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A puff for Newman's "Dragons"

As is customary, the latest blockbuster by Peter C. Newman, "Here Be Dragons", has become required reading for people interested in the evolution of politics as played on Parliament Hill over a span of four decades.

Newman first burst on Canadian consciousness with his "Renegade in Power", an unflattering description of the Right Hon. John George Diefenbaker, the populist Prime Minister from the Prairies. Diefenbaker claimed not to have read it, but his wife certainly did. Mention of it in her presence brought a blistering reaction.

"Here Be Dragons" will draw praise, and criticism, from all wavelengths in the political spectrum, but there can be no quibble with one particular section, the physical description of the Press Gallery as it existed in the early 1960s. His is a perfect word picture. Housed on the third floor of the main block, it shared the same corridor in the Centre Block as the Hansard offices.

There was much interaction between both offices. Some members of the Press Gallery were almost daily visitors, seeking an advance copy of the "blues", the unedited and unrevised reports of speeches and exchanges in the Chamber, usually but not always of happenings during the daily Question Period. Indeed, one member of the Gallery was a pain in the neck, constantly wheedling and whingeing, trying to gain preference ahead of his peers.

The traffic in the opposite direction was normally confined to after-sitting hours. As recounted elsewhere in earlier works on this web site, the oasis over which presided the affable George Gagnon drew many a parched Hansard reporter at the end of their working shifts.

All have their memories. Newman's book has stirred those memories.

If there is one that runs counter to Newman's personal musings it is of the members of the Press Gallery as a body. It had its stars, and Newman rekindles their light. But a collective comparison of its members in those years with latter-day political scribes suggests there was more investigative reporting done then than is the case with their present-day "gotcha" successors.

Despite this minor reservation, "Here Be Dragons" deserves full credit for its masterful limning of many who were once outstanding members of their respective professions, reporters and politicians alike.

J.W.

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