Two stories about John Horgan

John Horgan loved his family, his province, a good dad joke, and trying his level best every day.

I’ll let the people not on sabbatical weigh in on the substance of his life and passing. But anyone who interacted with him probably has a couple of personal stories they are thinking of right now.

Here are mine.

1. The week the NDP took power in British Columbia was a strange one, to put it mildly. Because the Liberals had a plurality of seats after the election, then-premier Christy Clark convened the legislature for a throne speech, leading to a non-confidence vote to force the Lieutenant-Governor to decide whether to hold new elections of give Horgan a chance to become premier.

It was a drawn out few days full of theatrics and constitutional procedure, all to get to one moment everybody knew was necessary, but where nobody knew what would happen next.

Naturally, I decided to tweet about it through the lens of a civil war soldier penning letters back home, starting all of them with “Dearest Sarah”.

An hour or so before the non-confidence vote, I was outside the legislature getting ready to talk on the radio for CBC about what was about to happen, as our office was in the basement caused periodic reception issues.

As I’m getting ready to go on the air, I hear a window open, and a voice boom out “JUSTIN! WHO’S SARAH?”

I had to explain to the person that in two hours would ask the lieutenant-governor to become B.C.’s 36th premier that there was no Sarah and that it was all a weird Twitter joke.

For a person about to face the biggest moment of his life, he showed a remarkable ability to be human.

2. Almost a decade ago, on a lark, I tried to make a board game about British Columbia.

It was sort of Settlers of Catan meets Ticket to Ride meets Power Grid, creating transportation links across British Columbia and building economic basis in each city based on their historical industries, but in a couple test runs with friends it was far too complicated and didn’t have enough tension between players, and my professional life got too busy with other things, so I dropped working on it and didn’t think about it for a while.

Until I was at a school in Coquitlam for some announcement a few months after the NDP had taken power. I asked Horgan a couple of quick questions 1-on-1 at the end before he had to head out.

As he turned away, he said “how’s your B.C. board game coming along?”

I froze in the way you freeze when someone brings up something completely random yet somewhat big that you’ve forgotten about, all while wondering how in the hell the premier had learned about my novelty unreleased board game that had only been played twice.

(It turned out a friend who did a test run was friends with a government staffer, and word/amusement had gotten around)

And so that became his running gag: every few weeks, after answering my questions about accountability or details on how a new policy would work, he would say “how’s the board game going?”, and I would have to explain why nobody was building a railway from Keremeos to the Kootenays with their labourer cards to connect their fruit and mining resources anytime soon.

I think Horgan liked bringing it up for a couple of reasons. First, it was his “bit” with me, a fun thing to check in on and personalize the situation, similar to what he had with other reporters. Second, I think there was some satisfaction in turning the tables, and getting a reporter on the defensive and making excuses and justifications.

Or maybe he just really wanted to play that board game.

Here are two photos I took from the moment outside Government House where he announced he was becoming premier, and the moment at a Vancouver hotel where he announced he was stepping down. I might have been only other person in the space for both moments.

In between I would report and critique and snark about him, but in response he always had humanity and always respected the role of a free press.

We were going to meet up when I was in Germany, not as reporter and politician but a British Columbian travelling the world for a year and a Canadian ambassador (but always John from Langford), trading notes and catching up from our new places in life. But then a week before his health turned, and it wasn’t meant to be.

My thoughts are with his family, who deserved so much more time with him.