In the end, everything was stripped away for Gerald Regan, as it will be for all of us.
At his funeral Friday at Halifax’s Saint Mary’s Cathedral Basilica, there wasn’t a word about his political accomplishments, a peep about the lofty titles he once held, or a mention of the allegations that dogged him.
On the day of his burial, the ex-premier and federal cabinet minister was remembered simply as a man who was forever smitten by his wife and children, who was most alive on the tennis court and hockey rink, and who deeply cared for this province.
“To me he was a giant of a man,” his daughter Miriam said.
On that point, on this day, in that crowded church, there was no dissent.
So, from every part of his long life they came to pay their respects: past and present federal politicians remembering that Regan won a seat in the House of Commons back in the early 1960s, and returned during the early 1980s as a cabinet minister for Pierre Trudeau and John Turner; Liberal backroom types honouring a former party leader; business titans remembering how Regan made so much happen here during his eight years as premier.
He was political royalty, so, naturally, Premier Stephen McNeil sat in the pews, as did Lt.-Gov. Arthur Leblanc.
But his honorary pall-bearers, along with people named Steele, Fares and Sobey, included Slavko Negulic and Frank Nolan, two of his old tennis partners, along with Jim Georgantas, a businessman from Halifax’s Greek community, a group which, I know for a fact, Regan had always supported.
The crowded church heard stories of Regan the man, not Regan the big-shot politician.
His son Geoff spoke of how, while a second-year law student, his father — who was known as Gabby for his loquaciousness — once talked a bunch of NHL teams into touring the Maritimes, playing exhibition games against local senior teams, a feat which the Halifax West MP called an apt demonstration of his “imagination” and “entrepreneurial spirit.”
Daughter Nancy told a story of how her brother-in-law Jack Graham, while serving in Regan’s ministerial office, once found himself on a three-week trade mission with his boss in 1983.
Regan, runner-up in the Nova Scotia Junior Men’s tennis at age 19, and Graham, now director emeritus of Tennis Canada, would rise each morning to hit the ball at 6:30.
The only match they lost during the tour was at the Manila Polo Club, against the Prime Minister of the Philippines during the Marcos Regime, which the notoriously competitive Regan told Graham to throw for diplomatic reasons.
Her sister, Laura, showed a different side of their father. While living in Ottawa, and playing on her school touch football team, she left a brand-new pair of leather boots at a playing field, which had been locked up for the night. Somehow, after she went to bed, her federal cabinet minister father found a way to get into the field. The next morning, the treasured boots were standing there in her room.
Her brother David recounted how he and his siblings used to rifle through their dad’s pockets on the hunt for spare change with which to buy candy. And how, once, he found a note Regan had written after suffering some chest pain in a hockey game, just in case.
After their father died Tuesday evening, his six kids gathered to finally read the note, which amounted to a statement of “who he was as a man:” he loved his wife Carole; he loved his children, upon whom he wished “God’s blessings”; he loved Nova Scotia.
He wished he had accomplished more, Regan wrote, but had high hopes that his children and grandchildren would achieve everything that he had not.
Friday, one of those grandchildren, Andrew Machum, stood at a dais on the church’s altar and sang Ave Maria in the quiet church.
In that stunningly beautiful song, written by Franz Schubert, the singer asks the Mother of God to pray for all of us, every one of us sinners, at the hour of our death.
That it was a grandson singing about his late grandfather, made it all the more stirring. But it was a show-stopper. Always is.
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