Dalton Camp is no summer camp
Larry Zolf, CBC News Online | March 2002
‘Dalton Camp is no summer camp’ was a private inside joke between Dalton Camp, the Red Tory wizard and syndicated political columnist, and Inside Zolf. That inside joke went all the way back to 1966.
That year this humble scribe had just been publicly fired by the CBC along with Patrick Watson and the now-Senator Laurier LaPierre in the famous This Hour Has Seven Days purge. Headlines and pictures all across the country told the story of our plight. Public and press
response focused on LaPierre and Watson.
Camp, then president of the Tory party and a regular columnist in The Toronto Telegram, wrote a column called “Why Fire the Indian?” The column was a celebration of my talents and a true vindication of my rightful place in Canadian broadcasting history. Camp didn’t even mention LaPierre or Watson.
Two days later a call came to the Zolf abode. The conversation went something like this.
“Hello, I’m Dalton Camp.”
“Sorry, I’m too old to go to a summer camp.”
“Dalton Camp is no summer camp.”
“Neither is Larry Zolf.”
Having engaged in a Canadian version of a Marx brothers routine, we both had a hearty laugh.
What Camp was calling about was to ask me to go to work for him at the Dalton Camp advertising agency. Re-electing Tory premier Duff Roblin of Manitoba and Tory premier Robert Stanfield of Nova Scotia was to be my job.
The pay Camp offered me was astonishingly high. I was out of a job and had two children. I swallowed my leftish qualms and said “yes.”
The way Dalton Camp operated in those days was to do all the political advertising and other work for a Tory premier or would-be Tory premier free of charge. But if Camp’s clients won, the Camp advertising agency would get the tourism account of the province in which Camp had been the architect of victory.
Camp already had a string of political victories behind him and was well on his way to independent wealth. He was also becoming a person who understood Canadian politics far better than elected politicians and the general public.
Camp had a tremendous ability to put himself in other people’s shoes. Camp, for example, could think exactly like the rabid right-wingers in his party. He reached their conclusions faster than they did.
The rabid right wingers, the nut bars, the demagogues could never read Camp’s very ample mind. Camp virtually created the Red Tory component of Canadian politics.
It’s fun these days watching Joe Clark desperately trying to retain his Red Tory status while he flirts openly with ex-Alliance social conservatives. Camp would never do that. If the price of honour and integrity was exclusion of the intolerants, Camp was glad to pay that price.
Camp’s legacy is that decency in politics still works. Camp out-manoeuvred John Diefenbaker by constantly keeping his cool. Camp ignored the Diefies who charged he was a Yankee puppet of Wall Street selling the Tories in Canada out to the Yanks.
"Do what you feel you have to do, and try and do it as well as you can. And never look back."
– Dalton Camp reflecting on his life and work in 1968 |
Camp in turn made no personal attacks of any kind on Diefenbaker. Indeed, in 1963 Camp’s eloquent defence of Dief’s refusal to allow American arms on Canadian soil was one of the great defences of Diefenbaker and one of the great tributes paid to the Chief.
Camp was a great man to work for. Every time I gave him a television spot he said “great” and asked for more.
Camp became an older brother to me. He would invite me to all the elegant parties he threw at home or in the Albany Club. One summer my whole family spent a week with Camp at his massive cottage estate at Robertson’s Point in New Brunswick. Robertson’s Point was a lush and lavish retreat for well-off New Brunswickers. It was the closest to the Riviera I had ever come.
Our family had its own private cottage. Camp even supplied us with our own babysitter. That was Richard Hatfield, then leader of the tiny Tory opposition in the New Brunswick legislature and soon to become premier of New Brunswick and a legend.
Camp was not only easy to work for but he always liked my work. We both got off on each other’s humour. Many of our hour-long phone calls dissolved into gales of laughter.
But we had our differences, though they were really minor. Camp loved Mordecai Richler and Peter Gzowski; both these icons left me ice cold. Camp often told me that the Stanfield we re-elected premier of Nova Scotia would some day be prime minister. I argued that television would do Stanfield in.
Camp’s dislike for Diefenbaker was as visceral as Dief’s dislike of Camp. I liked both men, loved their sense of wit and country. Still, on occasion I would feel that Camp was trying to push me into a dislike of Dief I never had nor ever could have.
On a personal level, Camp could be irritating at times. Camp phoned me once to tell me had just read an anthology of mine, Zolf by Larry Zolf. “It’s great! It’s fantastic! It’s excellent!” said Camp. “Don’t tell me, Dalton, tell your readers,” I pleaded. Camp never got around to doing that.
Watching Camp stick pins in his column into fatuous over-busy business minds and censorious preachers, posers and fools is the real big fun in my life now that I am rapidly approaching the dotage stage. Camp, who was never elected and was twice defeated, was recently the best guide and best interpreter of Canadian politics.
A Canadian politics devoid of Camp’s wisdom and craft is truly thinking the unthinkable.
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