Two Canadian Universities, The Most Interesting Man in the World, and America’s Best Steakhouse
Over the past eight years, I have participated in nine different Congress to Campus visits. My tenth visit was particularly memorable while at Simon Fraser University (SFU) and the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver last month, during their “lull” between the Winter Olympics and the Paralympics. USAFMC worked with our Canadian counterpart, the Canadian Association of Former Parliamentarians, to match me with two former Canadian Members of Parliament from British Columbia, both of whom had far longer and far more distinguished political careers than mine. The only justification for giving me equal billing was that I had to travel farther; otherwise, there was no contest.
We spoke to two graduate classes in the Public Policy program at SFU, with one session on health care and one on legislative review of executive policy. We then spoke to three undergraduate classes at UBC, two large lecture courses in comparative politics and a smaller seminar-style lower-level political science class at a small residential college affiliated with the university. The students at all the classes were well-prepared; the lecturers had made sure that students had questions for us in advance in case things got slow. The students were well-informed on both US and Canadian politics, and were curious about how our experiences matched up with what they had read, watched, and studied.
An added bonus was having dinner with my Canadian counterparts. At the SFU health policy class, I worked with Hon. Mary Collins, a Progressive Conservative who served in the House of Commons, and as the Government Minister in the Mulroney and Campbell governments, between 1984 and 1993. After leaving politics, she spent five years in Russia, first in the Chuvash Republic helping to design their health care system after the breakup of the USSR, and then in Moscow working with the World Health Organization, finally returning to Vancouver to head the BC Healthy Living Alliance. The following day I was paired with Hon. David Anderson, whose biography kept getting more fascinating with each anecdote. A Liberal from BC (which has similarities to being a Democrat from Arizona), he had a 20-year political career spanning over 40 years. He headed the provincial Liberal party between two different terms in the national Parliament, leading to holding four different ministerial positions in the Chrétien government, including as Environment Minister during Canada’s ratification of the Kyoto Protocols. He also had fascinating stories – which the students never got to hear – about his time in Saigon as part of the Canadian mission to the International Supervisory and Truce Commissions during 1962-64, and from winning a silver medal at the 1960 Rome Olympics in rowing. You know those beer ads with “the most interesting man in the world?” They didn’t need to use an actor, they could have hired David instead.
So if you’ve never volunteered for the Congress to Campus program, you should. You’ve probably been solicited and maybe thought about doing a visit someday, so go ahead and sign up already. You will talk to engaged students trying to understand American politics and examining their own, untested beliefs. You will meet faculty who really care about educating their students and are making sure their academic understanding of Congress matches your practical experience. You’ll meet colleagues with whom you have never really worked, either because you served at different times or because your paths never crossed before, who will entertain and inspire even the most cynical among us. If you never served with Orval Hansen, who I traveled to the University of Montana with last year, treat yourself to a visit to a campus with him. I don’t know how much the students got out of it, but I got inspired. When I grow up, he’s what I want to be.
And if that’s not enough, on my visit last fall, I discovered that one of America’s best restaurants – informal, friendly, and delicious – is Perini Ranch Steakhouse, located about 20 miles south of Abilene, Texas. The next time the Political Science Department at Abilene Christian University needs a Jewish Democratic Former Congressman to pair up with a GOP Former Member to visit campus to pitch public service, you bet I’ll volunteer. Unless you beat me to it and sign up first.
- Samuel Coppersmith (D-AZ, 1993-95)