- MacPolitics: Corporate Lawyer John Young: Was A Member Of The Allan J. MacEachen Club –
By Andrew Macdonald
Former noted BoyneClarke corporate lawyer John Young, a mover and shaker in the City of Halifax, now sadly deceased, once toiled with one of the most powerful politicians in the 1970s.
I refer to the wily political strategist Allan J. MacEachen, the Cape Breton Liberal don, who was Pierre Trudeau’s deputy prime minister.
MacEachen ran his Parliamentary office by hiring young bright minds – his political aides included Frank McKenna, former STFX president Sean Riley, lobbyist Moses Coady & Chris MacInnes, as well as Colin Patrick MacDonald, now a retired Calgary leading corporate lawyer.
John Young was an aide in the 1972 Trudeau minority government, as well.
Carol and lawyer John Young were top Movers & Shakers In Halifax Business and Political worlds. Notebook file photo.
I have long called the servants to MacEachen the Allan J. Club.
“I never met him until a month before I went to work for him. He interviewed me. I was a bit stunned when I first met him, because Allan J. was not quite like any other politician I had ever seen”, recalled Young.
Allan J. MacEachen, left, with Pierre Trudeau. Allan J built the Port Hawkesbury airport in 1974.
“He was cerebral. He was quiet. He would sit there and not necessarily talk to fill the vacuum”, said Young.
“He turned out almost to be a professor. When you worked for him, you’d almost get a degree in post-government”, he told me.
“We worked 24-hours a day, seven days a week, in those days because we had that famous minority government back in 1972-1974″, Young previously told The Notebook.
A portrait of political Titan Allan J. MacEachen, painted in the 1970s – notice the sideburns. Allan J. saw to it in 1984 that John B. Stewart would get a Senate seat. The Notebook photo.
“You got to learn a great deal and if you listened to Allan J you did learn – and you learned the discipline that is required to succeed in politics”.
Young added that working for the political don also made staffers “parsimonious”.
“Our expense accounts back then never made the front page. You didn’t spend much money when you worked for Allan MacEachen – I’ll tell you”, quipped Young.
Back in the mid-1980s, a Halifax Herald Ottawa correspondent the great retired political scribe Don MacDonald filed a story that MacEachen would bring his own bread from a bakery in Baddeck to Ottawa restaurants.
MacEachen died a millionaire in 2019, at age 96, and is buried in a cemetery in his native Inverness. He was the son of a coal miner.
“He also believed you shouldn’t be using taxpayers’ money for your own personal fun and entertainment. He had a very ethical streak, and you will note, during his whole career (beginning in the 1960s), no one ever accused him of any kind of ethical infraction or misdemeanour – because that is who he was”, observed Young.
Jean Chretien, left, with Allan J. MacEachen. Allan J built the Port Hawkesbury Airport, which was named after him, upon his 2017 death. The Hill Times Photo.
“He was an extraordinary man”.
Another politico to toil with MacEachen included Justin Trudeau’s former senior aide, Gerald Butts, who is from Glace Bay.
“Gerald Butts worked for MacEachen, when he was in the Senate, as did Al Graham, who MacEachen would go on to call him into the Senate.
Members of the Allan J. Club continue to hold significant influence in Canadian political life.
This Allan J MacEachen political poster went up for auction in 2019
“Many of us are still involved, but if you understand one thing about power, it is always more apparent than real, and it most certainly is temporary – as most politicians find out sooner or later”, Young told The Notebook.
MacEachen was famous for building fishing wharves throughout the Atlantic, particularly in Cape Breton.
During a chat once, Young recalled MacEachen asked why there was not a fishing harbour to work on, and Young says MacEachen retorted ‘let’s build a new harbour, and put a wharf there”.
As for Colin Patrick MacDonald, he was chief of staff in MacEachen’s office in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
His bio denotes a leading corporate career:
Colin is a retired Partner from the national law firm of Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, where he practiced corporate/commercial law, with an emphasis on government relations, competition, and foreign investment law. He has advised clients on corporate governance matters and a variety of strategic issues at all levels of government in Canada.
Between 1977-1982, Colin also served in several capacities with MacEachen and the Government of Canada, including as Executive Assistant to the Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister of Canada.
Colin has a long history of governance experience including: Chair, Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame; Chair, Winsport Canada (Canada Olympic Development Corporation); Director, Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation; Director, Terra Energy Corp.; Director, Calgary Airport Authority; Director, Canadian American Business Council ;Governor, St. Francis Xavier University; along with a number of other non-profit boards.
Colin is a graduate of St Francis Xavier University (BBA), McMaster University (MA -Economics), and Dalhousie University (LLB) and has earned the ICD.D designation from the Institute of Corporate Directors.
Editor’s Note: For 14 Macdonald Notebook stories on the Life & Times of Carol & John Young, click here.
