Alan Pope

Alan William Pope (August 2, 1945 – July 8, 2022) was a Canadian politician.

Pope served as an alderman for Timmins City Council from 1973 to 1974.

In the 1975 provincial election, he ran as the Progressive Conservative candidate in the riding of Cochrane South but lost to Bill Ferrier of the NDP by 1,292 votes.

He was a Progressive Conservative member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1977 to 1990, and served as a cabinet minister in the governments of Bill Davis and Frank Miller.

Pope was raised in Northern Ontario, and was educated at Waterloo Lutheran University and Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto.

He worked as a lawyer before entering politics.

He ran again in the 1977 provincial election, this time defeating Ferrier by 2,276 votes.

He was appointed a parliamentary assistant in Davis's government in 1978, and was promoted to Minister without portfolio on August 30, 1979.

He faced a minor controversy in 1979, when Ed Deibel, the leader of the small Northern Ontario Heritage Party, publicly claimed that Pope had promised to cross the floor to join the party, which Pope denied.

He was re-elected in the 1981 provincial election.

Pope was promoted to Minister of Natural Resources on April 10, 1981.

He served in that position for the remainder of the Davis administration's time in office.

Responding to a report on the state of the province's provincial park system, Pope promised a significant increase in the number of parks.

However, he refused to prohibit mining, hunting, and fishing within park grounds.

In 1982, after a dispute over wild rice harvesting on Mud Lake, Pope ruled that traditional native harvesting rights would be upheld and that the ministry would not allow commercial harvesting to proceed.

Pope's position in the Progressive Conservative Party was unusual.

He supported the interventionist policies of the Davis government and was sometimes considered to be on the progressive wing of the party.

However, he was not a Red Tory and did not support the party's Toronto-based establishment (commonly known as the "Big Blue Machine").

Pope was rather a populist, who sought greater power for the party's neglected local branches in northern, eastern, and southwestern Ontario.

In that sense, his position in the provincial Progressive Conservatives was similar to John Diefenbaker's role in the federal party a generation earlier.

In 1985, Pope was a prominent figure behind Frank Miller's campaign to succeed Davis as party leader.

Some regarded his presence in Miller's camp as unusual since Miller's supporters tended to be older figures from the party's right wing.

Pope nonetheless proved an effective campaigner for Miller by compiling much-needed polling data and devising strategies for Miller's supporters at the party convention.

One strategy was to have some of Miller's delegates vote for the progressive Larry Grossman on the second ballot, which resulted in the narrow elimination of the centrist Dennis Timbrell (that was considered strategic voting as Timbrell was considered a greater threat than Grossman).

Miller narrowly defeated Grossman on the third ballot to become party leader, and Pope was promoted to Minister of Health on February 8, 1985.

It was under Miller's leadership, however, that the Progressive Conservative Party lost its 42-year grip on power.

Miller was reduced to a fragile minority government in the 1985 provincial election and proved unable to sustain his party in power.

Pope was named Attorney General of Ontario in a post-election shuffle on May 17, 1985, but did little of significance before Miller's government was defeated on a motion of non-confidence in the house by the Liberals and the NDP.

He resigned his portfolio on June 26, 1985, and moved into the opposition benches.

Pope ran to succeed Miller as leader in the November 1985 Progressive Conservative leadership convention.

His campaign was weaker than expected, however, as many considered Miller's rightward shift a key factor in the party losing power.

Furthermore, one of his campaign staff was caught polling party members as to whether religion would make a difference in the leadership race, which was seen by some as a reference to Larry Grossman's Jewish background, and Pope made a public apology.

Pope also broke with John Thompson, his first campaign manager, fairly early in the race.

At the November leadership convention, Pope made a dramatic entrance by delivering a rousing speech surrounded by his "grassroots" delegates on the convention floor, rather than from the podium.

That foreshadowed future leadership speeches by figures such as Jim Flaherty.

Pope also tried to portray himself as a unifying figure in the party and noted that the animosity between frontrunners Grossman and Dennis Timbrell was threatening to tear the party asunder (one of his campaign buttons read, "Don't take sides, take Pope".) In spite of such efforts, he finished a weak third on the first ballot and was dropped from the race.

Many expected that Pope would have given Timbrell a second-ballot victory by endorsing him, but Pope surprisingly remained silent and allowed Grossman to defeat Timbrell by a mere 19 votes.

Pope had a poor relationship with Grossman, was not given a critic's portfolio after the convention.

He resumed his law practice in Timmins while still an MPP, and he spent two days a week away from the legislature.

He nonetheless ran for re-election in the 1987 provincial election and retained his seat.