The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben Mulroney talks about his first Christmas without his father

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

Ben Mulroney talks about his first Christmas without his father If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy

So this is the Ben Mulroney Show on the Chorus Radio Network. My name is Greg Brady. For Ben hosting this show. And yet, I'm looking right across from me and there he is. Is this an out-of-body experience for me or an out-of-hosting-the-show experience for you? This is a poor planning on my part. We made our travel plans for the holidays before the Ben Mulroney Show came into existence. And so we planned accordingly.

And next thing you know, I got to work on Fridays. I never had to work on Fridays before. Almost everybody made their holiday plans thinking the existence of the Ben Mulroney show was an impossibility. So we all did that. It just affects you a little bit more because your name's on the show and you're traveling. I'm sure this will be a, all of us dread this with our parents, the first Christmas without a mom or a dad. And this is your first

without your dad, who I think our audience knows was no ordinary dad to you and your siblings, but also was no ordinary person in the country and was no ordinary prime minister. When last year started, we had seven living former prime ministers and there's a kinship and a bond. And we lost your dad in late February of this past year. So how do you reflect upon the year and how much you've thought of him and the moments without him now? Well, I think about him every day. And I hope that as I speak of him, you know that I appreciate that we all go through it. This is a common, I'm not special about this. But I am fortunate in that I have a lifetime of memories. I can go to YouTube and I can see his face. I can hear his voice at any point.

And I've got my family and we are closer than we've ever been. We used to be really close and now we're even closer. And just yesterday, we were talking about what's going on in Ottawa saying, God, dad would have loved to follow the action in Ottawa. Like I miss him more on days where Ottawa is chaotic because we would have been talking on the phone eight, 10 times a day. And I definitely miss it. But I don't know that for me personally,

the holidays are going to be sad. I think they're going to be filled with humor and joy because we have so many stories to share. And in the back nine of his life, he loved when we would tell jokes about him and make fun of him. He got so much joy out of us ribbing him. And those stories are going to come to the fore over Christmas. And so I'm speaking to you with a big smile on my face because he is so alive in our hearts and in our souls and in our minds. Well, there's two things I think of when you say that.

One is to describe your dad's life as a life well lived. That doesn't even cover it, not by a long shot. And I would think also it's no one could make the case that he didn't pack a lot into 84 years. But you always want one more. I'm playing golf with my dad this summer. I'm like, I want one more game. I want one more summer where I can play with him. You always want one more i'm playing golf with my dad this summer i'm like i want one more game i want one more summer where i can play with him you would want one more christmas one more grandchild's birthday for him to call or be a part of and that's hard i mean i yeah i don't look at it that way because he had a number of health scares he had there was one time

years and years and years ago where we thought we were going to lose him. How long ago? Oh, so we were in Montreal. It was, I want to say at least 10 or 12 years earlier. I'm sure I'm getting the numbers wrong, but it's over a decade. And at one point, my mom converted my dad's den in his house into a hospital room. And this is where they sent him back and he didn't look good. And we could have lost him then. And so I looked at every him back and he didn't look good. And we could have lost him then. And so I looked at every day after that as a gift, right? So when he passed, to me,

that was, I said to myself, he fought as hard as he could. He's at peace now. Yes, of course, I would like love another day, but I got all those extra days. We could have lost him. And I think about all the birthdays, all the birthdays all the all the births all the weddings all the celebrations that he enjoyed after after he recovered from that illness as the gift what was great about christmas in your home with your parents well like you go through so many different like christmas is different when you're five than when you're 17 than when you're a college student coming back but what sort of stood out as being a foundation of christmas uh that my mom always goes overboard even though when we tell her please we don't we don't need that many gifts no of course it could

be a very small very modest christmas and then she just downscale this year it never happens and it's and the the number of gifts and now now there's there are a ton of gifts because there are a ton of mulroonies and so she'll make sure that they're all there and the kids the awe on their faces when they see that pile uh the the act of cooking christmas dinner which i now am a full participant in we deep fry a turkey we've got my mom invites not just we're not just the whole family but i think we have 33 people coming for dinner this year. Christmas day, my dad wearing his robe. He's wearing his robe. And the best part for me is always, he waits till the very, very end. He would wait until the very, very end to give my mom

the one gift that he got for her that she had no idea about. And it was normally a piece of jewelry. And she would then wear it for the rest of the day. And watching her face, watching his face, giving it to her was a staple. He was so proud that he could, he worked hard his whole life that he was able to give her something that would blow her socks off. He'd be having fun listening to your show right now. I know that you started getting deep into the talk radio weeds last fall at this time. So we had several months, I'm sure,

to check you out and I'm sure give you a fair amount of critiques and whatnot. But there's a real, look, there's always a parent-child, but I live it vicariously as well. The father-son thing where, you know, you want respect. You want, you so want your parents to be proud of you. When they say I'm disappointed in you, that's 10 times worse than when they're mad at you. Absolutely. Because anger is a human emotion. We all get like that. This, he would have enjoyed this.

