingly
about a second liver transplant when he had a massive internal
hemorrhage. Although the doctors in the Intensive Care Unit did
their utmost - he'd always insisted he wanted extraordinary measures
- he knew there were no more miracles. "He always told me, 'I'm
not afraid to die. If I have to go, I've had a great life and
I've had eight years that were a bonus,' said Ms.
BALLANTYNE.
"He looked at each of us, squeezed our hands and he just relaxed."
Michael Alan
BALLANTYNE was born February 27, 1945, in Toronto.
He died June 19, 2008, at the University of Alberta Hospital
in Edmonton, Alberta. He was 63. He is survived by his wife Penny,
his three children, one grandchild and his extended family.
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MEGGISON o@ca.on.grey_county.owen_sound.the_sun_times 2008-01-17 published
WEIR,
Joyce (née
McMILLAN)
Of Wiarton, passed away peacefully at Gateway Haven on Tuesday,
January 15, 2008 in her 81st year. Joyce and Don
WEIR enjoyed
50 years of marriage before Don's passing in 1999. Together they
farmed in Mar and operated the Ferry View Motel in Tobermory.
Family, fun and Friends - these were the three pillars of Joyce's
life. She was an avid curler, euchre player, traveller and a
devoted mother, grandmother, sister, aunt and friend. Dear mother
of Brenda ROUSE of London and Shirley and Don
JOHANNSON of Port
Moody,
British
Columbia Cherished grandmother to Amy
ROUSE (friend
Kelly STEWARD/STEWART/STUART), Adam
ROUSE, Ryan
JOHANNSON and Keira
JOHANNSON.
Joyce will be missed by her sisters Mildred
LEE and Shirley
BRYAN,
sisters-in-law Edith
MATCHAM and Margaret
McMILLAN, all of Manitoba,
sisters-in-law Mildred
McARTHUR of Scarborough and Edna
DAY of
Kingston, and sisters and brothers-in-law Hester and Tom
CUNNINGHAM,
Maisie and Howard
HEPBURN,
Betty and Harvey
WEIR, Mary and Lorne
WEIR and Clara and Jack
WEIR, all of Wiarton, as well as many
nieces and nephews. Joyce was predeceased by her husband Don,
sons Paul and Ross, parents Belle and Alexander
McMILLAN, sisters
Hester (Bert)
CHURCHILL and Glenis (Stan)
MEGGISON, brothers
Irvine,
Jack
(Edna,) George (Florence) and Don
McMILLAN and sister-in-law
Janet (Roy)
BARNES.
Visitation will be held at the George Funeral
Home, Wiarton on Friday, January 18, 2008 from 2: 00 to 4:00 and
7: 00 to 9:00 p.m. A celebration of Joyce's life will be held
at the funeral home on Saturday, January 19, 2008 at 1: 00 p.m.
with Rev. George
BELL officiating. Spring interment Colpoy's
Bay Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, donations made to the Friends
of Gateway, Wiarton Hospital, the Liver Foundation or the charity
of your choice would be appreciated by the family as expressions
of sympathy. Condolences may be sent to the family at www.georgefuneralhome.com
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