Friend o' Mine: The Story of Flyin' Phil Gaglardi

Gary Clarkson is a history lecturer at the University of Windsor and a
book reviewer for the Windsor Star.

Human whirlwinds are a part of history that continue to amaze political
observers: their movements are dissected and analyzed in an effort to
discern the causes of the phenomena they are. One such human tornado is
a man from the interior of British Columbia, Phil Gaglardi—MLA for 20
years in the Social Credit government of W.A.C. Bennett (1952-1972),
representing the interior hub city of Kamloops.

As the son of Italian immigrants to B.C., and in later life a convert
to Pentecostal Protestantism, the young Gaglardi was already beginning
to stake out an exceptional political style. As a very young man he had
taught himself to be handy with construction and engineering equipment
and, as pastor in a Kamloops church, he was able to add a warmly human
touch to his apparent vocation of shepherding men and practical can-do.
He could also be quite vocal with his views and grassroots
sentimentalities.

Never taken in by a false economy or the pristine Social Credit dogma,
Gaglardi could see that Socred politics was sufficiently populist to
make that pure philosophy irrelevant. He needed people, not theory—and
the people apparently needed him. Placed initially in Bennett’s first
cabinet as Public Works Minister, he became Highways Minister when
Public Works was expanded to embrace the awesome task of upgrading and
extending the road system throughout the province. To make B.C. safely
and efficiently accessible to all meant spending many millions of
dollars not only on surface roads but on bridge and tunnel
building—and novel engineering to accomplish those things. Eventually,
indeed, it also came to mean outfitting a modern fleet of
government-owned ferries to ply between the Lower Mainland and Vancouver
Island.

It was, in fact, the high quality of his ministerial care of his
Department of Highways that was to tarnish Gaglardi’s reputation. He
was obsessed with the need to get around to the various and sometimes
remote job sites being worked upon. His ability to get traffic tickets
as he zipped along the highways became legend. Besides making his name
common parlance, Gaglardi’s high political visibility seemed at the
same time a reassuring sign that he was a “doer.” It was, however,
the inception of aircraft flying that eventually brought “flying
Phil” low. He was grounded and removed from his post by Bennett,
ending up as Welfare Minister berating a care system that, he thought,
fostered unproductivity.

It is a theme of the last part of this book that W.A.C. Bennett was
foolish not to see that Gaglardi was his obvious successor for premier.
The author (quite rightly, I think) suggests that Bennett could see
that—but that the stubbornness of age kept him at the top. It was
certainly a fatal miscalculation on “Wacky’s” part, as the August
30, 1972, election made clear.

Rothenburger’s treatment is light but nevertheless thoroughgoing, and
eminently smooth and equable in describing Social Credit policies—no
mean accomplishment. The most obvious lack, though, is in not linking
the years in question in B.C. politics to the general evolution of
Confederation, however cursorily. But then, if the Socreds were not
self-centred, what were they? And Phil Gaglardi was the most pleasantly
conceited of all.