Though our paths must have crossed at NDP conventions in the ‘90s, on the streets of Ottawa, or at a university campus several times over the last thirty years, I met Ed Broadbent only once. 

But that once was a great time, and a great day. 

In 1996, I was in second year of a doctoral program at the University of Warwick, in Coventry England.  I had one Canadian classmate – she was Québecoise and a firebrand about Québec nationalism.  Sylvie had nothing but scorn whenever I talked about English Canadian politics and culture. She could barely put up with life at a British university – but her Montréal university had given her a scholarship to study for a PhD at Warwick with Richard Hyman.  Hyman, though at the time just over age 50, was “the grand old man of labour relations” whose first book, Strikes, tried to marry the best bits of the post-World War II system of industrial relations with Marxism.   

My other Canadian classmate was Mike, a 23-year old from St John’s, Newfoundland.  By his own admission, he had stumbled through his undergrad and master’s degrees on charm and bar hopping.  At Warwick, he was a fish out of water.  Few other grad students were friendly and most subscribed to the “dog eat dog” competitive ethos that made me – as a mature student in my 40s — flinch. 

For the last year, since the Québec referendum, Sylvie and I had discussed it.  The referendum had landed in shreds when just over 50.5% voted “no” the previous fall. That meant Québec independence was dead for the time being, something that shocked us both.  

“Who’s he?” she said with disdain, “an English Canadian separatist?”

Sylvie, on hearing I was going to lunch with Ed Broadbent

One day I saw a small note in the left-leaning quality daily newspaper, The Guardian.  It said that Ed Broadbent, a former Canadian Member of Parliament and one-time head of Canada’s New Democratic Party, was spending the next year as a Fellow at All Soul’s College at the University of Oxford.  Wow, I said when I showed the article to Sylvie.  “Who’s he?” she said with disdain, “an English Canadian  separatist?”

I told her who he was, and then said I wanted to meet him and talk about politics with him. It was surprising to see Broadbent was at Oxford.  At that time, no self-respecting newspaper mentioned Canadians or Canada except in news about extreme weather or ice hockey.  Sylvie rolled her eyes, “I doubt he’ll see you, not if he’s at Oxford.” 

Why not ask, I thought.  I looked up the street address of All Soul’s and wrote Broadbent a letter on the keyboard in the computer lab.  Within a week I had a lovely handwritten note on the creamy college letterhead inviting me to lunch with him. 

The next week, I took the train to Oxford – once there it was easy to find his “rooms” in All Soul’s.  We both stared out of the window to the lovely quadrangle with green topiary despite the trees starting to turn fall colours.  

We decided to take a walk and find a restaurant or bistro along the way – after all Oxford is a jewel of a city.  We walked.  He asked me about my PhD studies.  Since he was from Oshawa and his dad had worked on the line at GM (General Motors) he took a lot of interest in labour, unions and strikes.  We talked and walked.  We talked about the CAW (Canadian Autoworkers Union) supplanting the old UAW, an American union ten years previous.  We talked about Canadian versus US-based unions – I was for the former, he for the latter.  We talked about the “free trade election” of 1988 – and how the free trade deal ushered in by Tory Brian Mulroney seemed to split the country.  The Liberals and the NDP were against it as it meant an end to manufacturing and jobs in Canada.  In the election, Broadbent’s NDP won 43 seats – an historic high at the time, but he was disappointed and resigned as party leader the next year.   I said I was no longer a social democrat– I had given up on tinkering around the edges – I now was much further left –a communist at least.  

I saw pain register on his face, he told me the only option was really the NDP.   I had moved from Saskatoon to Coventry to study.  We argued about the NDP, about what was wrong (or right in his view) with Saskatchewan’s NDP and its proud CCF history.  He understood that the Right was on the ascendancy – but at least Roy Romanow had stumbled through and formed an NDP government in ’95.  He grudgingly admitted it might be the party’s last gasp.  He was wrong about that –  when Romanow retired, the NDP’s Lorne Calvert ran as leader.  He squeaked to victory through the next two provincial elections. The NDP was in power until 2007, but for the last 17 years, the NDP has been whipped by  the far right Saskatchewan Party.  

Back in 1996, Jean Chretien was the Liberal Prime Minister, whom Broadbent respected.  But it worried him that the official opposition was the Bloc Quebecois, and worse—the NDP was reduced to only nine federal seats. We argued, and we talked. 

We didn’t do much laughing, as I recall.  It had started to rain.  We looked around; we found ourselves at a truck stop somewhere on the outskirts of Oxford.  Neither of us knew where we were. Or how to get back. We went inside the café to order a “traditional” meal – baked beans, scrambled eggs, sausages, and fried white bread. All served luke-warm and greasy.  But it was the best tea I had ever drunk. 

“No one interrupted us.  No one showed any interest in our political scrapping.  No one told us it was time to go.”

We had to shout to be heard in the restaurant. There was clatter of dishes, scraping of chairs and the door banging open and closed every few of minutes.  No one interrupted us.  No one showed any interest in our political scrapping.  No one told us it was time to go.  It was amazing to spend a whole day talking to the leader of Canada’s third political party — about the personal, the political. To disagree, to put up with, to measure the quality of my arguments against his, to talk about history and economics for hours — all of this was a gift.

The lunch tab was £15; Broadbent left £20

The rain eased off; and dusk fell. Suddenly it was too quiet in the café. Truckers – at least in those days in the UK – didn’t drive at  night.  The two pieces of Victoria Sponge cake I saw when we walked in were still on the counter under a plastic cake dome. I remember the bill was around £15 pounds – Ed left 20 and the waitress told him he didn’t have to. 

We called a taxi.  Once inside it, we were eerily quiet – I guess we’d said enough. Ed dropped me at the train station and we waved goodbye.  He and I wrote briefly once or twice that year. But we didn’t do lunch again. 

Postscript: A couple of years later, my husband Larry met Ed Broadbent at a conference.  Larry said, “My wife told me you spent a wonderful afternoon together in Oxford.” Colleagues nearby raised eyebrows. My husband continued, “You know, the time you got lost on a walk in Oxford?” Broadbent said with a smile, “Of course I remember!”  Everyone relaxed.

Featured image at the top: All Souls Triptych, by Benjamin Sullivan (b. 1977). All Soul’s College, Oxford. The 2012 huge painting honours non-academic staff at work at the college. The left panel is secretary and administrative staff, centre is catering, right is housekeeping and maintenance staff. For more on this great triptych, read this. (photo credit: Colin Dunn (Scripture Ltd)