- MacPolitics: One of Stevie Cameron’s ‘ Mulroney Sources Was From Nova Scotia – This Can Be Reported Now
By Andrew Macdonald
In the 1980s, former Globe & Mail political gossip columnist Stevie Cameron was a main foe of the Brian Mulroney administration.
Cameron, who grew up in Belleville, Ontario, began her journalism career as a foodie writer. By the mid-1980s, she was well read as a columnist covering the Mulroney government, and Cameron kept tabs on the patronage plums dispensed by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
Mulroney, who read The Macdonald Notebook and last read it a week before he died in 2023, has had more books written about his leadership than any other Canadian prime minister before him.
Cameron was the author of a scathing book on Mulroney called, On The Take.
In researching this article, I learned that Cameron died in August 2024 at age 80.
Stevie Cameron was an investigative journalist. She died in August 2024 at age 80.
On Wiki, her page describes ‘On The Take’.
“Her second book, On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years, was published in 1994. The book raised questions about the ethics of former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Some allegations included the following scandals: Karlheinz Schreiber making payments to him to influence Air Canada’s $2 billion purchase of Airbus jetliners (Airbus Affair); maintenance contracts for Canada’s CF-18; and a computerized communications system for the foreign affairs department that went $200 million over budget. The book also documented several other corruption scandals during the period.”
With Cameron and Mulroney now deceased, I can now report that one of Cameron’s best Mulroney sources was a successful and colourful Nova Scotia businessman by the name of Joe Stewart, a Mulroney Insider and lobbyist.
Stewart is also deceased, having died in 2016 at age 80. Stewart had been a stalwart in the Tory party since the 1970s. He is fondly known as ‘Pizza Joe, for running a Pizza Delight restaurant in New Glasgow, also known as Big Daddy Joe, for his large physical appearance, and once ran an electronics store with the advertising jingle: ‘You Talk To A Pro, When You Talk To Big Joe’.
Joe Stewart loved spending his days talking to journalists the country over. I had frequent chats with him on politics between 1989 to the day before he died in Sept. 2016.
In life, I would never name a living news source, but Stewart often gave me big news scoops. It was Joe who told me that Mulroney’s daughter, Caroline, would be married by Antigonish priest, Father Greg MacKinnon.
Just as Joe was a main source politically for my 36-year-long news career, I can say with some certainty he was also a source on Mulroney for Stevie Cameron.
For more historical information on Joe Stewart, here is an archived Notebook story:
MacPolitics: Paying A Visit To Big Tory Joe Stewart’s Grave
By Andrew Macdonald
The ninth anniversary of Joe Stewart’s death at age 80 was celebrated this fall. He died Sept. 30, 2016, at his Terra Tory mansion in Antigonish County.
Joe Stewart died in 2016. He was a Mulroney lobbyist.
This week I paid a visit to Stewart’s eternal resting spot, a graveyard at Seabright in Antigonish County.
The graveyard is known as Paddy’s Hollow and dates back to the 1840s. Stewart, in recent years, brought the graveyard back into use, clearing out growth and trees and shrubs.
I offered a prayer at the top Tory operative’s grave, which overlooks Antigonish Harbour.
In life, I talked to Stewart weekly since I was a 21-year-old cub reporter. Today, I turn 58.
Joe Stewart, AKA Pizza Daddy, once told me that he believed Donald Ripley, new deceased, was the most dangerous man in NS Political Halls. The Casket Weekly photo of Stewart in 2015.
He is buried in a grave near where James McDonald was buried in 1913. McDonald founded the beach community of Jimtown Beach, a former lobster cannery, in the 1920s, which was operated by the McDonald family.
Prior to Stewart, the last burial at the graveyard was in the 1960s, but in 2017, it also saw the burials there of Jimtowner Colin Dhu Macdonald and his millennial son, Galen.
Stewart cut a wide swath in Tory politics during the Mulroney era, serving on the Brian Mulroney patronage advisory committee that appointed many Tory lawyers to the bench.
