Three decades ago the stars aligned for a rookie politician to win a seat at Queen’s Park.
The riding boundaries and its name have changed through the years, but one thing in the Timmins area has remained the same — Gilles Bisson.
He's one of three Members of Provincial Parliament from the Sept. 6, 1990 election still serving. The others are Ted Arnott, and Jim Wilson, who was elected as a Conservative and is now sitting as an independent.
Over the years, Bisson’s voted on countless pieces of legislation in the house and rubbed elbows with royalty. After 30 years, he still wakes up wanting to do the job.
It’s a rainy day in August a couple weeks before the anniversary and Bisson is set up in a corner booth at Osaka Sushi, overlooking the far side of the restaurant.
It’s a familiar space for the veteran politician. When he worked with the United Steelworkers, he explains, his office was on the other side.
Before reflecting on his time in office, he shares a story of the building from that first election night.
“What happened is that the night that we won I was driving down Third Avenue, there was a huge crowd in front of the building, it was like all of the New Democrats...were standing outside of the hall, the others were packed inside of the hall,” he recalls.
“And the thing that I always remember is Bill Ferrier, I can see his smiling face and him just shining in the middle of the crowd because he stood out so much. Because he was so excited that we had won government...it was a special moment.”
It was the work of Ferrier, who represented the riding provincially for about 10 years starting in the late ‘60s and was the minister at the Mountjoy United Church, and others that Bisson credits for winning.
“I always remember that night because of Bill being there. And then we had one heck of a celebration upstairs, that’s all I will tell you,” he laughs.
A career in provincial politics was a possibility he started mulling as a teenager.
Leading up to the 1990 election, he was on the candidate search committee for the local NDP riding association.
As he talked to potential candidates, he kept thinking about how he had better ideas.
When he won the NDP nomination, he didn’t expect to win the riding.
“(I) thought, I’m going to run, going to get known and I’ll get to do it again,” he recalls.
Two things happened in his favour: incumbent Alan Pope decided not to run, and there was an NDP sweep across the province.
“It was just like the stars lined up perfectly in 1990 in order to allow me to be able to win the riding. And remember I was only 32 years old, so I had experience as a staff rep with the union, I had been working with both the Ontario Federation of Labour and the Steelworkers for the better part of four of five years, I had been in industry working as an electrician. But I had no political experience, and I got elected as a result of that sweep,” says Bisson.
Early in his first term, Bisson posed for a photo with all the newly-elected NDP members on the staircase at the legislature.
“I remember looking around when the picture was taken and I was going,’ I wonder if I’m going to be here half as long as these people’. And I’m the only one left. That to me is humbling and rather surprising. Longevity in this business is not normal,” he says.
There are other photos of a young Bisson from those early days. He’s smiling from his office desk, standing outside the legislature, and walking alongside then-Premier Bob Rae.
The fledgling politician in those photos has learned a lot over the years.
He's learned to listen and understand what people are trying to say, and has a reputation for being straight with people.
In his political career, Bisson has won eight general elections.
“There was a couple that I was a little bit more nervous about,” he says, adding he's always had strong candidates running against him.
He started as a member of the governing party, and has sat as a member of the official opposition, which he currently is, a third-party member, and an independent when the NDP didn’t win enough seats in the early 2000s to maintain party status.
“There’s a bit of arrogance with being on the government side if you’re a brand new member. I think members who have been on the opposition and go into government have a little bit more of a balance because they know what it’s like to be on the other side of the house,” he says.
“I’ve been very lucky and very blessed to have served on both sides of the house in different capacities because it really does give me a perspective of how humbling this place really is. The legislature is a very humbling place and nobody is bigger than it.”
One of the fallacies he says people have is that you can only make things happen if you’re in government.
He says money has to be spent in other ridings, and it’s the members' job to work with their community.
“Let them identify what they want as a response to a need and for us to be able to go after the funding,” he explains.
