YouSaid · the spoken record

Gerald Butts

lines on the record: 94
first: 2020-03-30
most recent: 2020-03-30
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“First two campaigns and helped him out a little personally in the third campaign, but mostly the first two campaigns. And it was an underdog story, right? That we're very much the minority party in Ontario, the Liberal Party, the conservatives. Very much.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I wasn't really in the political arm of the firm I was doing, mostly private sector work, but he had said something in the aftermath of the campaign that he thought that they'd lost because he was just the anti-conservative candidate and they didn't have a perspective of their own on issues. And I wrote them, again, I was probably 25 years old or something. I wrote him this long letter saying I thought he was right. And he called me after checking me out with Don Guy, who was the person who was running the firm and had run his campaign. And he called me into have a meeting. And that began a relationship that ended up with me being as director of policy and then as principal secretary eventually as he was premier of Ontario. He was a wonderful, wonderful man.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was the guy who was working for Harris and who was the conservative at the time. And there were a lot of people around who felt that we needed a superior American to beat their American. Right. And that's how we.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You had a very important role that are very modest of you. Ousted Americans, I was thinking about that the other day when I saw that you were doing the new podcast with Mike Murphy. Yes.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Political skills here. It's a very similar thing when you move from Toronto to Ottawa. And in some ways, it's even more pronounced in Ottawa, which is a much smaller town. Yes. And tends to be populated by people who've been there for much longer time. The big dynamic difference”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because To get a sense of the same. I think it's like many things, there are a lot of important similarities in the way Canadian politics works and some really important differences too. But moving from Toronto to Ottawa is a big one.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Um... Some kind of authenticity as a person is to have relationships with people who are outside of that. And that can take many forms, it could be in a focus group.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Politics, in particular when you're successful and you end up forming a government and serving in a government. I'm sure you had this experience as well, is I used to think to myself that the longer we're in these jobs, all of us, the ministers, the prime minister, the staff, senior staff, anybody who's got a public profile, the more even the people who know you see you as the job rather than as a person. And the only way to maintain”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think that's a really important thing. Maybe we should dwell on it a little bit because there's a couple of things I'd like to ask you about it. I think that the hardest thing to do in...”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Something that you don't think about. When you say that, do you mean that the questionnaire frames the discussion too much?”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As you know well, the quantitative approach to research, especially as it's evolved now, is very bloodless. And there's just no substitute for.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My mom was quality. Pioneer of it Well, I saw it as a storytelling of a different sort. I'm also a big believer in data, and we ran a very innovative data operation in both all five campaigns that I've been involved in in my life. And it was a key ingredient of success. But at the end of the day, there's no substitute for flesh and blood human beings and getting a sense of their reaction to or their view of what's going on in their country or their province at the time.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I ended up, as many graduate students do, taking on part-time work to support my own studies and ended up working in research, mostly in qualitative research and focus groups, but strictly for private sector clients. I was doing a lot of work for insurance, finance, drug companies, that kind of thing. It was very...”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we can bracket it for our listeners here. Exactly. But you know what I mean? It's the common thing to say. But it was very much his own speech. And there were a bunch of people, including my aunt, actually, Aunt Peggy, who talked to him about it, who gave him advice. And Joe McGuinness was another person, a great oceanographer and physician, who talked to him about it and we all gave him advice on what we thought he should do, but then he took all that advice and told a few really beautiful stories about his dad to get back to your point about storytelling.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There were a bunch. I mean, it was very much his own speech, David. And I know, I'm not saying that in the usual politician way, that, of course, well, let me know when you're saying stuff.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A little bit. It wasn't really ironically in the end, I guess, because he ended up doing the public debates. It wasn't really his thing. There were a lot of people involved in the debating union at McGill that formed lifelong friendships, and some of them are in caucus now, actually, a Liberal Party caucus in Ottawa. But our friendship had more to do with playing pool than it did with debate. And we were just... There are lots of conspiracy theories, in particular in the right in Canada about how we'd been planning his ascendancy since we were CALO undergraduates at McGill, but it's just not true, unfortunately.