Ed Broadbent
March 21, 1936 – January 11, 2024
aged 87 years
I learned of the death in Canada of Ed Broadbent on Friday, January 12, 2024. Broadbent was the federal leader of the socialist New Democratic Party from 1975 to 1989. As such, he was a prominent feature of Canadian politics when I was growing up, going head-to-head with political giants like Liberal PM Pierre Trudeau and Conservative PM Brian Mulroney. He was an intellectual giant whose true nature and accomplishments were masked by his affability, personal modesty, and by his physical appearance, which was less friendly with the television cameras than was Pierre Trudeau’s.
The NDP reached its zenith in the early 1980s when the Liberals fell hard after a long tenure and were replaced by the Conservatives in a sweeping change. Under his leadership the NDP nearly became the official opposition in the national legislature when the Liberals were practically annihilated in the general election of 1984. That would have freaked out the Reagan conservatives in the U.S. - to have a socialist party one step away from power in their nearest neighbour.
I mentioned Ed’s death to a Canadian teacher in Tokyo. She’s a University of Toronto graduate. She didn’t know who I was talking about. Sad. Young people today don’t know anything. Just to test her, I asked her if she knew all the Prime Ministers of Canada (a list of names that I memorized in middle school and that I can still recite in an instant). She could not name any prime minister except Justin Trudeau, the current premier. Sadder.