Vaughn Palmer
In Victoria
From the moment she entered the B.C. legislature a decade and a half ago, Christina Joan Clark - Christy to you - announced that Liberal party politics were almost literally in her blood.
Her father, Jim, had run for the legislature three times. Unsuccessfully, for he was a B.C. Liberal back when the party couldn't hope to win a provincial seat outside of a few upscale enclaves, and the Clark family home base of Burnaby was not one of them.
Still, to hear her tell it, Papa Clark had set young Christy to door-knocking when she was barely able to walk, and she's been a political animal in the making ever since.
Her first speech in the legislature proved that. Long-standing tradition says what used to be called "maiden" speeches are both polite and exempt from heckling.
Instead, in the summer of 1996, the newly elected B.C. Liberal MLA for Port Moody-Burnaby Mountain plunged straight into lambasting the then-New Democratic Party government, provoking both heckling and (after she accused the NDP of lying about the state of provincial finances) a warning from the chair.
Who me?
"Due to my newness in the house, I obviously have a few things to learn," she acknowledged perfunctorily. "I of course withdraw any comment that might have offended members."
Then plunged right back into baiting the government, something she would do with singular effectiveness over the next five years.
By the time the B.C. Liberals were installed in government in 2001, she'd already established herself as a politician to watch. When she established a Christy Clark website, reporters joked that the web address was actually www.christyforleader.com.
But a well-honed ambition does not necessarily translate into performance at the cabinet table. As education minister, she launched many initiatives but delivered on few, and lost a key battle with the B.C. Teachers' Federation over control of the College of Teachers.
"She was energetic with a lot of ideas - some of which were positive," said Gordon Comeau, head of the school trustees, on the day in early 2004 when the premier shuffled Clark out of education. "But her energy sometimes created conflict in the system that is still there now."
Second chance was the Ministry of Children and Family Development, graveyard of many a ministerial career. "Why me?" Clark was quoted as saying when Campbell gave her the news.
Whatever his reasoning, she didn't last long enough to have any impact. Half a year later, she surprised the premier (who was in Ottawa) with the news that she was quitting the cabinet immediately and would not seek re-election.
"I'm just doing this so you'll stop calling me ambitious," she teased reporters. Getting serious, she cited a wish to spend more time with son Hamish, who was three.
"The premier is going to be able to find another politician," she said in her most widely quoted comment. "Hamish is not going to be able to find another mom."
"It's a decision that I am at peace with," she continued. "If I thought politics was the most important thing in my life, I wouldn't be having this conversation."
But before getting too carried away, she added: "In B.C. politics, nobody ever really goes away, do they?" Wink, wink.
Within a year, Hamish's mom was sniffing around the political arena again. On the day she quit the cabinet, it had been: "I love Port Moody. I would never want to move." Now she was house hunting in anticipation of a bid to seek the NPA nomination to run for mayor of Vancouver.
She took the plunge in September 2005 with an organization combining federal Liberals, instant memberships from the Indo-Canadian community, and provincial legend-of-the backrooms Patrick Kinsella. All for naught as she was trumped by Sam Sullivan, who went on to win the election.
Embarrassed, she retreated from politics for five years to pursue a second career in broadcasting on radio station CKNW.
She had a lot of fun. I'll not forget the bit where she confessed to a guilty enthusiasm for MANswers, the you've-got-to-see-it-to-believe-it show ( "How big do boobs have to be before they can crush a beer can? Stuff like that!") on Spike TV. She also established herself as an accomplished interviewer, even, in one recent exchange, managing to corner Bill Vander Zalm - no mean feat.
But she never lost the hankering for elected office. As she once memorably put it, leaving politics was like breaking up with a boyfriend.
"In the first six months after you leave you still remember the reasons why you left," she told Marcie Good from B.C. Business magazine. "And then a couple of years down the road, you're sitting alone at night by yourself in your living room, maybe into a glass of wine, and you're thinking, 'God, that guy was great! I miss him so much!'
And you pick up the phone and dial."
She's been dialing up her connections since the pending vacancy in the premier's office was declared a month ago. And she has now made it official that she and her old flame, politics, are getting back together again.
vpalmer@vancouversun.com