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Illness. Yeah, there was, and I think that one of the things I like about one of the many things I love about Canada is most people are unpretentious, right? There weren't a lot of kids at McGill who everybody knew who Justin was, but also nobody really cared at the end of the day. I think that he was treated like everybody else by everybody else. I think his public persona became much more robust after this. I want to talk about that in a second.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“16 years, yeah, yeah, and unlike here where in particular. Know that the kids of politicians have a public persona of their own in the United States in a way that has not traditionally been the case in Canada. And Justin's father was very protective of his identity as a young man, right? So when they left politics, when Pierre left politics, Justin was 13 years old, I think. And they moved Montreal and had a very quiet life for most of the next 10 years”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were introduced by a mutual friend, Jonathan Ablet, who is living in the United States now actually in Boston. Wonderful guy. And it was just a normal friendship.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I expected him to say, no, you should put yourself in a position to go to law school or whatever it was that he thought was appropriate and would be remunerative at the time for me.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can do boring and I can do really hard, but it's hard to do really hard and boring. And that's what the impenetrable math involved in doing a physics degree at McGill University looked like to me. So I initially switched into political science and social sciences. And again, my father had a real impact on this in a surprising way that what I really loved was literature. I loved reading. I loved writing fiction. I loved just about everything about it. And I was sort of gradually inching my way toward it as most people do when they discover what they love. And I was worried about doing it because for exactly the reason you just alluded to, I didn't think it had any practical value at all. And I talked to my dad about it one day and he said, well, you know, you should do what you like. And I was stunned, frankly.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What were you? If only my parents were alive to hear this explanation, I actually went to McGill with the intention of studying physics. And I got there and realized how difficult that would be and how little time it would leave me for just about everything else in my life. I mean, I can do...”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the Miners Museum in Glace Bay, and the photograph is someone's mining clothes hanging up on a hook. And next to it, there's a sign that says, your wife and kids forgive the gender specificity. Your wife and kids expect you home tonight. Don't disappoint them. Be careful. And on the back of the picture, my dad had written, I walked by this goddamn sign every day for 40 years so you don't have to stop complaining. And I've never forgotten that. And I adopted a kind of personal motto whenever things seemed really difficult any day in the office. I would say, well, it beats mine and coal.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In Ontario. I was, as young people often are in these circumstances, completely unaware of what real work looked like. And therefore, I felt it easy to complain about how tired I was and how little time I had, etc., etc., etc. And I stupidly complained this way to my father on the phone. And he said, well, it's tough. You know, you got to make time for we'd just been married. You got to make time for your wife and et cetera, et cetera. And he said nothing about it. And then about, oh, I guess three weeks later, this photograph arrived in the mail. And it was a big thing because my mom was always the person who wrote to us. My dad never wrote to us. And on the back of the photograph, it was a picture of the mineshaft, the replica of the mineshaft.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Back when we knew each other, when we met each other, rather, in the McGinty years, the pre-campaign that we worked together on in.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there were five of us and we all have, I think at least two degrees. And that was an unusual thing for a coal mining family, obviously. Especially given my older brothers are 13, 12, and 10 years older than me. So they were more your peers than mine generationally. So it was speaking of coal mines, it was very, every time we screwed up as kids, my dad would say, well, I could always get you a job in the pit. And it was their way when I say he used humor as an inducement. That was the way he would paint a picture for what life could look like for us if we didn't apply ourselves adequately in education.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Correct. Well, it's a good speaking of surveillance. It's a good way of becoming acquainted with the concept early in life.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've tried to figure out ways to do similar things to my children, but I haven't come up with anything quite so pretty. I don't think I would have the page.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I used to have lunch with her and my father, and depending on what shift my mother was working, because she also worked in the mine as a nurse I came home for lunch and the bottle of empty bottle of Jack Daniels, which I thought was my prize possession that I'd squirreled away in the proverbial underwear drawer was sitting right in the middle of the table like that. And I spent about an hour waiting for somebody to say something about it. And none of them did. They just let it sit there. And that hour felt like a decade. And I think it's an interesting.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, in fact, there's a property requirement in order to sit in the Senate in Canada. So the diocese of Anaganesh had to transfer several acres of swampland into her name so she could satisfy the constitutional obligation to own property. I think she's still the only cleric ever to sit in the Senate.