Randy Bachman, according to a story in the Huffington Post, has vented his displeasure at Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper for using without permission his classic “Takin’ Care of Business” as the theme song for a speech Harper gave recently to his Conservative supporters.
Bachman tells HuffPo he likely wouldn’t have granted permission to Harper to use the song because of the low royalty rate (10 percent of the American rate) for digital music streaming set by the Copyright Board of Canada earlier this year. The full HuffPo story is at this link.
I did a newspaper interview with Bachman back around the time he wrote “Takin’ Care of Business.” You can read about that encounter in a recent column I wrote for the estimable Facts & Opinions online journal. You can find a link to the column here. It will cost you a buck to read it but, hey, that’s less than you would pay to buy me a cup of coffee. Plus, that buck helps pay my grocery bills. I depend on royalties for my livelihood too.
UPDATE – Bachman has backtracked somewhat, saying in a story today that “Takin’ Care of Business” was actually played in a venue licensed for use of recorded music. But he’s still upset at the Copyright Board for shortchanging Canadian musicians. You can find the updated Winnipeg Free Press story here.
(This story is one of a series entitled “One Person’s Journey” telling how people from all walks of life, including a few rogues and rebels, have left their marks upon the world. To see a list of others featured in the series, click here.)
John Brownlee 1883 – 1961
As political sex scandals go, it seemed like pretty tame stuff at first. When a junior government stenographer named Vivian MacMillan accused Alberta premier John E. Brownlee of sexual misconduct, the province’s newspapers devoted less coverage to the civil lawsuit than they did to a juicy wife-swapping suit involving Brownlee’s public works minister, O.L. (Tony) McPherson. But when the stenographer’s charges stuck and the 50-year-old premier had to publicly defend himself in court, the newspapers broke out the big black headlines that they normally reserve for coverage of a world war. It was cheap entertainment for the Depression-battered masses, and they devoured it with prurient relish.
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(This story is one of a series entitled “One Person’s Journey” telling how people from all walks of life, including a few rogues and rebels, have left their marks upon the world. To see a list of others featured in the series, click here.)
Henry Wise Wood 1860 – 1941
Henry Wise Wood was the first in a series of semi-mystical visionaries – William Aberhart and Ernest Manning followed in his footsteps – who rose up when called upon to give voice to the concerns of western Canada. At a time when 70 percent of Albertans lived on the land, Wood was the most influential farm leader in this province. He could have had the premier’s job for the asking when the United Farmers of Alberta swept to power in 1921. Yet for reasons that remain unclear to this day, Wood never sought political office. Instead, he expanded his role as farm leader and became a pivotal figure in the creation of wheat pools in Alberta.
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(This story is one of a series entitled “One Person’s Journey” telling how people from all walks of life, including a few rogues and rebels, have left their marks upon the world. To see a list of others featured in the series, click here.)
Sir James Lougheed 1854 – 1925
Two buildings in Calgary stand as monuments to James Lougheed, the contractor’s son who rose from humble beginnings in Toronto to become early Calgary’s leading citizen and the grandfather of a future premier.
One structure is the big sandstone mansion Lougheed built as his home. It has been restored to its former glory as a magnificent example of late Victorian home building in the colonies. The other Lougheed development, located in the heart of Calgary’s business district, is one of the last Canadian examples of a turn-of-the-century commercial building with a theatre contained within.
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Jack Layton, said The Globe and Mail, was a “man of convictions and ideals who reached across partisan lines to work pragmatically and for the public good. He ennobled politics.”
Indeed, and Layton reminded me of two Alberta politicians who played similar roles on the provincial stage: the late Grant Notley, who also was a New Democrat, and the late Sheldon Chumir, who was a Liberal.
Notley, a former national secretary for the federal NDP, became the leader of the faltering Alberta NDs in 1968 when it was a party torn apart by ideological differences and – with no seats in the legislature – on the brink of political extinction. Some suggested he should run for a party that actually had a chance of electing members, but Notley wanted to be a New Democrat because the party represented “the most civilized approach to blending the two instincts that we all have – our desire to be individuals and our need to be part of the community.”
Chumir, a lawyer and civil liberties advocate, never sought the leadership of his provincial party because, as he said, he “didn’t have the fire in the belly for the position.” But as Liberal critic for all the important government portfolios – shadowing the provincial treasurer, energy minister, attorney general and solicitor general – Chumir garnered more headlines than the ministers whose policies he found fault with.
Both men defied the odds to win seats in a province where right-wing governments – starting with the Social Crediters and continuing with the Progressive Conservatives – had ruled supreme since the mid-1930s. Notley ran unsuccessfully three times before establishing a legislative beachhead for the NDs in the 1971 election that brought Peter Lougheed’s Tories to power. Chumir broke the Tory blockade of southern Alberta in 1986 to become the first provincial Liberal elected in Calgary in 20 years.
If ideology shaped their political beliefs, it rarely surfaced as a credo that defined them as legislators. Notley never came across as a “real” socialist because he had an uneasy relationship with the trade union movement – the traditional support system for the New Democrats. Chumir never came across as a standard-bearer for liberalism because he was more interested in dealing with the practical day-to-day concerns of his constituents – worker compensation claims, landlord-tenant disputes and so on – than in getting speeches into Hansard about the global economy.
Both men – like Layton – were taken from us far too soon. A plane crash ended Notley’s life at age 45, two years before Alberta voters sent an unprecedented number of New Democrats – 16 – to the provincial legislature. Chumir died of lymphoma at age 51, three years into his second term as MLA. Some said the two men could have made their names as cabinet ministers if they had run for the ruling Tories. But Notley and Chumir didn’t go into politics for the prestige. They went into politics because – like Layton – they cared. They will continue to be missed for a long time.