A squad of volunteers will fan out around Ottawa today delivering oak saplings to friends and admirers of Carletto (Charles) Caccia, one of the most compelling and persistent politicians to have landed on Parliament Hill in many decades.
Indeed, former prime minister Jean Chrétien told an eclectic group of politicians, former politicians, environmental advocates, and others who gathered on the weekend to pay tribute to Mr. Caccia, who died just over a week ago, that Mr. Caccia had more influence on his government than most of his cabinet ministers.
The sapling delivery is symbolic, and like the man it commemorates, extremely practical. Mr. Caccia knew that oaks take 100 years to reach maturity, Mr. Chrétien said, "so Charles was always planning into the future."
On the practical side, Mr. Caccia's annual order of hundreds of oak saplings had already arrived when he was felled by a stroke while working on his silviculture project in the Gatineau Hills. What better way to deal with the cache than to have the mini-legacy planted around the country by friends and colleagues?
The news stories and obituaries after his death captured the broad strokes of the Caccia career.
He was born in Milan, immigrated to Canada after the Second World War, began his political career as a Toronto alderman and was elected as the first Italian-born MP in Parliament in Pierre Trudeau's 1968 sweep.
He was appointed to the Trudeau cabinet, eventually became dean of the Commons as the longest-serving MP, including an extended and fruitful stint as chairman of the Commons environment and sustainable development committee.
But obituaries didn't fully reflect his profound impact as a catalyst for the broader environmental movement, in Canada and internationally. Nor did they capture the essence of his personality or explain how he engendered fierce loyalty from people who worked with and for him (even though many would admit his energy and persistence could also try their patience). He was the only cabinet minister in Ottawa to refuse a government car and chauffeur, for instance, preferring to walk to work.
He was one of the earliest advocates for sustainable development, and a prophet about the "ecological footprint" of economic development, concepts that are now in the mainstream. Internationally, he was one of the early negotiators of the UN Climate Convention and Kyoto Protocol, a member of the Canadian Association for the Club of Rome, and an advocate for the World Commission on Environment and Development that became known as the Bruntland commission.
Jim MacNeill, a friend and another environmental pioneer, read a letter of condolence to the Caccia family from Green Cross International, a Geneva based non-governmental organization concerned about nuclear waste and other toxic contaminants. It was a personal message from Green Cross president Mikhail Gorbachev and indicates how wide the Caccia net was cast.
The memorial gathering was a cross-section of an earlier era, a time when there was more respect between political opponents, and for civil society represented by non-governmental organizations and advocacy groups. Not present at the gathering, for instance, was any representative of former Liberal leader Paul Martin's team, which in 2004 had blocked Mr. Caccia's renomination in Davenport, a riding he had represented in Parliament for 36 years, to make way for one of their own.
Mr. Chrétien admitted privately that he had always felt badly he didn't put Mr. Caccia into his cabinet. His explanation: When first elected prime minister in 1993, he had been ridiculed as "yesterday's man," so he had to go with younger ministers.
But Mr. Cacccia never held it against him, they remained friends and he always valued Mr. Caccia's advice, he added. An example of the Caccia influence Mr. Chrétien talked about at the memorial service, was how as chairman of the environment committee, Mr. Cacccia stick-handled amendments to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act into law over the resistance of his own party's cabinet.
When he had to vacate his Parliament Hill offices in 2004, the Sierra Club offered him a place to put his many boxes of papers and documents.
As Elizabeth May, then president of the Sierra Club and now the Green Party Leader, told the story, "Charles came with his boxes."
One day when the organization was hosting an international delegation, Mr. Caccia was helping Sierra staff stuff envelopes with promotional material. One of the visitors noted that it said a lot about how egalitarian a country Canada is, when a former minister of the Crown would be stuffing envelopes.
"I don't know what it says about Canada," she added, "but it says an awful lot about Charles."
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