On <a href="http://www.ontla.on.ca/web/house-proceedings/house_detail.do?locale=en&amp;detailPage=/house-proceedings/transcripts/files_html/23-NOV-1978_L127.htm&amp;Sess=2&amp;Parl=31&amp;Date=1978-11-23" target="_blank">Nov. 23, 1978</a>, former Ontario NDP leader and then still-York South MPP Donald MacDonald rose on a point of privilege at Queen’s Park.
MacDonald told the legislature the day before he received a letter from the Progressive Conservatives “bagman,” asking him for a donation.
“Is the Tory party so rich that it can send this out indiscriminately to everybody in the province, or is it so poor that it requires the assistance of people as long identified with the New Democratic Party as myself?” MacDonald asked. He even offered to send then-premier Bill Davis an application form to join the NDP.
(Hansard records veteran NDP MPP Elie Martel as saying “that is no guarantee he will get in though.”)
Davis had a confession: the Tories were trying to broaden its base of donors, and may have had "gone a shade too far."
"We even have purchased the odd subscription list," Davis added. "I will check for the honourable member’s own comfort that this isn’t the Playboy subscription list, that possibly being the reason he was canvassed for support.”
At this, says Steve Paikin, “the whole house collapses in hysterics.” 
Paikin, host of TVO’s flagship program The Agenda, has written<a href="https://www.dundurn.com/books/Bill-Davis" target="_blank"> a book</a> about the life and times of Ontario’s 18th premier: <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Bill-Davis-Nation-Builder-Bland/dp/1459731751" target="_blank">Bill Davis: Nation Builder, and Not So Bland After All.</a>
Part of the reason he wrote the book, Paikin says, is to remind people there was a “more collegial time” in politics, particularly the 14 years (1971 to 1985) Davis ruled the province.
“And we can get back to that, but we have to stop practicing the politics of personal destruction, which [Davis] never liked,” Paikin said. 
During his time in public life, Davis also helped establish Ontario's community college system (as education minister for his predecessor as premier, John Robarts), scrapped the Spadina Expressway, and extended full funding for Catholic schools. 
Paikin took a few minutes this week to speak to QP Briefing about the book, his fifth. The following interview has been condensed and edited.
Why did you want to write a book about Bill Davis?
No one’s a done a really comprehensive look at his entire life, both the prepolitical life, the 25 years he spent in public life, and the 30 years he’s now spent in the private sector since retiring from Ontario politics.
And number two: Because he’s premier of Ontario from the time I was 10 until I was 24. So my most formative years growing up in the province of Ontario were his most formative years as premier, of his political life. So he’s kind of been a significant figure in my political awareness for a very, very long time.
I covered his government, his last term, the ‘81 to ‘85 term. And so I’ve always had in the back of my mind a hope that I would one day be able to convince him to do this.
What convinced Davis to get on board?
I’ll never know for sure, but believe me I was after him for about 10 years to do it, and he’d always just sort of tease me about ‘oh, yes, we must get around to that someday.’
But I said a couple things to him that I think may have been helpful. I really kind of guilted him into it, in as much as I told him I thought he had a duty to history to do it. Because he first got elected, remember, when Leslie Frost was premier, 1959. And I thought, he just has so much political and institutional knowledge about the country and about the province and I thought it would be really terrible for him to sort of not share all that information with people in a good book.
And then finally, there was a book written about Davis shortly after he got out of politics 30 years ago. But I thought it was a very harsh depiction of his time in public life. It was written by a columnist named Claire Hoy, who worked for the Sun. He thought Davis was far too squishy. It was kind of a mean-spirited book and I just thought that the man deserved better than that. And I told him that, and I said ‘you’re really going to give Claire Hoy the last word on your life?’ I think maybe that had some role in it as well.
What’s been his reaction to the book now that it’s out?
I don’t know. The funny thing is, he had no impact on the manuscript. I wrote the whole thing, and I know he was a little bit nervous about it, because I heard from some of his friends that he was. But he did not try to influence me one way or another.
His wife was thrilled. She looked at [the book's cover] and said: ‘oh, Billy look how cute you look on the cover’ and all that. And he said: ‘yes, the book looks good, but then again I haven’t read it yet so I can’t tell you what I think of it.’
Either that or he devoured it the first day he got it and he’s not giving me the satisfaction of telling me that.
How would you explain Davis' significance to someone who never saw him in action?
Bill Davis as an electoral politician, as a guy who wanted to be winner and a successful politician, was a great success. He won four elections in a row: '71, '75, '77, '81. No one had won four elections in a row since World War I, and of course nobody’s done it since. I can’t see that record changing.
The other thing that was amazing about him – again we’re talking politics here – is that he came in with a majority government, he then had two minorities in a row. He was superb running a minority parliament, able to tack left to pick up the NDP’s support on some bills, able to tack right to pick up Liberal support on other bills.
One of his best friends after he left public life was Stephen Lewis, who was the leader of the NDP. The notion today that you could have an opposition leader be one of your best pals in politics is just impossible to believe. It’s just too vicious, it’s too cutthroat. But they were back then.
And of course when he retired in '85 he was as popular, if not more, than he ever had been. Had he chosen to contest the next election, as (former NDP premier and Liberal MP) Bob Rae told me, he would have wiped the floor with both Rae and (former Liberal premier David) Peterson. But he decided to retire instead, and the rest is  history.
What was something he really believed in?
I think probably his greatest achievement was repatriating the constitution with an accompanying charter of rights and freedoms. He made a very difficult and controversial decision right off the get-go to support Prime Minister Trudeau on this, even though the base of his party couldn’t stand Pierre Trudeau, and even though everybody was telling him it’s terrible politics to get into bed with the prime minister on this. He did it anyway, because he thought it was right for the country.
When it first happened, when Trudeau first unveiled his constitutional package, eight premiers were against. It was only Davis and Richard Hatfield from New Brunswick who were in favour. So, basically, he was going against the vast majority of his fellow premiers. And [Davis] played a crucial moderating role in the midst of all the negotiations that enabled the thing to be successful.
Trudeau rightly gets the lion’s share of the credit for making all that happen, but it wouldn’t have happened without Bill Davis. I think part of the mission of my book is to make sure people know that now, because that story hasn’t come out before,
So let’s say 1971 Bill Davis is walking down the street and he falls into a time warp and ends up in 2016 at Queen’s Park. How do you think he does?
I think about that all the time.
Back in his day, there’s no such thing as social media. Instead of a deadline, instantly, or maybe every half hour, there was basically two or three deadlines throughout the day and that was it. So you had the ability to not have to react instantly to every single little thing that came along.
But I also have to remember Bill Davis was awfully quick on his feet. There was nobody better at reading the temperature of the province. Those skills are always in demand.
So I’d like to think that he would have been as successful today as he was back then. But again, it’s in the realm of speculation. Who knows?
To contact the reporter on this story: 
<a href="mailto:gzochodne@qpbriefing.com">gzochodne@qpbriefing.com</a> 
416-212-5913 
Twitter: @<a href="http://twitter.com/geoffzochodne">geoffzochodne</a>

‘It wouldn’t have happened without Bill Davis’: Steve Paikin talks about his new book

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