He would have enjoyed hearing you opine on all the issues of the day, no matter where it took you. Oh, he would, no, he would have loved this. Listen, he was always proud of his kids. And, you know, he always told us, find that thing that you love and do it as well as you can. And I found broadcasting and it brought me into the entertainment world and eventually into sort of current events with the morning show that I did at the other network. But this, this is the thing that he loved the most.

Talk radio and talking politics and going inside and and opinions and bringing the newsmakers in and you know we're building something that i i wish he could have seen i wish he could have seen this show in a year right because we're not the show we're going to be in a year but this is this i mean i remember when i first started on radio i think on the second day he would listen on the first day and thought it was good. And then he listened on the second day and told me it wasn't so good. And I told him like that, I'm figuring out how to do this.

This is my, not my second day hosting a show, hosting any show. And so, so he was always very honest, but always, always with kindness. Even,

even when he had criticism, he was leveling at me. It was, it was because he knew I could do better. And, and so, but I think he'd be proud of what we're building and he'd be proud of sort of the content and the perspective and the, the, the, the, the values that I want Canada to know about me. And I think he'd be happy with the stories I share about him as well. The holidays are about family. So we're talking with Ben Mulrooney, of course, from the Ben Mulroney Show. It's Greg Brady guest hosting today with Ben heading away. And I'd also bring up the notion that your dad went through this soaring popularity politically and that changed nine years later.

And there's some similarities to now. There's not a lot. There's a lot of differences between what you're seeing now. I think there are far more differences. Probably more differences. Yeah, some of the similarities are just the numbers themselves.

But the similarity is the proof that governments get long in the tooth. And after a certain amount of time, it's time for turnover. So how was that for him? And what do you remember about sort of, you told me a story earlier in the week about him calling you home. You were 17 years old and he said, like, this is

it. I'm going to I'm going to ride this out for another few months, but I'm not running for reelection again. It gets quiet after that. Right. Everybody, everybody wants you. Everybody's calling. You are you are on the hook. You are incredibly popular, deeply unpopular. You're all over the place did he enjoy a little more of the silence or did he miss it right away so so he believed that political capital was meant to be spent and if if you if you resigned aloft in the polls you did something wrong it's me it means you didn't use everything you had to do the hard things and he knew that the hard things that he wanted to do were going to cost him politically.

So he knew that going in. You know, I don't want to get into the conversation about what happened in that election because I have personal opinions that differ with other people. I think it was a winnable election. There were polls that suggested that Kim Campbell could win a minority.

So it was not, that defeat was not written in the stars. Those two seats were not inevitable. That's my own personal opinion. I don't care if people disagree with me because that's not the point of this conversation. But to answer your question, did he enjoy the silence afterwards? He, maybe, but no.

He liked being in the center of stuff. And then to be in from the center of stuff to no longer in that circle, it was confusing for him. There was one day in the summer after he resigned where he looked at my sister and said, tell them I'll have my coffee outside. My sister said, I'm them, dad. There's nobody around. It's just us. Well, we'll come back with more and we'll do another few minutes, especially around holiday time. Like we said, we think about family.

We think about moms and dads. Ben and I are both parents. And I think it means a lot to talk about family and for people to relate this to anything that they're going through or, you know, deciding how they want to celebrate those holidays. You're listening right now to the Chorus Radio Network and the Ben Mulroney Show. Welcome back. It's Greg Brady hosting the Ben Mulroney Show across the Chorus Radio Network and joined by Ben Mulroney, who's kind enough to share some memories of his legendary father, prime minister between 1984 and 1993, who sadly passed away this past year on February 29th, the leap year day at the age of 84. I mentioned all that.

And again, there must be some traditions you must see yourself as a parent and a husband. And we all try and look at all the things we liked about our dad and adored about our dad. And we try and emulate that in our own lives. We're like, that might've been you. This is me, but I'm sure there's some things that pass right along down the chain. What do you see in yourself? What do you see, especially this time of year when everybody gets to get together for a holiday like this? Well, I think one thing I've got from my dad now is that I don't need anything. Like I don't need presents. I really don't.

If nobody gave me a present at Christmas, that doesn't determine whether it's a good Christmas or not. It's about all the stuff that when we hear as kids, we think are hokey, family and togetherness and a good meal and memories. Those are the things that truly matter to me. And I think I got that from my dad. I want everyone around me to have a really happy Christmas. And so that gives me joy at Christmas. I'm selfish other times a year, but at Christmas, I actually feel quite the opposite. And so I want my kids to have a good time, but my kids are different than me. I wanted lots of presents. I had a list as long as my arm of presents I wanted. My kids don't want for much. They ask for one or two or three things and they don't really care for much. And so I like that. I don't want to lean in and change those expectations,

especially in this economy. But the love of being with family at Christmas, I get that from him, absolutely. And from my mom, I get the desire to be in the kitchen with her. I love being in the kitchen with her, helping out with Christmas dinner. I'm sorry you don't want anything. I got you a 1993 Montreal Canadiens signed jersey from old. I feel like you have that already, though, with that legendary team that won in 10 overtimes. The last Canadian team, naturally, to win against Gretzky and the Kings 31 years ago. I also think about you mentioning that makes me think that you were such a rock during this process. We talked a couple times on the air a couple weeks after your dad passed.

