Hard work takes Pallister from homestead to premier's chair

Green Party Leader James Beddome, left, and Progressive Conservative Leader Brian Pallister take part in the provincial leaders' debate in Winnipeg on Tuesday, April 12, 2016. (Trevor Hagan / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

WINNIPEG - Brian Pallister's own advice may have been the key to propelling his Progressive Conservative party to victory for the first time in 16 years.

"Halfway measures don't get you where you need to go," he said in an interview just before the campaign officially began last month.

"An important part of work, of life, of politics is showing up. Show up. Do your job."

Since becoming leader of the Tory Opposition in 2012, Pallister has made his mark by driving staff and caucus members hard, rebuilding constituency associations and boosting party coffers to prepare for Tuesday night.

Tory incumbent Kelvin Goertzen said Pallister stressed the need to reach out to the public to help shape party policy, and pushed grassroots members to knock doors in areas held by the NDP.

"It showed that we were open to news ideas and new people," Goertzen said.

"You can invite someone to the legislature. You can hold a community forum. Those things are important. But if you don't reach out to where people are .... they're more than likely never to connect with you."

Pallister came from humble beginnings and now owns one of the biggest homes in Winnipeg.

He's a politician with an imposing height who clearly remembers being bullied as a child, a focused and disciplined taskmaster with a history of verbal slip-ups and gaffes.

He grew up on a small farm near Portage la Prairie - the homestead of his great-grandparents. There wasn't a lot of money, so his mother took a teaching job.

Pallister, 61, stands a towering six-foot-eight. He remembers he and his brother Jim playing sports.

"We had one ball when we were kids, and we played everything with that ball - football, basketball, baseball - everything we could imagine. We golfed with that ball."

He made a name for himself as a teenager playing fastball. He hitchhiked to Brandon University and tried out for the school's basketball team. His coach remembers a young man, fairly overweight, who played above his talent level thanks to determination.

"The biggest thing we wanted to do was get some of that weight off him and he ran hard every day," Jerry Hemmings recalled.

"Many times I would put garbage cans in each corner of the court, and tell him if he got sick, to pick up one of those garbage cans and puke in it and keep on running."

The puke came. Pallister kept at it.

"He probably lost a good 30 pounds ... and he's been super-fit ever since."

Pallister graduated and took a teaching job briefly, but then started an insurance and investment firm out of his car. He and his wife, Esther, grew the company over three decades and used the proceeds to buy a $2-million, 9,000-square-foot mansion in Winnipeg.

He also became involved in politics. He was elected to the Manitoba legislature in 1992 and later became minister of government services. He ran unsuccessfully in 1998 for the leadership of the federal Progressive Conservatives. Two years later, he was elected as an MP for the Canadian Alliance.

He left the Commons in 2008 and, in 2012, ran unopposed for the leadership of the Manitoba Tories, who were on the ropes after four consecutive election losses.

Pallister made it known that he would be something of a drill sergeant. At a meeting of a dozen party members looking for staff jobs, he drew names from a hat and assigned each person a constituency in which to sell memberships. Applicants were also subjected to an on-the-spot essay contest. About half left. One compared the meeting to a "Survivor"-style reality show.

Pallister assigned caucus members a second constituency to build the party's profile. The moves did not endear him to everyone, but the party raised more funds than the governing NDP in recent years and was in fighting shape for the election.

Even his reply when questioned during the campaign about an abundance of time spent at his Costa Rican vacation home was framed in terms of work.

"Time with my family doesn't mean I don't work," he said, adding that he writes speeches and reads up on issues when he's away.

The one area where his discipline slips at times is when he is making speeches.

While delivering an off-the-cuff holiday message in 2013, he extended well-wishes to "infidel atheists." He quickly added that he believes in the rights of both religious and non-religious people to mark the holiday season in whatever way they choose.

During his time in Parliament, he once dodged a question by saying he was giving "a woman's answer ... a sort of fickle kind of thing."

In a lengthy speech in the legislature in 2014, he veered into a diatribe in which he said he hated Halloween because it is bad for children's integrity.

"I don't work from prepared texts all the time," Pallister said.

"I've done several thousand interviews ... so if I said a couple of embarrassing things, I didn't say them to hurt anybody."

Pallister stands by his dislike of Halloween. He was six-foot-three when he hit his teens, and no disguise could mask his identity, leading to taunts from other kids.

"I've learned, too, from my slip-ups. I'm evolving. I'm learning too."