He was folksy, flamboyant and colourful. He was the farmer in the iconic green Stetson. He was blunt and rough around the edges. At times he was the antithesis of all things politically correct.
And, while nobody said it in so many words, he was also the guy who made being minister of agriculture seem almost sexy. Perhaps that's because being in a Pierre Trudeau government was sexy in itself. Regardless, Whelan is likely the only MP to hold that post and have his name remembered because of it.[3]
Whelan was always known as a die hardLiberal. He loved to boast,
The Conservatives have the right wing, the NDP have the left wing. The Liberals have two wings and that's why we can fly.[4]
When he announced that he was running for the Liberal leadership in 1984, he said:
I don't think there is any politician that is as well known in the world as I am.[5]
Early years
Eugene Whelan was born in Amherstburg, Ontario,[6] the middle of nine children born to Irish-Canadian farmers Charles B. Whelan and Frances L. Kelly.[4][7] He was educated in Windsor and Walkerville. At 16, Whelan quit school and worked for a time as a welder and tool and die maker[4] before returning to farming.[8]
In 1960, Whelan married Elizabeth Pollinger and they had a family. One daughter went into politics (see Family below). His brother Edward Charles Whelan made his life in Saskatchewan. He also went into politics, being elected and serving in the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan.
Whelan entered municipal politics at age 21[2] and surprisingly won an election to the separate school board of Anderdon Township,[8] which administered Catholic schools. He was next elected as councillor and eventually reeve of the township council,[6] becoming warden of the Essex County council in 1962.[9] He ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Ontario assembly in 1959.
Whelan first won a seat in the House of Commons in the 1962 election, representing the southwestern Ontario riding of Essex, and held it until his retirement in 1984.[6] Whelan ran to succeed Trudeau at the 1984 Liberal leadership convention, but came in last.[5] In 1996, Whelan was appointed to the Senate by Jean Chrétien, and served in the chamber until he reached the mandatory retirement age of 75 in 1999.[6]
He once recalled a time when his qualifications for Minister were questioned:
I remember one time when I was out West, someone asked me what the hell I knew, coming from Ontario, about being minister of agriculture and I said I knew just as much as Allan Blakeney, premier of Saskatchewan who was born in Nova Scotia, or Don Getty in Alberta who was born in Quebec, or Bill Vander Zalm in B.C. who came from Holland. The fact is that I came from the most diversified farming region in the country, and we were diversified farmers ourselves. We had it all and I was an agriculture minister who really had hands on experience.[11]
As Minister, Whelan promoted the extension of national marketing boards — first implemented with the creation of the Canadian Dairy Commission in 1970 — to eggs in 1972, turkey in 1974, and chicken in 1978.[12] These were placed under the supervision of the National Farm Products Council. For those commodities not under supply management, he fought to maintain a level playing field in world markets at a time when other countries strongly subsidized such products. He was successful in getting the Canadian government to increase its support for farmers, through amendments to the Agricultural Stabilization Act[13][14] and the introduction of the Western Grain Stabilization Act.[12][14][15] In 1977, the Advance Payments for Crops Act was passed,[16] which guaranteed loans to producers requiring advance payments for perishable crops. He opened markets in the Soviet Union for Canadian wheat, and established legislation to protect fruit and vegetable growers from processor bankruptcies.[10] He also restricted the powers of the Canadian Wheat Board, allowing private-sector feed grain trading and inter-provincial movement of feed.[12]
Whelan's English was rough-hewn, and his French was non-existent. He openly acknowledged this, exclaiming:
Canada has two official languages and I don't speak none of them.[4]
Whelan was one of Pierre Trudeau's best constitutional campaigners. However, in 1976 angry Quebec dairy farmers threw diluted milk on Whelan after cabinet refused to approve dairy subsidies to compensate
farmers in a collapsed world market. Whelan said this refusal contributed to the success of the Parti Québécois in rural ridings that fall.[17]
His green stetson hat became well-known and Whelan was seen as an ardently vociferous advocate for the agricultural sector, with a habit for plain-spokenness (which occasionally got him in trouble).[18] In response to complaints voiced over the cost of food, when he wanted to stress the average farmer's narrow profit margin, he said:
The cost of cars, fur coats, housing, booze, travel goes up and who gets excited? Nobody, because they don't buy these things every day. Potatoes go up a few cents and my God, everybody's crying.[1]
Catalyst for Russian perestroika
During his last term as Minister of Agriculture, Whelan became good friends with Aleksandr Yakovlev, then the USSR's Ambassador to Canada, as both men were ardent agriculturalists. The relationship became so close that Pierre Trudeau called him in to get assurance that Whelan had not divulged any national secrets, as the minister was a member of the Cabinet defence committee.[19] When Mikhail Gorbachev, then Soviet Minister of Agriculture, came to Canada in 1983, Yakovlev connected Gorbachev with Whelan, who arranged a three-week tour across Canada for both Soviet officials, accompanied personally by Whelan.
