My Grandad’s Conservative Values

Named Normand by his French-Canadian mother, my Grandad was a man of deep principles. They were very conservative and they were non-negotiable.

In the depths of the Great Depression, Grandad found himself without work and without resources. With three young boys at home to feed, he went down to the township office to see if he could find work and was instead offered the dole– a handout.

“I’ll not take welfare! I want work.”

“There is no work,” responded the official.

“I see that the yard and the parking lot are muddy and full of puddles. Do you have a shovel I may borrow?”, asked my grandfather. Soon enough he was out in the municipal yard digging and trenching and filling in ruts. After a day’s work, and the parking lot drier and more civilised, Grandad went back into the office and accepted a welfare cheque in fair compensation. And thus it went on.

The word went out that Normand Bowley was a willing and smart worker, and soon he picked up a job here, and a job there. Before long he was noticed by a large construction company and soon enough was a crew foreman. By the time of the wartime construction boom he was Superintendent of Construction at a number of airports, including Dorval in Montreal.

My Grandad was a man of principle, conservative principle. He lived by the notions that you carry your own weight, you give more than you get, that your word is your bond, that you live within your means, that you respect your neighbours and their privacy, and that you approach change courageously but carefully and on a reasoned basis..

To him, conservatism and bigotry were not allied. My conservative grandfather, who had been a Manitoba sodbuster, had a longstanding admiration for Louis Riel, the Métis rebel leader, because he stood up for his persecuted people. While Grandad always voted Tory, Wilfrid Laurier was one of his political heroes because of his courage and his vision. During the Depression, when a neighbour was railing on about Liberal Premier Mitch Hepburn’s failed projects, my grandfather snapped, “Some of his stuff fails, but some of it works. At least he’s trying!” And on his jobsites, a man’s colour, language, or origin were of no importance, only his work ethic.

Every Saturday afternoon my grandfather would sit at his farm kitchen table, patiently setting and filing the teeth of his handsaws, the most important tools in his pre-electric toolbox. He understood the conservative value that a workman is only as good as his tools, and that you need to strive to keep yourself at the top of your game.

One of my Grandad’s saws has a place of honour on the wall of our family room, his initials (which are also mine) carved into the handle. It draws the occasional puzzled look. I’m always happy to expound on the conservative values my Grandad held dear– that you carry your own weight, you give more than you get, that your word is your bond, that you live within your means, that you respect your neighbours and their privacy, and that you approach change courageously but carefully and on a reasoned basis.

Conservative values? I’m all for them if they look like my Grandad’s conservative values.

(Does the other word for Grandfather or Grandpa or Grampa or Gramps have one “d”, or two? Well, it appears the jury is still out and not likely to come back any time soon!)