It felt like I had been stabbed. It was two-thirds of a page and it was a glowing obituary for Sylvia Murphy in the Toronto Star. It brought back a flood of memories. That woman could sing songs about DuMaurier cigarettes to me all day long. She was not only beautiful but she had a very soothing voice. The only problem was that I think she hated me.
I could blame it all on her second husband. You would think Chuck would have defended me, but when it came to Sylvia, Charles Templeton was a bit of a coward. And I was only one of quite a few liberals who wanted Chuck to ditch his job at the Toronto Star and run for leader of the Ontario liberal party.
Sylvia was not pleased. The first time I met her, Chuck had taken one of their sons somewhere, and I was left with Sylvia. This voluptuous lady who was married to my friend was wearing a much too small bathing suit and sitting glaring at me beside the Templeton’s backyard pool.
She seemed to accept me over that summer as I frequently chauffeured her and Chuck to liberal functions around southern Ontario. I guess she was tolerating me as long as she thought of me as a flunky and not an instigator. She let me hang about, as long as I was useful. She liked my wife though and she made a good buffer
And sometimes when heading into southwest Ontario, we would stop near Paris, Ontario and Dorothy and Bob Nixon would join us. The long-serving liberal, Nixon, was Chuck’s second choice as liberal leader.
It all blew up when we lost the by-election called in Toronto’s Riverdale riding. This was only my second involvement in a campaign and I had to stand back and watch. It was the only campaign where my candidate lost to the new democrats. I learned a lot but Sylvia won Chuck back from the brink of politics.
The next time I saw Sylvia was in March, 1968. I had an office down in the mall under Ottawa’s Skyline Hotel. We were getting things ready for the federal liberal leadership convention to replace Lester Pearson. Chuck was with CTV and was going to do commentary on the convention. He had parked Sylvia in my office while he was next door getting the low-down on what I was planning for the convention from the chair of the Bob Winters campaign.
As history tells it, I made it snow inside Ottawa’s Bank Street Arena in April and Pierre Trudeau won the convention. It was later that Chuck told me about his break-up with Sylvia.
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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry
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