John Horgan 1959 - 2024

My reflections on BC's 36th premier

It's rare for BC premiers to be remembered so fondly after they have left office.  They're usually chased out of power.  But John Horgan was a different sort.  Horgan died today in Victoria, months after his third and latest cancer diagnosis.  He was 65.  And while he certainly wasn't without his faults, it was no accident he was BC's longest-serving NDP premier.  His five and a half years running the province were longer than any of his New Democrat predecessors, edging out Mike Harcourt, Dave Barrett, and Glen Clark -- the next three elected NDP premiers on the list.  David Eby, newly re-elected on October 19th, will beat Horgan's record -- if he serves his full term.  But he has to get there first.  

READ MORE:

- Former B.C. premier John Horgan dead at 65

I first met Horgan during my stint at CHEK News in Victoria.  In those days (2007-08), he was the MLA for Malahat-Juan de Fuca and I clipped him several times for Langford or West Shore stories.

Once I was back in Vancouver, he was a reliable critic of the BC Liberal government of the day, and we spoke on the phone often. I recall a particular sitdown interview in our Newsarium, a fishbowl-like meeting space across from the newsroom. As 1130 isn't a talk format, in-studio interviews with newsmakers were (and still are) rare. 

In 2013, NEWS 1130 had an army of reporters covering the NDP leadership convention in Vancouver, each of us assigned to cover a different candidate.  I was tasked with covering Adrian Dix, who ended up winning.  Horgan placed third.  His day would come soon enough though.  BC Liberal leader Christy Clark would win the 2013 provincial election, and Horgan would be acclaimed NDP leader the following year.

Then, of course, came the 2017 provincial election.  A very good book has already been written about the weeks between election day on May 9th and the swearing-in of the Horgan government the following July, so I won't rehash that here.  But I will say, a feather in 1130's cap was how one of the more memorable moments of the campaign came during our "radio debate" which was also televised on Citytv.  During a particularly heated exchange, Clark told Horgan to "calm down" and touched his arm.  "Don't touch me again, please.  Thank you very much," he fired back.  In the coverage that followed, Horgan was called out for being "angry" but one wonders how Horgan would have fared had the roles been reversed.

READ MORE: 

- Tetchy moments a feature in first British Columbia election debate

Horgan wasn't perfect.  Sometimes he could be a little cringe-y.  Many tributes today recall him as Premier Dad.  But I think that nickname cuts both ways.  In 2018, he agreed to debate then-BC Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson on prime-time television about the merits of the proportional representation voting system ahead of a mail-in ballot referendum on the issue.  The most memorable line of the night was when Horgan told Wilkinson, "If you were woke, you'd know that Pro Rep is lit."  Wilkinson called him out for using so-called "hipster" language.  The following morning, 1130's Simon Druker was sent down to Main Street in search of actual "hipsters" to see what they thought.  As only Simon could put it, Horgan was "closer to hip replacement than hipster himself."

READ MORE:

-  Are you ‘woke’? Horgan proclaims Pro Rep ‘lit’

Another cringe-y moment came during BC's deadly heat dome in 2021.  Liza Yuzda, who was our Victoria-based Legislature reporter at the time, asked the premier if the provincial government could have done more to alert the public about the scorching temperatures.  His response was basically that death is a part of life.  Horgan was wrong and he knew it.

READ MORE:

- B.C. premier walks back comments about heatwave deaths

Then there was June 28, 2022, the day Horgan announced he was stepping down as premier.  Remarkably, it wasn't the lead item in our newscast that afternoon.  News of the premier of the province resigning was pushed down to the second story by a deadly bank shootout in Saanich.  As anyone who observes BC politics knows, you learn to expect the unexpected. 

READ MORE:

- Saanich bank shooting leaves 6 police officers hurt, 2 suspects dead

Last year, Horgan resigned his seat and was appointed Canada's Ambassador to Germany a short time later.  In June of this year, he announced he was taking medical leave after being diagnosed with thyroid cancer, his third cancer diagnosis.  When news of his death broke late this morning, I was on the phone moments later with Stewart Prest, a political scientist at UBC, for his thoughts on Horgan's legacy.  

Prest said, looking back, Horgan seems like something of a rarity now.

“Looking from the perspective of 2024, he represented a kind of style of politics which I think we see less of, in a polarized environment, where he presented himself as just an authentic person that people resonated with from across the political spectrum," he said.

Horgan was also an unlikely premier.  He landed the job through a confidence and supply agreement with then-Green Party leader Andrew Weaver.  His rise to the NDP leadership was also unlikely, as it came by acclamation.

"In the mid-2010s, after the NDP had suffered a series of losses, including the heartbreaking lesson in 2013, [he put] himself forward. He wasn’t doing so as part of some kind of calculated political play, it was just doing what needed to be done when no one else was willing to step forward for the party,” Prest continued.

I also wanted to hear from Ravi Parmar, the man who replaced Horgan as the MLA for Langford.  We spoke over Zoom this afternoon.  Some of the most powerful words I heard about Horgan were not spoken by Premier Eby or any of Horgan's former cabinet colleagues, but by a man who remembers first meeting Horgan as a fifth-grader.

"Today, I'm thinking about his family, in particular, the love of his life, Ellie, his boys, and [I’m] really thankful for the incredible service that he provided to the people of Langford, but all British Columbians," he said.

"He was the guy at every single [Victoria] Shamrocks game, yelling as loud as the next person sitting down the row.  He was the guy that would be at your neighbourhood grocery store.  He was the people's premier.  And he was the people's MLA.  It's no surprise why so many people said that he's the type of guy that you would want to have a beer with.  I think that's what the people of Langford are going to be thinking about, not only today but for many days ahead," Parmar added.

While we have lost premiers Bill Bennett and Dave Barrett in recent years, losing Horgan hits a little differently for me.  That's most likely because I was born too late to cover either Bennett or Barrett.  (I was eight years old when Bennett stepped down in 1986.)  Horgan is the first premier from my time working in news to pass away.  And whatever we may say about his time in his office, and there is much to debate, his passing does mark a significant moment in BC politics, one those of us who covered this era won't soon forget.