Known fondly by his legion of friends as Pizza Joe, Big Tory Joe and Big Daddy, he was a Mulroney lobbyist who wielded enormous clout during the Mulroney tenure from 1984 to 1993.
I spoke to Stewart the day before he died, as part of a new serial on the Mulroney Insiders’ mansions at Terra Tory, a subdivision Joe began to create in the 1970s on the shores of Antigonish Harbour.
“Other than (Mulroney minister) Elmer MacKay, as for all the other Mulroney Nova Scotia MPs, “they used to complain we had more power than them,” Stewart told me the day before he died in Sept 2016.
Joe Stewart’s 2016 funeral program
He was referring also to his summer cottage neighbours, Brian MacLeod, owner of a chain of seven nursing homes, and Noel Sampson, who is still a government lobbyist.
Lawrence O’Neil, a Nova Scotian MP during the Mulroney years, once chimed that Stewart, MacLeod and Sampson had more power than he had at his disposal as a government backbencher.
Stewart operated his Mulroney government lobby business on the second floor of his former Pizza Delight shop in New Glasgow, where he spent his business life before retiring in the 1990s in his native Antigonish.
He also once owned a Pizza Delight in Halifax.
Stewart had a full day on Sept. 30, 2016, attending the annual St. Francis Xavier University President’s Dinner, where he was a lifetime member. He received an honorary degree from X in 1975. He was a big champion of the university’s football team, and in addition to serving as a Tory bagman, raised funds for the football team and the Junior B Bulldogs in Antigonish
Big Tory Joe Stewart’s tombstone at Paddy’s Hollow graveyard
He died of a heart attack at his home after returning from the X gathering.
Stewart was a proud ‘home boy’ who grew up in the Bill Gillis household. Gillis, now deceased, was Liberal Antigonish MLA for 30 years.
Despite growing up in a Liberal household, Stewart spent 60 years organizing Tory campaigns and doing Tory fundraising.
Efficient with his iPad, he enjoyed reading online newspapers, and one was not welcome to phone his house in the afternoon when Question Period was on in Parliament.
“I enjoy the websites,” he said to me.
He was a regular attendee of old retired businessmen, who gather at Tim Hortons in the town at 8 a.m., and regularly attended Sobeys to read the Globe & Mail – for free.
He also ran the Jimtown RC Chapel, where masses were said during July and August, and drew laughter once in 2014 when he told the congregation to ask for church receipts.
An ornament at Joe Stewart’s grave
That drew gales of laughter, because he said, “The taxman likes receipts.”
He was poking fun at his celebrated income tax evasion conviction in the 1990s, when he failed to declare over $1 million in lobbying income, and was fined by the taxman to the tune of $200,000 in 2001.
In my interview the day before his death, Stewart correctly observed that when he died media would write up articles on his death and bring up the ancient tax conviction from the 1990s.
“It’s been 26 years since I had my problem, and if I die next year, they’ll say in the news obituary, I was once charged for income tax evasion,” Stewart told me. “I think it is just terrible that when someone dies, they will report an indiscretion someone had in their life. It is God awful”.
He was right, the matter formed part of the articles following his death, including that in the provincial Chronicle-Herald.
Installed in 1939, this sundial is at Joe Stewart’s grave.
Stewart was proud of Terra Tory, the poshest subdivision in Antigonish County, home to three medical doctors and three Coady Institute execs. Joe’s wife, Pat, owns 90 undeveloped acres at the seaside enclave.
Stewart is dearly missed by his family, his wife, and three children, his grandchildren, and is also greatly missed by his legion of friends from all political parties.
One of the first to phone Stewart’s wife after he died was Trudeau cabinet minister Scott Brison.
Former Tory premier Donnie Cameron and former Liberal leader Danny Graham attended the funeral at St. Ninian’s Cathedral.
Stewart once sold electronics with the jingle: “You talk to a pro when you talk to Big Joe.”
