Vaughn Palmer: Crossing the line of decency, protesters pay angry Horgan a house call
Credit to Author: Gord Kurenoff| Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2020 01:49:46 +0000
VICTORIA — Premier John Horgan was asked recently how it had gone on the day when protesters surrounded the legislature and tried to disrupt the reading of the speech from the throne.
“My day started with the insurance adjuster coming because there’s water in my basement, and the carpet is all messed up, and my kid’s guitars might be wrecked,” replied Horgan.
His way of saying that even premiers have annoying distractions on the home front: “I was thinking about normal things that people think about after torrential rains.”
When I asked later in the week, Horgan provided an update: the water was gone, the guitars were saved, the insurance will cover the damage.
All that was left was a lingering concern about mould — could it provoke an allergic reaction and affect his voice, the meal ticket for every successful politician?
The flooding was at the Langford home that Horgan and wife Ellie have owned and occupied since the early 1990s. They moved there with their two boys, directly from living in his mother’s basement.
Horgan is intensely proud of where he and his wife chose to put down roots: A middle class home in a middle class neighbourhood with middle class realities like water in the basement.
The place in a suburb of the provincial capital helps to ground him.
“I get to sleep in my warm bed when the legislature is sitting,” he said awhile back. “So for the unity of my family and the patience of my spouse, I’m really happy to be here.”
On the day back in 2017 when the lieutenant-governor called on Horgan to form a government, he of course phoned home with the news.
But Ellie was in their garden, so he got the answering machine and had to leave a message: “This is the premier calling!”
Later that year, the hometown Goldstream Gazette published a feature on “Langford’s first premier.”
The Horgans had visited the newspaper office for a joint interview.
He talked about how much the community had changed in the past 25 years. She joked she could no longer send “Mr. Big Shot Premier” out to buy milk because he’d spend the next four hours schmoozing in the checkout line.
But the “patient spouse” also talked about how things had changed with a husband who had taken on the workload of a premier.
“I definitely see far less of John than I would like,” she told the paper. “He’s away a heck of a lot or even if he is in town, he comes home quite late … that’s been the biggest change.”
I thought back to that comment from Ellie Horgan when I learned what had happened at their home shortly before 8 a.m. on Tuesday.
A group of extremists calling themselves the “Extinction Rebellion” descended on the Horgans’ Langford neighbourhood with a view to disrupting the premier’s ability to attend budget day.
They planned to “arrest” him for crimes against humanity, specifically genocide. Which would be grotesquely laughable had they not banged on the front door of his home with every intention of carrying out the threatened citizen’s arrest.
Horgan had already left for work with the RCMP detail that accompanies B.C. premiers everywhere for obvious security reasons.
Ellie did not answer the door. Instead she phoned her husband, who got the RCMP to turn around and take him back home.
When Horgan got there, according to one of the protesters, he swore at them — as might any homeowner confronted by a bunch of yahoos milling around in front of his place and upsetting his wife.
Local police were called. Arrests were made. And the premier resumed his drive to work, albeit seething. When reporters talked to him after the legislature adjourned in mid-afternoon, he was still angry about the protesters having gone to his home.
“It was certainly well and truly beyond the line,” said the premier. “And if people think it helps their cause to terrorize my spouse, then they’re dead wrong.”
Was Ellie OK?
“She’s a strong woman — she’s been married to me for almost 40 years.” Tuesday also happened to be the Horgans’ wedding anniversary.
B.C. Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson was quick to condemn the protesters. So did Andrew Weaver, the former leader of the Greens.
Horgan’s sense, communicated to reporters, “is that the vast majority of British Columbians agree with me on this.”
I expect so. But for a small and determined group of zealots, a politician’s home is fair game. If they also get to shake up members of his or her family, that’s a bonus.
Earlier premiers — Liberals, New Democrats and Socreds — have experienced at-home protests and other kinds of threats as well.
Premier Gordon Campbell moved out of his home and into a more secure apartment tower after a firebombing at his constituency office and another at his wife’s office.
Premier Christy Clark likewise moved into safer quarters after a couple of incidents at her home, one of which happened when her son Hamish was alone.
In both cases, the premiers were informed that short of 24-hour surveillance, it is difficult to secure a stand-alone private home on a residential street.
The Horgans may well hear similar advice in the days ahead. Not likely will they consider moving from their home.
But I expect Tuesday’s brazen invasion of their neighbourhood will have a lingering impact on their peace of mind.
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Last year’s provincial budget projected 58 million cubic metres of wood would be harvested from crown land in the year ahead — not 58 cubic metres as I wrote by mistake on Wednesday.
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