And I remember you mentioning sometimes you're like, I know I'm okay, but I got to make sure everyone else is. I got to make sure my wife is, my mom especially. Grandkids that lose their grandparents is a little bit of a, it's always a shock no matter what you are able to see coming as a son. That was a big factor wasn't it it was like my kids didn't show a ton of emotion until the funeral and especially when we were walking out and they were we played a song that he had recorded for his grandkids he sings yes yeah yeah it was called um we'll meet again yeah we'll meet again don't know where don't know when and it was just it hit everybody like a ton of bricks and uh and so you i listen i check in with them all the time we're not a family

that's afraid of feelings that's for sure uh i i could i cry at the drop of a hat now like there's a there's an alan doyle song i was listening to it's uh it's called um a dream of home and he sang it on my morning show during the pandemic. And I got welled up because it reminded me of my dad. And so it popped up on my playlist, surprisingly, the other day. Did you skip past it? No. Oh, gosh.

Some of the sad ones. Yeah, no, I had to play it. My dad has never heard that song. He never heard it. But to me, it reminds me of him. And it's beautiful and haunting and optimistic even in its sadness. And I think there's – I think I remember that, that there's joy even inside those sad moments. And we're going to cry over Christmas, but we're going to be crying two seconds later laughing with tears coming down our faces because he elicits, he deserves and demands all of those feelings, I think.

When all the people that were at the funeral, all the people that would call our radio station or you'd probably look up in the subsequent days, see them on TV, paying tribute to your dad. The people that agree, the people that disagree, the people that were sometimes in the middle. I think you're spotting uh jean cretchen i always think about this and i told you this made that incredible effort at age 93 to go down to parliament hill and and get in front of cameras doesn't do it very often and do this scrum where he talked about how much he adored your dad even when they'd scrap i I thought that was amazing. That was deeply appreciative. I was no fan of him and how he treated my dad in politics, but I can promise you what he did that day.

I've told my family, I said, if there's a single invite when he passes, I said, I would like to attend on behalf of the family because I would like to show my respect to his family as he showed respect to ours. Did some of it surprise you? Oh. From some people even? Oh, of course. Everything surprised me.

If you'd asked me to write out 10 different scenarios as to how that entire process was going to go from the moment he passed to the moment that we said goodbye, finally, I would never have predicted what actually happened and believe it or not our prime minister suggested it to me he said he said listen whatever you're expecting don't he said you're not gonna you will not be able to understand what's about to happen to you and i thought he was i thought i thought the trudeau myth you know the the the the you know the train across the country and all that stuff. I thought, oh, you know, the country had a love affair with his dad, right?

I was forgetting how unpopular his father was when he passed. So he was quite, it was sage advice from the prime minister at that time. Would your dad worry, even in the last nine months since he hasn't been alive and hasn't been in your life, would he worry more about canada uh now even as we end 2024 i don't know that we're in dangerous times but ben we sure are in uncertain times we're in on very uncertain waters here i think yeah i i won't i wouldn't speak for him but i'll just tell you something he said about america he said you know when people were talking about donald trump and being an affront to,

a danger to the republic, Dad said, he said, I'm far more bullish on the strongest, greatest republic in the history of democracy than I am about any one person's attempt to undermine and destroy it. In other words, like, everyone calm down.

This too shall pass. And I, again, I don't want to speak for him, but I wouldn't be surprised if he felt the same way about Canada and where we are as a nation. We will fix where we are. It's going to require hard work. It's going to require decisions to be made. And it's not going to be pretty.

And a lot of people are going to be angry. But yes, my dad would never for a second think that this country will not be here tomorrow he went through such a unique experience too with three u.s presidents ronald reagan george herbert walker bush and obviously the first year or so bill clinton such such different all three such different personalities yeah yeah well but uh the relationship between the Canadian prime minister and any president has to be at the top of any prime minister's list. Tending to that relationship and making sure it's as good and as strong as possible has to be the top foreign policy priority of any prime minister. When you think about Christmases to come, is this going to be

a harder one to get through than the rest of them? I'm not trying to go Barbara Walters on you, but people are going to want to know that. Oh, look, we're going to cry. Of course we're going to cry. Of course. But I look forward to those moments. Somebody said sadness is – when you lose somebody, sadness is sort of a reminder of the love that you have for them. I'd be very disappointed in myself if I felt nothing or if I didn't explore all those feelings,

especially when I'm surrounded by my family. And my mother has been such a rock. Watching her navigate this past year, watching her navigate from the moment he passed to today, she's the most incredible woman that any of us in our lives have ever encountered. She is the high watermark for strength and poise and family and love and organization also. She's quite organized and she needs to be with this many grandkids. So no, she has been, I was always

amazed by my mom. I'm further in awe of her every day since my dad passed. That's Ben Mulroney on The Ben Mulroney Show. You know, you're a decent guest. Will you come back on the show sometime? I mean, at some point? Merry Christmas, Gregory. Thanks for sitting in for me. I appreciate it.

It was lovely. I appreciate you talking about it.