‘Not a fall guy yet:' The savvy and staying power of former Bay Street titan and Ottawa survivor Michael Wilson

Toronto Star

08-06-2025

Mike Wilson once told me the idea to run for Parliament came to him after a 1977 business trip to Hong Kong.
Wilson said he became 'haunted' by the words of an Asian businessman who said, 'We look at Canada, that vast expanse of land where you have resources and can produce food. You've got everything going for you. Why are you messing it up so badly?'
Wilson resigned as executive vice-president at Dominion Securities and won public office in 1979. By the time Saturday Night assigned me in 1985 to write a profile on Wilson, he'd been minister of finance for a year.
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My interview time with Wilson included five hours on an Air Canada flight from Toronto to San Francisco.
In those days, Air Canada was a Crown corporation but there were plans to turn it into a public company. When a member of Air Canada's counter staff gave Wilson indifferent service, I could see his face harden.
'That's why I want to get some shares out into the hands of the public,' he muttered, 'so they have an interest in improving the service.'
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The speech Wilson gave in the Mark Hopkins Hotel ballroom was received with similar lethargy. When his twenty-three minute talk concluded, he was rewarded with all of nine seconds of applause. If Mike Wilson counted on audience response for nourishment, he'd starve.
As I researched the article, many friends and colleagues described him as naive and guileless. I formed the thesis that if Wilson's deficit predictions didn't work out or some financial crisis caused economic trouble for the country, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney would blame his self-effacing finance minister because Wilson wouldn't protest.
Among the many anecdotes he told me, one involved him saying to a fellow cabinet minister who'd complained about back pain, 'You don't have a bad back, you've got a bad front.' When the fact-checker from Saturday Night called Wilson and he learned that this comment was in the article, Wilson called me several times to remove the quote. I eventually agreed.
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My story was on the March 1986 cover. The close-up photograph of Wilson showed him adjusting his tie and looking up with the hint of a smile. The cover line read, 'Is the minister of finance about to become Brian Mulroney's fall guy?'
Wilson proved me wrong.
He had the savvy and staying power required for the role as finance minister from 1984-91.
At one point during that period, I received a brown envelope from the Department of Finance. There was no note. There was no need. Inside was the torn-off Saturday Night cover featuring his smile that somehow seemed to have grown wider. In his own hand he'd written, 'Not a fall guy yet' and signed his name.
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I assumed that this jocular notation meant that he'd forgiven me for my description. He had not. A few years later when I called him to ask for an interview about another matter, he browbeat me again about the 'bad front' quote, before finally agreeing.
Wilson was certainly not one of those politicians with a needy ego. The Economist once declared, 'Many Americans seem to think that theirs is just a large country, stuck between dull old Canada and noisy Mexico.'
Said a droll letter to the editor, 'Why do you persist in calling Canada dull? What is it you want? Do you know that Canadians are the world curling champions? Do you know that the paint roller is a Canadian invention? Have you ever heard Michael Wilson speak? A country can only stand so much excitement.'
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The writer was Frank Potter, then Canada's executive director at the Washington-based World Bank, a Wilson appointee who knew the minister wouldn't mind a bit of lighthearted fun at his own expense.
After fourteen years in Parliament, Wilson did not run for re-election in 1993, a wise decision as it turned out because his Progressive Conservative party was reduced to two seats. He returned to his old firm, by then called RBC Dominion Securities, as vice-chairman.
Wilson's life was forever altered in 1995 when his only son, Cameron, who suffered from mental health issues, died by suicide. Wilson's high-profile role in Parliament allowed him to draw public attention to a topic about which he cared deeply.
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He launched a fundraising campaign for the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Foundation. He also gave speeches about the need to help all those with mental illness as well as the importance of not staying silent when it strikes family.
I can't think of very many other high-profile individuals who took such a courageous stand.
Mike Wilson, who died in 2019, was proof positive that you can thrive after a Bay Street role as well as time in Ottawa, the city that has withered many a heart.