TVO Director Chris
Taylor followed me around one day and finished
up on the day after the election. This
is his show:
Hostess: Not many politicians would boast
about a record with 44
elections and no wins. Except John Turmel.
He's run against opponents
such as Brian Mulroney and Sheila Copps
and though he's never won a
seat, he's won a spot in the Guinness
Book of World Records for
contesting more elections than anyone
else on the planet. But he does
win... at the gambling tables... financing
his campaigns with Poker
and Blackjack winnings. This month, he
was in the news again running
for the Regional Chair of Ottawa Carleton.
We've followed Turmel for
his 44th kick at the electoral can.
JCT: The scene
opens at one of my retirement home accordion
concerts playing the Clarinet Polka. Then,
with the music toned down:
Don Francis (Manager): You're at the Thorncliffe
Place Retirement Home
which is in West end Ottawa. John has
been a guest accordion player
maybe a dozen times or more. As a personality,
I've known him for a
long time in that my father ran for politics,
was a member of
Parliament locally and the first time
I saw John was in the early
1980s that he ran as a candidate in one
of the campaigns. I think he
likes to be center of attention. Running
in the political campaigns
gives him that to a certain degree in
that he will have the podium and
everybody's listening.
JCT: Then back
to end of the polka with a flourish. While he was
speaking, the showed a little old ladies
in the audience and one who
stood up and danced around her chair.
The next scene
is at a candidate debate with Bob Chiarelli and
Peter Clark.
Turmel: Wherever there was a federal election
or byelection, I was
there. I ran against Brian Mulroney in
Nova Scotia way back in 1983.
I've run down in Toronto, London, Kitchener,
all over. Wherever there
are byelections, I go. And in the Anthology
of Great Canadian
Characters, I'm one of them and they quote
a thing at the end that
says: "There are four major powers in
Canadian politics present at all
elections. The Liberal, the Conservative,
the NDP and John Turmel. Now
sometimes you might get a Green, a Commie
or a Marxist Leninist but
you could always count on the Big Four
and I was one of them.
JCT: They cut
in a scene where I was passing out literature
before the debate asking "do you want
one. Explains how the software
works."
Turmel: Now there's Peter Clark, Bob Chiarelli
and myself running for
Chairman of the Regional Municipality
of Ottawa-Carleton. It's my 44th
race and I'm always pushing the same program:
trying to Abolish
Interest Rates. And I want to use the
LETS software to do that. LETS
stands for Local Employment Trading System,
a System for Trading
Employment Locally and it allows unemployed
people to barter their
time back and forth doing things for each
other and they use their own
personal currencies.
Bob Chiarelli: We have a long history together
actually. In 1979, I
was campaign manager in the federal election
for Lloyd Francis who
became speaker ultimately in Ottawa West.
And that was John Turmel's
first election campaign. And we got to
know each other at that point.
Back then his agenda was to legalize gambling
and it was for about
eight or ten elections then he gradually
matured into other issues
such his LETS program that he talks about.
So he's been a colorful
personality around Ottawa.
JCT: Now they
use one of the funnier lines from my evening's
speech:
Turmel speech: When the media have a debate
and they don't include me,
they end up saying: Gee, "there was nothing
approaching a compelling
verbal duel. I certainly doesn't make
for great television." Well if
you cut your most radical character off
the debate, you deserve a
boring show.
JCT: After the audience laughter died down, cut back to Bob:
Chiarelli: I think he enjoys it. I think
he enjoys entertaining and
most of the people who attend the all-candidates
debates, for example,
are quite entertained. I really think
he believes in the cause that
he's talking about. He's well-researched
on it. He just puts his cause
forward. He does it with humor and panache.
Turmel speech: I'll pay my tax for army
and police to handle strife;
I'll pay my tax for doctors, nurses who
protect my life;
I'll pay my tax for all engaged repairing
road and sewer;
I'll pay my tax for social servants helping
out the poor;
I'll even pay my tax for bureaucrats with
no regret;
But I object to paying tax for interest
on debt.
Chiarelli: I think he's got a different
agenda than a lot of people
but he's a very credible individual, he's
an upstanding citizen, other
than some of his little gambling pursuits,
I guess, but he's well
respected and well-liked in the area.
