Uncle Bud

Hard to think about my dad and not smile about Uncle Bud.  (He is 3rd from the right) My Uncle, the Socialist from Canada.  Go figure.

Fond memories ...Told me some good stories of my dad.  Hell, I even let him drive my Porsche ...once. Another time he visited me in SF....we had a spirited discussion on politics over a bottle of cheap rum in a run down hotel on Lombard Street.  As I recall, dinner in Chinatown followed.  Then again, maybe it was two bottles of rum and we skipped dinner.

As a former member of Parliament his cohorts had the opportunity to get up and speak on his passing.  What they said is below.  The link I had on this is no longer any good. So I will print it in it's entirety here.


The House met at 1332.

Prayers.


MEMBERS' STATEMENTS


Hon Bob Rae (Premier): Mr Speaker, I wonder if I might have unanimous consent to make a statement about the passing of a member of the House.


The Deputy Speaker: Is there unanimous consent? Agreed.


1350


BUD GERMA


Hon Bob Rae (Premier): Yesterday, the Deputy Premier and I were away from the House attending the funeral of Bud Germa, who was a member of this place from 1971 to 1981. I'd like to take this opportunity to say a few words about him.


Bud Germa was born in the Sudbury basin. He joined the armed forces, the RCAF, in the Second World War. He came back to Sudbury and worked as an electrician for Inco. He then went into municipal politics. He was elected to the federal Parliament in a by-election in 1967 and he was elected to the provincial Legislature in 1971. He was defeated in the election of 1981.


Bud passed away over the weekend after a long struggle with cancer. I would like to take this opportunity to say a few words about him beyond the simple description of the chronology of his political career.


I did not in fact serve with him, though I was the leader of the party from 1982. Of course, I got to know him extremely well because he remained politically active until the very end of his life. Those who served with him -- and I know there are some members present who remember him vividly from his time in the House. He was what I think one could describe as a political original. He was someone of great passion, verve, good humour and blunt speech.


He was not someone who either minced his words or chose to phrase them in particularly flowery ways. His eloquence stemmed entirely from his experience and from his sense of the people he represented. He cared deeply about the people of Sudbury and the Sudbury basin. He cared deeply about the people he worked with and for. He cared passionately about their health and their safety and their position in our society. He cared very, very deeply about this province and about Canada.


I said that Bud Germa was a man of great and good humour. It is not, I think, possible for me to express in quite as pungent and direct a way Bud's humour, certainly in the current political climate, but I would say that Bud's commitment to being straightforward and his commitment to service was not a grim or onerous task for him; it was one that he took up with gusto and with a great deal of vigour and with a great deal of joy.


He was a tremendous partisan debater in this House at a time when night sittings were a regular fact of life rather than a two-week exception at the end of a session. He was known to everyone as a tremendous participant in debates, particularly in the periods of the minority governments between 1975 and 1981, when debates and votes were constant and were very closely argued.


I know that other members will want to say a few words. I had a chance yesterday, together with the Minister of Finance, to raise a glass at the Nickel City Hotel at about the time question period was due to start yesterday as we were reflecting at the end of the funeral on his commitment to ordinary people, on his sense of passion and compassion for them and on the enormous joy that he took in public service.


All of us will miss him. I shall certainly miss him. To his family, many of whom we were able to meet yesterday -- to all of them -- we wish our very best and our sense that this is, of course, a sad event, but it's also a moment in which we celebrate a remarkable life of service for the people of the province.


Mr James J. Bradley (St Catharines): I rise on behalf of the Liberal caucus to express, as well, to the family and close friends of Bud Germa our remorse and our sadness at his passing last weekend.


It was just last week that I was chatting with some of the Sudbury members about Bud Germa, asking about his health, because I know that, particularly in recent weeks, he has had great difficulty in his battle with cancer.


It's interesting that, when I say "a battle with cancer," Bud Germa was never a person who would give up. I was reading an article from the Sudbury Star on February 23 of this year. One of the comments that Bud made himself with his usual candour was the following: "The prognosis is not terminal at this point. It's going to have to get me, because I'm not going to give up." That probably exemplifies Bud Germa and what he was all about.


