Like many public servants, Tom Campbell avoided reporters.

In life, he kept his distance. In death, however, he has opened up.

At his behest, his daughter sent an email the other day signalling that one of Ontario’s most influential deputies was finally ready to go public.

“Hello Martin. Yesterday my father, Tom Campbell died.

“You wrote a piece about him in 1984 when he was deputy minister of finance and you might be interested to know that at dinner on the night before his death, your piece was a topic of conversation.”

Campbell, 83, had kept a copy of that newspaper profile all this time, despite refusing an interview with the rookie reporter who wrote it. Now, according to his daughter Alexandra, 44, he was ready, belatedly, to talk — from the grave.

As much about how he lived his life as how he ended it.

“I did ask my Dad, ‘What if I told Martin some of these things now, after you die?’ And he said, ‘Sure.’ ”

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But before the epilogue is written, one must go back in time.

Campbell had once helmed the province’s sprawling health ministry, where lobbyists pressed him to help people suffering from terminal illnesses die with dignity. The deputy had listened respectfully, knowing full well his hands were tied by his political masters and prevailing public opinion, but he’d challenged the group:

“Why should we do it?” he asked at the time.

This year, Campbell had his answer, when the roles were reversed. Suffering from the excruciating pain of bladder cancer, he quietly chose Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID).

But to fulfil his final wish, he first had to rely on his old skill set as a deputy to navigate the Byzantine rules laid down by bureaucrats in the corridors of power he’d once inhabited. The irony was not lost on the former mandarin, a shy but forceful introvert who’d always been a stickler for formality and rules.

“I don’t want to be a science experiment,” he told his children, declining desperate attempts at surgery as the cancer invaded his lymph nodes and the pain worsened.

A deputy treasurer must be cold-blooded in wielding a budget axe to balance the government’s books. No surprise that he would be similarly decisive about his own circumstances.

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Campbell’s daughter says he had excellent care from the two physicians who assessed his bid for MAID. But the drawn-out procedures for collecting information and granting permission were frustrating and dehumanizing.

After securing the final approvals, Campbell tried new pain medications without success before announcing to his family (including his wife Mary Mogford, also a former deputy, and son John): “I want to do this . . . this is happening tomorrow.”

His daughter describes it as a moment of enormous relief — from the physical pain, but also the mental limbo. He worried that others would still not benefit from the procedure as he had.

“It sounds crazy but the chance to have an assisted death gave him the courage to keep living through the summer,” Alexandra explained. “He was very adamant that the legislation has not gone far enough. And he hopes that having been former deputy minister of health for Ontario might give some weight to the cause.”

Over coffee, she explained that her father believed the procedures could be streamlined so that people who clearly qualify for medically assisted death are not forced to take heroic — or humiliating — steps to comply. At times, it felt as if the roadblocks made death harder for patients only to make life easier for the bureaucracy.

Despite securing permission from his Toronto doctors, it was difficult to relay that approval to another jurisdiction so that he could die with loved ones at his suburban home. He faced an unexpected 72-hour delay in filling the approved prescription. And having watched two of his sisters struggle with dementia, the inability to sign an advance directive for MAID “created fear and frustration for my Dad,” she said.

Throughout his career, Campbell had always projected precisely the opposite — outer calm and inner confidence. A downhill skier from northern Ontario, he scaled the heights of the Toronto power structure during the Progressive Conservative dynasty that culminated with premier Bill Davis, and later chaired Ontario Hydro.

Publicly, he kept his mouth shut and his tie tightly knotted — to the point that one of his political masters described (in that 1984 profile) ordering him to loosen his collar at a staff meeting. Privately, though, Campbell fussed over every budgetary comma, political coda, and even the dress code for budget day.

He was too loyal to disclose it at the time, but as his daughter told me this month, Campbell had begged then-treasurer Frank Miller to dress appropriately when delivering his budget in the early 1980s. Miller wouldn’t back down, concealing his trademark tartan jacket until just before he walked into legislature for the solemn occasion.

That act of defiance was one of Campbell’s lingering regrets, for he believed it detracted from the budget and trivialized the work of the public service. But perhaps Miller (who died in 2000) was gently pushing back against his powerful deputy, whose grip on the budget process was legendary.

That symbolic power struggle stayed with Campbell. A sign that, in life as in death, there are some things one cannot fully control.

Martin Regg Cohn’s political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn