This is the fourth in The Globe's series of profiles of all the Liberal leadership candidates.
CHEVERIE, N.S. – He envies the eagle floating in the late afternoon breeze coming in off the Minas Basin.
Scott Brison would like to soar as high, see as far.
He stands on the shore, the Fundy tide just beginning to rise. Bathing here one morning in the open, outdoor shower he has built at his beach house, he could see all the way to Cape Blomidon, all the way across the wide brown basin to Parrsboro on the far shore.
Liberal leadership candidate Scott Brison (CP/File)
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Yet he wants even more.
He wants to build a towering structure in the woods that rise back of the rolling fields of hay and clover that his father, the local grocer, picked up for $2,200 in the early 1950s. He wants to build above the tree tops, a home strong enough to stand up to the shifting winds, round enough to allow vision in all directions.
Different, like him.
Never let it be said Scott Brison lacks ambition. In elementary school, he gave a speech to the local 4-H club that quoted, as inspirational talks invariably do, the likes of Mark Twain and Will Rogers, but where the most powerful words were his own.
"Iron rusts from disuse," he said at 12 years of age. "Stagnant water loses its purity. And inaction saps the vigour of the mind. To be successful one must be ready for hard work, must have integrity and must have a good attitude. If you have the will to win, you've achieved half your success. If you don't have the will to win, you've achieved half your failure."
"I still believe in that now," he said, smiling at the old speech his parents kept all these years.
He is 39 now, so filled with will to win that, in another hour or so, he will be introduced to several hundred locals as not just the next leader of the Liberal Party of Canada but "the next prime minister of Canada." They will not only cheer but they will dance as the most unusual, certainly most entertaining, of the 10 candidates to succeed Paul Martin takes to the microphone and begins belting out Johnny Cash's I Walk the Line.
They have come for Mr. Brison's annual barbecue and country dance, as they have come every summer since he first ran for office, and won, in 1997. Some came originally as Progressive Conservatives, now as Liberals. Some come today as provincial Conservatives, federal Liberals. Some just come because, well, Scott can be whatever he wants to be, for all they care, so long as he continues to represent the very rural, very conservative riding of Kings-Hants.
He can be a Liberal instead of the Conservative they once thought him to be. He can be gay instead of the straight young man his parents once thought him to be. For all they know -- and many of them lining up for the chicken breasts and potato salad believe this possible -- he can be leader of the Liberal Party and even prime minister of Canada.
"I don't think you plan your life," Mr. Brison said on a long walk along the beach before the guests arrived, a walk he jokingly called "the Hants County Gay Pride Parade."
He did, on the other hand, plan to get involved politically from a very young age, either as an organizer or a candidate. It just happened about a quarter-century before he figured he would be ready. And there was a time, a long, long time, when he thought his dream would prove impossible. An openly gay person could not run for office and be elected. Not in rural Canada. Not as a conservative. Not here in the heart of Nova Scotia's "Baptist Belt."
And yet, he has. Four victories, two as a Progressive Conservative, two now as a Liberal, three victories while openly gay, the first despite being challenged by innuendo.
It was at this moment that Mr. Brison came to appreciate "what an amazing country we live in." A Reform/Alliance supporter was at the microphone during an all-candidates forum in nearby Windsor, and when he insisted on going on about why Mr. Brison had never married, the largely blue-rinse and white-hair audience began booing, some even standing to wave their fists at the questioner. Shortly after a story appeared in Frank magazine suggesting Mr. Brison was gay, he went public and today lives openly with his partner, Maxime St. Pierre. And despite some hard feelings that persist among certain local Conservatives concerning his switching to the Liberals, neither sexual choice nor party affiliation has hurt him in the least at the ballot box.
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