Bud Germa, to me, was always what I expected in a New Democrat. He was perhaps a stereotypical New Democrat from northern Ontario, where I was born a number of years ago in the city of Sudbury, and the causes he fought for were causes that were dear to the people in that area, particularly to workers who worked in difficult circumstances relating to health and safety in the area. He was a very grass-roots individual. He had little time for theory and academia. In fact, he once referred to members of his own party who were more the people relying on theory -- and I can't remember the first part, but academic something heads, and I can't remember what it was. But that was terminology he used on that particular occasion.


Bud Germa, as I say, was a fighter. He was a person who represented his constituents well at the municipal level, in the federal Parliament where he served for almost two years after winning a by-election and of course in the Ontario Legislature, and even after he left the Ontario Legislature he was still a force to be reckoned with in his community.


Always the people who are closest to people like Bud Germa have probably the most relevant things to say about them. One I was reading was by Ron MacDonald, who is a staff representative with the United Steelworkers of America. He had a couple of things to say about him which I think really point out what Bud Germa was all about.


He said, "Germa stood out from most politicians because what you saw is what you got," and how true that was. He also said: "When he believed in something he fought for it. You didn't have to agree with his position, but you knew he didn't have a hidden agenda. He wasn't slick or polished and there was nothing devious about him."


That, I guess, says it best, perhaps better than anyone of us could, and I thought it was most appropriate that subsequent to the funeral, the report I had was that many of his friends proceeded to an establishment in Sudbury which was well known to many people in the area. I was too young, of course, to ever be involved with it, but I know that many people in the Sudbury area have heard of the Nickel City Hotel. Bud would have been delighted that, subsequent to celebrating his life and paying tribute to him as he passed, the congregation then moved to the Nickel City for the wake.


Mr Norman W. Sterling (Carleton): Bud Germa came to this Legislature in 1971. I came here in 1977 and had the experience of sitting on the opposite side of the House in government while Bud Germa sat in these benches in opposition. I can remember sort of the first blush of Bud Germa. We used to sit late at night and I used to time my exit out of here so I wasn't going home on the same street as Bud Germa was, because I thought if there's one guy I don't want to meet on a dark Toronto street it's Bud Germa.


But I must say that over the ensuing three or four years I got to know Bud Germa a little bit better, and as the previous speakers have said, Bud did appear like a very tough guy on the outside and was very direct. Conversations with him on political structure and theories would be less than a sentence long and he would be very pointed.


Because he was pointed he did appear rough on the exterior, but when you got sitting down with him, I don't think anybody on any side of the bench or any political party could doubt his integrity and his real softness on the inner. He was really a Softee Toffee and probably wouldn't like you saying that, but the truth of the matter is that he was very generous in terms of his time, given particularly I believe to people who really needed it in his area, and people who really needed his help and came to him. He was probably the least selective of anybody in terms of who he dealt with and how he dealt with the problem.


1400


I know his good friends like the member for Nickel Belt, Mr Laughren, and Mr Martel, who spent many hours with him, both in this place and in other establishments, enjoyed the number of stories that Bud Germa had. Bud Germa had more stories about various aspects of Ontario life than anybody I know of.


He probably epitomized sort of the two extremes of politics. On the one hand, if you got him into an argument in this place about an issue, you couldn't get somebody who was more dogged, more determined, more stubborn about that, but on the other hand, you probably couldn't find a person in the Legislature at the time who was more good natured and better humoured than Bud Germa.


I think that when people who watch us on television from time to time see us laugh at an inappropriate time, the odd time that happens to us, because politics is a tough thing to live with when people are talking about passionate issues on one hand and then an off comment comes and we laugh at the inappropriate times, I think in some ways he represented that kind of dichotomy that we find in politics here in the province of Ontario.


I think Bud Germa did, as he would say, a hell of a job for his constituents in Sudbury. He was a guy who worked with his hands, who came to this Legislature and continued to represent the people who did work with their hands.


I want to express our sympathies and our appreciation, as members of the Progressive Conservative Party, for the contribution he made to this Legislature, to Sudbury and to the people of Ontario when he served them so well in this place. Our sympathies go to his family and his friends. We will all miss Bud Germa for his contribution and his good humour and his good nature that he brought so well to this place.