[ISL] "Wade MacLauchlan: P.E.I.’s optimist-in-chief"

[rfmcdonald]

Aaron Wherry's article in MacLean's takes a closer look at Prince Edward Island's new premier, Wade MacLauchlan.

Some years ago, Donald Savoie, the influential scholar of public administration, was playing golf with Wade MacLauchlan, then president of the University of Prince Edward Island. “I said, ‘Wade, you should go into politics. You could be premier of P.E.I. You’d be good at it,’ ” Savoie recalls. “He said, ‘Ah, no, no, that’s not for me, I’m at UPEI, I’ve got work to do there.’ ”

Yes, well, that was then. MacLauchlan, now 60, says he remained steadfast until last fall, when Robert Ghiz announced his intention to resign as premier and the P.E.I. Liberals found themselves in need of a new leader.

“In a very short period of time, I would say in the order of a week, there were many conversations, most of them not initiated by me, which started out with me saying that I thought I could contribute in other ways,” MacLauchlan says. “And then through a process that I can chronicle almost hour-by-hour, I moved toward the point of no return.”

And so now he is the 32nd premier of Prince Edward Island, not merely as an outsider to the practice of professional politics but as a particularly historic figure—becoming both the first openly gay man and the first member of the Order of Canada to become premier.