Liberal Member of Parliament Mauril Belanger speaks in the House of Commons in Ottawa on Dec. 7, 2015.CHRIS WATTIE/Reuters
It was not at all certain that Mauril Bélanger would arrive in the House of Commons on the second Thursday of June to ensure the survival of his private members' bill to make the English version of O Canada gender-neutral.
Mr. Bélanger's body had largely given out on him in the seven months since he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and the Liberals were scrambling to find ways to delay the vote until the following week if he could not muster the strength to appear that day. Without him there to introduce the legislation on third reading, Bill C-210 would have died.
But, a few minutes before 1:30 in the afternoon, a wheelchair carrying the Liberal MP was pushed to a vacant spot near the Speaker's chair.
Mr. Bélanger, a large man whose energy had been one of the trademarks of his political career, sat slack-jawed, unable to speak or even move his head, as Conservatives argued against his proposed lyrics and a New Democrat and a member of his own party defended the changes. In the end, the legislation was passed by the House.
When it becomes law – something that is all but certain to happen later this year – future generations of Canadians will sing "in all of us command" instead of "in all thy sons command."
Mr. Bélanger knew he would never be among those to belt out the revised version. His voice had left him months earlier. Its gradual departure throughout the fall federal election campaign was one of the first signs that something was desperately wrong with his health.
But in May, with the help of text-to-speech software, he explained to fellow politicians why he believed the new lyrics were necessary.
"Canadians now are ready for an inclusive national anthem," Mr. Bélanger told the House. "The objective of Bill C-210 is to honour the contribution and sacrifice of our Canadian women, in addition to those of our men, in our national anthem. It is to underscore that all of us, regardless of our gender or our origins, contribute to our unique country."
Mr. Bélanger was the member of Parliament for Ottawa-Vanier for 21 years and through eight elections, including five in which he obtained more than double the votes of his closest competitor. He died Tuesday at the age of 61.
Ottawa-Vanier, which used to be known as Ottawa-East, is the safest Liberal seat in the country. It has been held by five men, all of them Liberals, since it was created in 1935. But those who know Mr. Bélanger say he never took his party's local dominance, or his own job, for granted.
He was a career politician, but not a partisan. He was never a prominent cabinet minister, but was the strong voice of his constituents. He cherished the symbols of Canada – the anthem, the flag and Parliament. He would likely have been elected Speaker of the House of Commons had the disease not struck when it did.
And he was, above all, a believer in equality – for women, for the various racial and ethnic groups in his riding, and for linguistic minorities including francophones in Ontario.
Mr. Bélanger was born in Mattawa, Ont., a town that is 45 minutes east of North Bay with a large francophone community. He was the oldest of four boys.
He was also exceedingly bright – he was a member of the Mensa High IQ Society – and excelled at the University of Ottawa where, as a student, he sat on the university's senate and was also head of the student federation. The House of Commons at that time had 282 seats and Mr. Bélanger told his friends he intended to sit in one of them one day.
Immediately after graduation he got a job as an aide to Jean-Robert Gauthier, who was then MP for the riding of Ottawa East. Then, during the 1979 election, he was seconded to work for Jean-Luc Pépin in the neighbouring riding of Ottawa-Carleton.
The Liberals lost that vote to the Progressive Conservatives, but Mr. Pépin won his seat and Mr. Bélanger met the woman who would become his wife. Friends say Catherine Bélanger, who came to the marriage with a son, Barclay Easton, has been his closest confidante and his source of strength, especially this year as his body gave way to the disease.
The Liberals returned to power in 1980 and, a short while later, Mr. Bélanger went to work for Mr. Pépin, who was then transport minister.
He left politics for a few years to become an investment adviser, and then to work for the chair of the Ottawa-Carleton regional council. His university dream of becoming a federal politician was finally realized in 1995 when when he won the riding of Ottawa-Vanier for the Liberals in a by-election.
"He has always been a guy who spoke his mind, both privately and publicly," said Bob Rae, who led the federal Liberals on an interim basis from 2011 to 2013. "He's very much his own guy. He's prepared to buck a trend if he has to. He gets hold of an issue and he takes it and keeps going with it. And he's never been one who goes along to get along."
Mr. Bélanger's biggest accomplishments were mostly local in nature.
He helped to bring 15,000 people from Ottawa to the Unity rally in 1995 to plead with Quebeckers to vote "No" in the independence referendum.
He gathered 25,000 used books from his riding and sent them to Inuit children.
He was intensely proud of his role in the successful effort to keep open the Hôpital Montfort, the French-language hospital in east Ottawa that had been slated for closure by the provincial Conservatives in 1997.
In 2009, he worked with then Conservative environment minister Jim Prentice to have the Beechwood Cemetery in his riding named the National Cemetery of Canada.
And last year, when the Conservative government showed little interest in marking the 50th anniversary of the Canadian flag, Mr. Bélanger had a poster depicting Canada's flags since Confederation designed, printed and distributed to 13,000 Ottawa high school students.
"He saw his service as one that he owed to his constituents and to his profession," Mr. Rae said. "He took his profession as a politician very seriously. He wasn't a mean-spirited partisan."
In that vein, Mr. Bélanger turned down the opportunity to be named one of the Liberal "critics" in favour of being the "advocate" for co-operatives and credit unions.
Tony Stikeman, the president of the Liberal riding association in Ottawa-Vanier, said Mr. Bélanger saw himself as a public servant "in the most honourable sense of the word." His constituents, he said, were like his family.
Most believed Mr. Bélanger would easily win the vote for Speaker when it was held in early December last year. But, less than a week before the ballots were cast, he was diagnosed with ALS.
"We had a group cry and discussion on the Sunday," three days after he was told the bad news, said Sheila Gervais, the former national director of the Liberal party and a close personal friend.
Mr. Bélanger had been told by his doctor that, the more he used his muscles, the faster he would lose them, Ms. Gervais said. But he was determined to let the people who had helped him in his bid to become Speaker know the situation before the news was made public.
"He just got on the phone and he could barely speak at that point, his voice was very weak, to tell them about his disease and that he was withdrawing from the race," Ms. Gervais said.
Senator Jim Munson, a long-time friend of Mr. Bélanger, recalls the final trip to Africa that the two of them took this past spring as members of the Canada-Africa Parliamentary Association, which Mr. Bélanger co-chaired.
By that time, Mr. Bélanger could not walk or talk except by writing on his iPad. But "there he was at the airport," Mr. Munson said, "this picture of courage and determination showing two thumbs up as we had seen in the past, [indicating] let's get on board and go."
Francis LeBlanc, who ran Mr. Bélanger's last political campaigns, said he would remember his friend as a quietly effective member of Parliament with a deep respect for the institution, who exuded a profound humility in all that he did.
"At one point, I said 'we want to know what you did for you constituents,' " Mr. LeBlanc said. "And he stopped me right there and said 'they're not my constituents. They are the constituents that I have the privilege to represent.' And he never deviated from that."