When I found out that John Turner had died this weekend, I went looking for this letter which had been gathering dust in the back of my closet. It was dated September 13, 1984, and it was given to me a few days after his failed bid to win the 1984 federal election by my boss, Peggy Dillman Taschereau, who was the Chief of Correspondence for the Prime Minister's Office. Everybody got a letter. I got two -- one that was filled with flowery and gushing language, and this one that I had written myself. I preferred my version -- crisp, unsentimental, to the point -- and I threw the other one out. There was no great ceremony, no tea and cookies with the great man himself, just this letter to remember the 79 days I had worked for Turner as a correspondence assistant. I had, in fact, never met the man who had succeeded Pierre Elliott Trudeau as Prime Minister of Canada. That was fine by me. I wasn't a sycophant, not even a political militant; I was just a hired gun who got paid to ...
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