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She was late in life, she was appointed to the Senate and our system, the Senate is appointed. So she spent two and a half years. And the church had no objection.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, that's right. That's right. When I was 16, I had the bright idea that many kids have that you should. Keep a souvenir of the first time that you drink. And this is a great story, actually. It reveals a lot about my parents and his sister, my aunt.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Correct, correct. Yeah, it's very fun. It's a lot of fun. But I think it was more a personal commitment for him. He certainly saw what it had done to families and lives around him.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so. I think so. He would, like most things with my dad, the way he would talk about them was he'd love to joke about it, right? So you were never, but as most psychologists will tell you, there's no such thing as a joke, right? There's usually a rationale for it. So he would get at his”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At all. He never tasted alcohol. I think he and his brother took the temperance oath in the 30s. As I said, he was a Macedon Catholic, and he never took, well, he took the bread, but not the wine.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was brutal. It was brutal for a lot of people in the spin-off health problems associated with alcoholism, which was a rampant demon in the town through the whole time. But at the same time, My dad would say”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were lucky. He had just retired, but my dad was a very stoic guy. He was very funny, wonderful man, a great sense of humor, very intelligent. And just because of the diminished horizons at the time, if he were a 19-year-old male in Cape Breton in the 30s, you were probably going to end up working in what they call the pit, right? So that's just the way it was. And he went into the coal mines in the 30s and left in the 70s. So 40 years he saw almost 800 people die in Nova Scotia mines. And what about the health”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I was in grade three or four, and we were in a split grade, so there were kids from both grades in my class. I remember the events surrounding it. I believe it happened on a weekend. But there were six people who lost either their father or teachers who lost their husbands in my class. And it's funny, it's one of those things that when you describe it to people, those of us who've never really worked in any kind of workplace where physical harm was a remote possibility, it sounds so foreign. It's like it happened in another country and the distant past. But that's the way people lived where I grew up. It was a constant concern that a loved one was going to be lost at work, which is very strange. Now, when that happened...”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was a pause in our parents' relationship, and then I'm sure there was a moment where she was deciding this would have been in the early 50s, early to mid 50s, where she was deciding whether to stay in Toronto like many, many people from the East Coast and pursue a professional career there or come home and she ended up coming home and they got married. Nobody really knows the story. There's not a lot of emails between them to survive. Yeah, that's”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She was absolutely. Our countries, our societies have become much more diverse than they were at that time. There would have been It would have been considered cultural diversity at the time to have a mix of someone with an Irish and someone with an Eastern European background. Of course, they kept their languages very vibrant. So there was a bit of a divide. But there was this really interesting year where my mom, and this was a big thing in her family. I think she was the first person to get a professional qualification. She went to Toronto to go to nursing school.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was a big age difference between them. It's actually kind of an interesting story. We my dad was a devout Catholic. He went to church every day. And when I say every day, I mean every day. And he used to drag us to church every day during Lent. whether it was hockey practice or not. And there was 14 years between them. So my dad married suspiciously late in life for someone at that age. He was 38 years old. I think about this all the time because I'm 48 now. And my dad was 54 when I was born. So I was a late in life Catholic mistake, right? There are a lot of us, and it was kind of family speculation that maybe my dad had intended to be a priest. And then he met my mother, who was 24 when they got married.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like a lot of Ukrainians who ended up in Canada, my mother's family came, I believe, in the first part of the 20th century that came in the great migration of Ukrainians out of Eastern Europe. And a lot of Ukrainians, of course, settled on the prairies in Canada and in the Midwest here. But for some reason, my mother's family stayed in Cape Breton, which they were coal mining family. On both sides”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You'd have to wait a while to get there. If you had stronger They were, like most North American stories, a mongrel mix of immigrants from a bunch of different places. My dad's side was mostly Irish. My mom's side was a melange of Eastern Europeans, which, depending on the state of geopolitics, they describe themselves as Polish or Czech or Ukrainian, but they were mostly Ukrainian.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is pretty much on the far eastern tip of Canada. It's on Cape Breton Island on the east coast of Cape Pretton Island. My Newfoundland and Labradorian friends will say it's the second most eastern province in Canada. But where I grew up about a kilometer from the ocean, and if you sailed due east the next piece of land, you would hit would be Europe. So, very much on the East Coast of Cuba.”
2020-03-30 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 377 — Gerald Butts · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source