There are a number of issues he’s proud to have been involved in.
He says he’s helped secure dialysis services in Timmins and other areas of the region, and saw an opportunity to increase access to healthcare with family health teams. He’s proud of the efforts to lobby for College Boreal and Université de Hearst, and notes how Northern College has been at the forefront of creating a niche and submitting strong applications.
“It wasn’t me that approved the applications, but I was there in order to assist those applications to move forward. And what I learnt early on was you just gotta be in their face all the time,” he says.
Not all the battles have been won.
One of the biggest disappointments was the closure of the Kidd Creek met site.
“That’s a fight that we should have won, that was a no-brainer. The problem there was the electricity prices,” he says.
Without hesitation, he says the legislation he’s proudest to have voted for is sustainable forestry development.
“It is the one bill that has stood the test of time. Governments have weakened it somewhat, but generally it’s there. There is a plan on how we’re going to approach forestry operations when it comes to planning for the cut, when it comes to how we’re going to cut, making sure that stakeholders — cottagers, whoever — are a part of the process,” he says.
Another perk of the job for Bisson is meeting a lot of interesting people.
“I met Prince Charles two or three times and he knows my name,” he boasts.
He explains how he ran into His Royal Highness getting off an elevator at an event.
After the encounter, he went to the bar, which unbeknownst to him was near the receiving line for Prince Charles.
“And as I go away from the bar, I walk into this lineup and Prince Charles goes, ‘Mr. Bisson, Gilles, so good to see you again.’ I said, ‘Your Royal Highness, it’s always a treat, I said do you know our Premier here’, was my way at jabbing at Dalton (McGuinty),” he recalls.
Despite several run-ins with the heir to the throne, it’s the Queen who Bisson would love to sit down with.
“I’ve never met her personally, I’ve seen her at a distance — the Queen — imagine the stories she could tell you. She has had Winston Churchill as a prime minister, she’s lived through it all — the Falkland Island wars, Lady Di dying,” he says.
Bisson already has plans to run in the next provincial election. At that point, half his life will have been spent in the political ring.
“I’ll run again, I’ve already decided, I’ve committed to that. But I have no intention of staying there 41 or 44 years. Those types of records don’t impress anybody and they don’t impress me,” he says.
There are still things the veteran politician wants to achieve.
In Northern Ontario, he says worker ownership, the sustainable forestry development act, and the mining act mean companies are more responsible to the environment and people where they do business.
He recognizes resource industries are a business, and their job is to make money.
“However, there has to be some regime in place where there is a planning for the future and there is a little bit of a rainy day fund in order to make sure that once your resource is depleted that there’s something there in place in order to assist your community and your province to continue and invest in new technologies that’ll take the place of those jobs,” he says.
Splitting his time between Toronto and Timmins hasn’t always been easy.
Bisson has been married for over 45 years to Murielle, and has two daughters — Natalie and Julie.
“It’s been, at times, difficult for both her and the girls...because I was a gone-away father, in Toronto four days a week, here three days a week. And when I became the member for Timmins-James Bay I was up that way two days a week, I was lucky to do a day a week here,” he says.
“I think the reason it works is Murielle just picked up the slack. She was the rock of the family, she is the rock of the family.”
His family has grown over the years, and he now enjoys four grandkids as well. When he sees them, he always makes sure to have bags of candy.
The hardest part he’s had to learn in balancing a busy political life and family, is saying no.
“Sometimes you just gotta say no to work, and say ‘OK this is important, let’s go do it’. I haven’t always done that. I’ve been delinquent in some of those requests, but by and large I’ve done enough of them that at least I’m trying, is the way they see it. Because it’s easy to get caught up with this job,” he says.
With all the ups and downs, Bisson doesn’t hesitate to say people considering politics should do it.
“If you like people and you genuinely want to connect with people and hear them...it’s one of the most amazing things you could ever do. You never know from day to day what you could be working on."
