David Israelson
Special to Niagara Now/The Lake Report
If you have lived or grown up in Niagara, or Ontario for that matter, during the last six decades, it will be hard to get your head around the idea that Jim Bradley is no longer with us.
Bradley, who passed away Sept. 26 at age 80, was chair of Niagara Region. But that’s like saying John Lennon was a songwriter. Jim Bradley’s work, his accomplishments and his legacy, mean a lot more to Niagara, to Ontario, to Canada, to those who knew him and to everyone who is better off because of his accomplishments.
Bradley served in the Ontario Legislature for three days short of 41 years, from 1977 to 2018. A few months after he was defeated in the 2018 election — after having won 11 previous times — he became regional chair. But it’s not how long he was in office that really matters, it’s what he managed to accomplish.
His most significant achievements came in his first stint in the Ontario cabinet, as environment minister from 1985 to 1990. He was not exactly a dashing figure — he more or less looked and dressed in the same rumpled suits back then as he did just before he fell earlier this year.
But his work was dashing. I covered him as an environment reporter for the Toronto Star. He made a huge difference, overhauling and modernizing environmental protection in Ontario in ways that have been emulated around the world. “I didn’t realize until I started working for him, he’s an environmental freak!” one long-time staffer told me.
If you toss a can into a blue box, it’s because Jim Bradley brought in the world’s first blue box recycling program. If you go camping in Algonquin Park, you are enjoying lakes and trees that are not choking to death on acid rain, because his Countdown Acid Rain program set the standard for curbing air emissions. Bradley also brought in tough municipal and industrial wastewater rules, making it harder for cities and companies to pollute the Great Lakes.
In opposition at Queen’s Park, he served for a short time as interim opposition leader and for a long time as a thorn in the side of successive New Democrat and Progressive Conservative governments. He returned to cabinet when Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals came to power in 2003 and served in several ministries, including environment, again. Mostly, though, he was there to offer wisdom and insight into how to get things done.
He told me he agreed only at the last minute to run for Niagara Region when he was asked by citizens concerned about the quality of the region’s council at the time. He didn’t want the job but he wanted to get the job done.
Bradley’s political style was as effective as his personal style was, well, dull. He was modest, polite, thoughtful and hardly ever used the teacher voice he had at his disposal. He didn’t need to.
He made friends with politicians of all parties and views and worked patiently with bureaucrats. But the slowness of government bugged him. “I can bang the desk and say to the bureaucrats: Do this now! If I’m lucky, the fastest I see results will be two months,” he said.
That was too slow for the environmental freak.
To move things faster, he deployed a small army of young, energetic, highly motivated staffers. To this day, there are all kinds of important people in high places across Canada and internationally, whose eyes light up when they speak about Bradley and the opportunities he gave them.
Many would return every year for the annual “Bradley Dinner” in St. Catharines. Many more people would relish receiving his annual Christmas card, cheap-looking of course, but with a personal message on the inside. I don’t know all these people, but I know they’ll all miss him. And so will I.
David Israelson is a writer and non-practising lawyer who lives in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
