Hizzoner

One J.A. McGrath writes to the Telegram today to “correct” the record:

I had the honour of bestowing the highest rank of the Order of Canada on Mr. Smallwood at Government House in St. John's during my tenure as lieutenant-governor in 1987.

Of course, said J.A. McGrath was probably too busy, six years earlier, to have read Barbara Yaffe’s report in the February 9th edition of the — huckthoo — Toronto Globe and Mail:

So lambasted in some quarters has Mr. Smallwood been that the 80-year-o ld politician apparently has felt a need to redeem himself. To that end he has written, among others, two books (both published in 1979): The Time Has Come to Tell and No Apology From Me.

[…]

([The Time Has Come to Tell], by the way, contains some great gossip, revealing Mr. Smallwood's intense dislike of John Crosbie; his belief that Mr. Peckford is a true Grit in Tory togs; his belief that Pierre Trudeau has retreated from Liberal principles; and his repeated refusal to accept both a Senate seat and an Order of Canada commendation.) In No Apology From Me, Mr. Smallwood thumbs his nose at those anti-Confederates still a'cursing over affiliation with the mainland foreigners.

But hey, if nothing else, today’s letter by J.A. McGrath confirms the identity of a previous, equally fact-challenged epistlist also named J.A. McGrath, who wrote to complain that

We have never had a judge on the highest court in the land in the 60 years that we have been a constituent part of the federation.

Yes, that J.A. McGrath who was a PC government MP in 1985 when Gérard La Forest, a — huckthoo — New Brunswicker, was named to the Supreme Court of Canada in the place of the long-serving notionally “Atlantic” justice, Ritchie of — huckthoo — Nova Scotia — also appointed while said J.A. McGrath was a PC government MP.

Between them, Ritchie and La Forest JJ. occupied 37 of those 60 years on the Supreme Court of Canada.