I think it was the summer or fall of 2004 when I first met Brad Wall, while working as the political reporter for the Battlefords News-Optimist.
He had recently become the leader of the Saskatchewan Party, having succeeded Elwin Hermanson, possibly one of the least-exciting political leaders this province had produced. Wall was young, still in his 30s, and he had just recently put out a policy paper with a number of points on how he wanted to reform Saskatchewan.
I met him in the small, little-used North Battleford Cameron McIntosh Airport terminal. He had flown in on one of those executive air planes that were used to ferry MLAs from Regina to far-flung ridings (Those planes were disposed of in the last provincial budget).
We sat and talked, probably for half an hour, and I got a really good picture of him, which happens to still be floating around my office somewhere, in print form. It was probably the best politician portrait I’ve taken yet.
I don’t remember if it was on this day or later that fall, but he spoke to a group of party faithful in North Battleford.
I still remember a key point in his speech – the story of the white pickup.
Wall talked about how a business person he knew at home kept getting a new white pickup of the same make and model every year or two.
He’d like to get something different, but couldn’t. Why? Because if the customers of his business knew he could afford something new and swanky, they might punish him by not going to his business because he was obviously getting too far ahead.
And that, in a nutshell, what was wrong with the Saskatchewan attitude at the time. We collectively frowned on success.
I’ve since retold that white pickup story several times, because he was absolutely right.
After he was done, I got to have a one-on-one chat with him that probably lasted half an hour or more.
It must have made an impression, because since then, I have been fortunate enough to have one-on-one discussions with him, on average once a year or so, discussing things at much greater depth that everyone else got from the typical press conference.
That might have been because the rest of the news media had nearly daily access to the premier, while I only spoke to him once or twice a year. I wouldn’t call very often, but he would usually return my calls. Whatever the reason, he made time for me in a way that I would have never expected from other politicians in his position.
For instance, when he was on one of his annual lobbying efforts to Washington, fighting for the Keystone XL project, I got a 15-minute call from Premier Wall while he was in the halls of Congress, about to go into a Senate committee meeting. That was a big deal for me, and for Pipeline News.
Another time I ended up talking to him via cellphone from my SUV in the Regina Costco parking lot. Beyond my questions for the paper, I told him about the housing shortage in Estevan coming to a crisis point, and stories I had heard of people sleeping in cars in parking lots. He was genuinely concerned, something I rarely heard, in that manner, from a politician.
Brad Wall is, and has been, a politician that one might only come across once in a generation. He is humble, yet strong and forceful when needed. He’s a gifted speaker beyond anyone I’ve ever seen. Recently I watched another political leader and found myself comparing him to Wall. There was no comparison.
I don’t think he tripped over his ego like many other politicians do daily. He could charm a room and an individual, and often did both.
To my knowledge, he never did move to Regina, instead spending nearly five hours in the passenger seat of a vehicle nearly every day between Swift Current and Regina, with a driver handling the wheel while he worked the phone. I’ve done several interviews over the phone with him while he was on this incredibly long daily commute.
He got it, and Saskatchewan people knew it. It’s no surprise that the last few elections, the Saskatchewan Party, led by Wall, walked away with massive majorities in seats and popular vote.
He’s not gone yet, but Brad Wall will be sorely missed when he is. I just wonder if he’s going to spend the next few years learning French, and if he’ll take a run at the federal stage at some point down the road.