JCT: Scene switches
to the Cyberccino Cafe where Tom Kennedy has
the LETS Assist software available for
demonstrations:
Therese Turmel: My name is Theresa Turmel,
John Turmel's mother. I
could start by saying that he was never
like everybody else when he
was young. Okay? And it used to bother
me a lot when I would see him
playing cards and playing solitaire and
it turns out he's making his
living out of that. So what can I say.
I can't say I don't agree. And
who keeps mother going with cars and sending
her south and.. so, it
was good that I didn't stop him from doing
what he wanted to do... He
wanted to go to Vegas and I just had a
little house, was making
payments, and everything, I was working
though, working as translator,
so anyway, I didn't have the money. He
said "well, would you go make a
loan?" Well, I'll go and try. So I got
a three thousand dollar loan
and he went to Vegas and he came back
and he had sixteen hundred
dollars more than when he left. So that
was fine. I never regretted
it. Why should I?
JCT: Interview
at the Diamond Casino playing at a Blackjack
table.
Turmel: So that was my first junket to
Las Vegas back in 1974 and you
needed three thousand dollars up front
in those days. I didn't have
three thousand bucks and I knew I could
beat Vegas because I'd learned
how to count the cards. So I talked my
mother into going to a bank and
making a loan to send me to gamble in
Vegas. And she did. How many
mothers do you know would do that?
{JCT: Show some Blackjack playing at the table.
Turmel: I'm just banned from playing Blackjack
in Vegas, not Poker.
Poker, the house don't care if you win
because they just take a rake-
off out of your winnings. It's not like
you're beating them. If you
beat them at Blackjack, then they'll change
their mind. They don't
like that.
JCT: More blackjack
play at the table then switch to Pauline
sitting with mom at Cyberccino Cafe.
Pauline Morrissette: I'm Pauline Morrissette,
John Turmel's associate,
partner, ally, whatever, for 13 years.
I remember taking a course one time and
I sat there and this gentleman
sat beside me and said: "I can't imagine
what life with John Turmel
would be like." I said: "Well, it's very
similar to a roller-coaster.
The highs are high, the lows are low,"
and I said "you kind of feel
nauseated all the time." [chuckle] Anyway,
God forbid if he ever won
an election.
JCT: Scene of
Bob Chiarelli's workers chanting on the night of
his victory. Then me watching the returns
which say:
Announcer: Bob Chiarelli, former MPP, will
be the new man in charge of
Regional Government in Ottawa-Carleton.
JCT: Cut to me reading out of the morning newspaper:
Turmel: Regional Chair Peter Clark lost
his job yesterday to Bob
Chiarelli by a margin that was so small
that the votes cast for
perennial fringe candidate John Turmel
would have covered the spread.
Bob Chiarelli, 81,926. Peter Clark 79,128
and John Turmel, 4,126. Two
and a half percent. They only predicted
in the poll that I'd get one.
Well, I went over the Peter's party for
a couple of hours. Then Bob's
party for a couple of hours and I was
looking around and with Bob,
there were 8 different people in the room
who had beaten me before.
Three federal MPs, Mac Harb, Lloyd Francis
from my first election in
'79, Marlene Catterall. Two mayors who
had beaten me, Jim Durrell and
Ben Franklin, Ottawa and Nepean, and two
provincial MPPs, Richard
Patten and Alex Cullen, and now our new
regional chair up there. I
said: "Hey they could have a convention
of guys who beat Turmel."
JCT: Back at the Diamond Blackjack table,
Turmel: Well, I don't foresee any federal
elections for 4 years,
provincials for 2 years, municipal for
three. So it looks like I've
got 2 years off except for byelections.
And after forty four
elections, I could use a little bit of
a break. I'm going to take
off.. I'm going down to Atlantic City
to
play Poker for a month or so.
Then off to Biloxi Mississippi to play
Poker there for a month or so.
Then probably off for a couple of months
to Australia. So it looks
like next year's going to be pretty busy
on the international front.
I figure I'll be more famous than Einstein.
Do you think I don't know
where I fit in the scheme of things? Let
them laugh. John The Engineer
knows where he's going to end up in the
history books."
JCT: Scene ends with the ending of "Good night ladies" on my accordion.