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Oh. My. Goodness. Some very woke person hissed “As a social worker in training, I need to speak out against oppression and discrimination.” Right. Not at all presumptuous of a “social worker in training” to lecture a former PM on how to succeed. Or what it means. See it’s all relative. “Just because post-secondary education is your idea of success, that doesn’t mean that it’s everybody else’s. Living in a paper mill town is not an obstacle that you need to overcome.”

Might I tentatively suggest that this sentiment is just a tiny bit “judgy”? What ever happened to live and let live, you do you, be sensitive and supportive and all that talk? In fact taken seriously this argument devours itself as well as its offspring.

See, just because living in a paper mill town is your idea of success doesn’t mean it’s everybody else’s so don’t lecture me. As a matter of fact I do think there’s a great deal of dignity in manual labour. Often more than in the symbolic professions and certainly more than in politics. But while I wasn’t a big Mulroney fan at the time and still am not, surely he’s entitled to feel that he walked the walk, and thank his old dad for sage words that changed his life in ways that for him worked out really well.

Following his father’s counsel, Martin Brian Mulroney had an outstanding career as a lawyer before going into politics and becoming prime minister, the only (Progressive) Conservative federal leader to win two majorities since the Treaty of Versailles, raising a big family with his wife of 46 years (and counting) and becoming an elder statesman. Which is pretty much what he wanted to do and he seems happy with it. Apart from that, I guess it was lousy advice.