On Thursday, Brian Mulroney comes to Ottawa to be feted as the "greenest prime minister" in Canadian history. A Liberal Premier, the current right-of-centre Prime Minister and the editor of a left-of-centre environmental magazine -- who was brought up believing that Mr. Mulroney was a tree cutter and not a tree hugger -- will be doing the honouring.
And all this is happening at the venerable Chateau Laurier before a sold-out crowd of environmentalists and corporate leaders.
So sought-after are tickets for this Earth Week Gala Dinner that some members of the David Suzuki Foundation, who were too late in trying to buy some, will have to be squeezed in somehow.
There is room for only 308 people.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose environmental policies are still a blank page to environmentalists, will introduce Mr. Mulroney. Quebec Liberal Premier Jean Charest, a former Mulroney environment minister, is to speak and tell war stories from "Rio" (the UN's Earth Summit was held there in 1992), and Mr. Mulroney's famous son, Ben, star of CTV's eTalk Daily and Canadian Idol, will be the evening's co-host.
Mr. Mulroney will deliver a speech in which he will not only look back on his government's green legacy, but look ahead.
He will speak about the serious problem of the shrinking polar ice cap, and the growth in China and India and the role Canada can play in ensuring those countries maintain good environmental practices.
Old-time Mulroney PMOers and staffers will be at the dinner. A table costs $2,500, but MPs and public servants are being charged only $40 so they don't end up attending as any big-wig's guest.
The event is being organized by the principals of a small independent environmental magazine, Corporate Knights, which began four years ago with $1,500 and a big idea that big business can be part of the environmental solution.
"All of a sudden, what is happening to us? We're like this centre-left magazine and all of a sudden we've got all of these . . . [leaders]" Toby Heaps, the magazine's editor, said about the success of the dinner.
It's even more delicious when you know that in 1988, Mr. Heaps's mother voted for the Liberals in the free-trade election, telling her son, who was 12 at the time, that the free-trade deal would "cause trees to be cut down."
"I always associated Mulroney with a tree cutter," he said.
No longer.
"I guess [Tory]Blue can be green," Mr. Heaps said.
Two years ago, Mr. Heaps, who had been in the United States working on Ralph Nader's presidential campaign (one of his jobs was to canvass at a Wal-Mart in Casper, Wyo.), returned to Canada and came up with the idea of polling environmentalists as to who was the greenest prime minister in Canadian history.
He asked 12 prominent green Canadians -- people such as the Sierra Club's Elizabeth May, Environmental Defence's Rick Smith and even former Liberal environment minister Sheila Copps -- to act as jurors who would cast ballots, explain their choices and then make recommendations about environmental policy to the current government.
Mr. Mulroney won, receiving five votes against three for former Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau.
Mr. Heaps said that once Mr. Mulroney agreed to the honour, the floodgates opened and the clamour for tickets began.
In fact, the event was to take place last year, but had to be rescheduled because Mr. Mulroney was suffering from an inflamed pancreas and was too ill to attend.
Meanwhile, this is to be a big event for Canada's environmental crowd, who say Mr. Mulroney is a very deserving honoree.
"Mulroney being the greenest PM in Canadian history is actually a widely held view in the environmental community," said Mr. Smith, noting that among many positive steps Mr. Mulroney took for the environment was to go to bat "big time" for the acid-rain agreement with the United States.
(Mr. Smith, however, nominated Sir Wilfrid Laurier for the greenest PM because he created a national commission to deal with environmental issues.)
But Ms. May nominated Mr. Mulroney: "For a lot of us in the Mulroney years, we didn't know it, but this was our Valhalla."
She said that former Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien made many environmental promises, but did not fulfill them. Mr. Mulroney, on the other hand, launched initiatives on acid rain, climate change and the ozone layer. Like Mr. Smith, she said that Mr. Mulroney made acid rain a bilateral priority with the United States.
Both environmentalists say they hope that Mr. Mulroney's environmental legacy will be followed, or even overtaken, by the Harper Conservatives.
"Of course, my hope and the hope of a lot of environmentalists who are going to be there [at the dinner] is that this new Conservative government breathes some life into the Mulroney legacy," Mr. Smith said.