In 2013 Jean Chrétien recalled Whelan introducing Gorbachev to Canadian life when the tour came to Windsor:
'He came to Windsor and introduced him to the life of a Canadian,' Chretien said. 'He was amazed at the food processing in Canada, to have all the food available so quickly. Later on, they were driving and he was marvelling to see two cars in front of every house.'
The group stopped in front of one blue-collar home.
'Gorbachev said, "Do you know them?" And Gene said, "I don't know them, but they know me,"' Chretien recalled. 'So they knocked on the door and went into the house. Gorbachev was very impressed by that.'[20]
At the end of that tour, the Whelans hosted a farewell reception for Gorbachev at their Amherstburg home on the evening of 19 May 1983. Whelan was delayed in arriving. In what has since been called "the walk that changed the world", Yakovlev and Gorbachev walked in a nearby orchard, strolled among saplings and past fields of corn, soy and wheat, had an earnest discussion, and resolved that the old ways in the USSR had to end.[21][22]
According to Yakovlev, this was where perestroika was born, with 80% of its features discussed while visiting Whelan's farm.[2][23][24]
In an interview years later, Yakovlev recalled:
At first we kind of sniffed around each other and our conversations didn't touch on serious issues. And then, verily, history plays tricks on one, we had a lot of time together as guests of then Liberal Minister of Agriculture Eugene Whelan in Canada who, himself, was too late for the reception because he was stuck with some striking farmers somewhere. So we took a long walk on that Minister's farm and, as it often happens, both of us [Yakovlev and Gorbachev] suddenly were just kind of flooded and let go. I somehow, for some reason, threw caution to the wind and started telling him about what I considered to be utter stupidities in the area of foreign affairs, especially about those SS-20 missiles that were being stationed in Europe and a lot of other things. And he did the same thing. We were completely frank. He frankly talked about the problems in the internal situation in Russia. He was saying that under these conditions, the conditions of dictatorship and absence of freedom, the country would simply perish. So it was at that time, during our three-hour conversation, almost as if our heads were knocked together, that we poured it all out and during that three-hour conversation we actually came to agreement on all our main points.[25]
Broadcasting
Whelan was once host of the Agricultural Hour on CFRA in Ottawa.[26]
Whelan also actively participated in the Agri-Energy Roundtable (AER), an international non-governmental organization which forged a dialogue between food-surplus and energy-surplus nations, their private sectors, and multilateral agencies. Working with US Senator Jennings Randolph (D-WV) - a noted humanitarian- and Lord Harry Walston of the United Kingdom and others, Whelan helped the AER to gain United Nations recognition in 1985. Whelan joined AER's Committee of Honor and rose to become AER's vice chairman. As such he presided at a number of international conferences in the late 1980s.
In 1984, the Woodslee soil substation of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Greenhouse and Processing Crops Research Centre, located at Woodslee, Ontario, was renamed as the Honourable Eugene F. Whelan Experimental Farm.[33]
In 2008, the Whelan ancestral home,[34] where Eugene was born, was relocated for preservation to the Canadian Transportation Museum and Historical Village[35] in Essex, Ontario.[36]
Family
Whelan and his wife Elizabeth had three daughters. Susan Whelan went into politics and was elected to the House of Commons in 1993 in her father's old riding. In 2001 she was appointed as Minister of International Trade in Chrétien's cabinet. She was dropped from Cabinet with the change of administrations when Paul Martin became prime minister.[37]
Death and funeral
He died at his home in Amherstburg on February 19, 2013, following complications from heart disease and colon cancer.[4][5] His funeral was held on February 23, 2013, at St. John The Baptist Church in Amherstburg, and he was buried in the church cemetery. Jean Chrétien, Herb Gray and Remo Mancini were among the people that gave eulogies at the service.[38]
