Hugh Segal knew the value of friendship — and offered it in abundance

National Post, 11 August 2023

The former senator led a distinguished career and was well versed in policy and theology, but most importantly, he was a great storyteller and a wonderful friend

In October 2020, in honour of Hugh Segal’s 70th birthday, I wrote in these pages an appreciation of his book-length argument for a universal basic income, offered in the winsome manner of a memoir. Having lunch at the University Club at Queen’s University — one of his favourite places in his adopted hometown of Kingston, Ont. — not long after that, Hugh told me that he appreciated all the kind words, but what was left for the eulogy?

The time for eulogy has now come, alas. Hugh’s enormous network of friends, in politics and beyond, join his wife Donna and daughter Jaqueline in mourning him after his death on Wednesday.

He was for me, more than 30 years ago, an encourager during my time in youth politics — as he encouraged so many. Federal cabinet minister Anita Anand related upon Hugh’s death that he had encouraged her to run for office, even for the Liberals.

In 1994, I was in his class at the School of Policy Studies at Queen’s, and we began a conversation on public policy that lasted until our last visit during his final illness in the hospital.

But soon enough, our meetings were more about the conversation than the policy. Twenty years my senior, and with a wide range of more influential people calling him each day, he offered me his friendship. For that I am grateful. I am immensely sad that he has died.

Many others will remember the astonishing range of his achievements over more than a half-century of public life. He was one the great Canadian public figures of his generation — even if, as he amusingly recalled, the people repeatedly refused to elect him to office.

Many more, I hope, will remember that he had what few in any field possess: the gift of friendship. He was a genius at it and generous with it.

Partly that was because he was a great storyteller. What are friends but people who enjoy listening to each other’s stories? He enjoyed listening to his own stories, too, which is why we so often repeated them to each other.

He loved to tell of the time in 2002 when, preparing for my ordination in Kingston, I called him from the seminary in Rome. Marrying Donna Armstrong made him into a proud Kingstonian, even an “old stone,” as the Armstrongs have deep roots in the city. So I asked him if Donna knew a good caterer.

For years that became the time that “the Vatican” called the Jewish boy from Montreal for advice. On the day of the actual call, when his secretary asked him who had called, he replied that he was not at liberty to discuss Vatican consultations.

It was an echo of another story he loved to tell, about how his boyhood rabbi was in a receiving line when a young Queen Elizabeth II visited Montreal. When queried about the brief pleasantries they exchanged, the rabbi demurred, citing the privileged nature of conversations with the Sovereign. The Queen’s portrait hung prominently in the synagogue classroom after that.

It was another prominent visitor to Montreal who shaped his entire life. In 1962, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker came to speak on the new Bill of Rights his government had passed, and a young Hugh was so impressed that he became a partisan Conservative from that day forward.

That was his approach to politics and to life. Persons were important, as were principles, but principles did not become your friends.

Over the years, he would be asked why such a Red Tory simply did not become a Liberal. Some no doubt hoped that he would! Hugh didn’t think that way; friendships were not ruptured due to policy differences. His brand of Toryism values traditions, institutions, communities, loyalties and personal compassion. He applied that to those whom he worked with, those whom he taught, those whom he led and, above all, to his friends. He was a tribal Tory, and thought that tribes could be a good thing. It was one of those “Old Testament” lessons he would offer me when we spoke about theology.

He wrote a memoir subtitled “Happy Warrior.” Both parts were true of him, but the adjective more than the noun. When too many are now looking for a fight, it is the happy part that is more important. A long afternoon with Hugh, as we discussed our points of disagreement — he was always a bit suspicious of conservatives from Alberta — was a much more convivial time than like-minded interlocutors whose teeth are always on edge. It’s hard to laugh with teeth on edge, and Hugh laughed.

Continue reading at the National Post.