In Some Day the Sun Will Shine and Have Not Will Be No More, the political memoirs of Brian Peckford, former premier of Newfoundland and Labrador from 1979 to 1989, were formally published today at a launch party in St. John’s. Political Management professor and historian Stephen Azzi, writing in the Canadian Encyclopedia, draws attention to a little-known but markedly consequential contribution Peckford made to the Canada that exists today: his role in breaking the political log jam that permitted the patriation of the constitution and the adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982.
The commonly accepted folklore holds that the provinces and the federal government were bitterly divided at the constitutional conference of November, 1981, until federal justice minister Jean Chrétien, Saskatchewan attorney general Roy Romanow, and Ontario attorney general Roy McMurtry ducked into an unused pantry in the conference centre and hashed out a compromise that was later dubbed “the Kitchen Accord.” It is a nice story, says Prof. Azzi, but it fails to do justice to the complexities of the negotiations or to the role played by Brian Peckford in bringing about an eventual agreement.
Randy Boswell, who teaches in the School of Journalism and Communication, noted in the National Post how the Canadian Encyclopedia rewrote its entry on the constitution’s patriation to acknowledge Peckford’s contribution: http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/09/12/kitchen-accord-downgraded-former-premier-rewrites-constitutional-history/