Kenneth Rafe Mair (31 December 1931 - 9 October 2017) is a Canadian lawyer, political commentator, radio personality and politician in British Columbia, Canada. He served in the British Columbia Legislative Assembly as a member of Kamloops from 1975 to 1981 in the caucus of the Social Credit Party.
In his post-political career, Mair became a radio figure and political commentator, causing controversy for his views on both constitution treaties Meech Lake and Charlottetown. He served as the plaintiff of Canada's historic Supreme Court decision Rafe Mair v. Kari Simpson .
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Mair was born in Vancouver and grew up in the Kerrisdale neighborhood. His mother is Frances Tyne (nÃÆ' Â © e Leigh), known as Frankie, and her father is Kenneth Frederick Robert Mair, a salesman born in Auckland, New Zealand. They had been married in Vancouver 16 months earlier.
Mair became a diligent fisherman and developed an interest in the public affairs of his mother's work in the provincial newspaper .
Mair entered the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 1949 and proceeded to law in 1953. He worked for a timber company and later in the oil industry in Edmonton before spending three years as a claim adjuster with an insurance company.
In 1960, Mair began speaking with Vancouver lawyer Tom Griffiths. Called to the bar in 1961, he handled many personal injury cases. He practiced law in Vancouver until 1968, when he moved to Kamloops to join the practice of his law classmate Jarl Whist, a Liberal who has run twice unsuccessfully against Progressive Conservative MP E. Davie Fulton.
Maps Rafe Mair
Political career
His electoral career began with his election to the Kamloops city council in the early 1970s. Previously involved with the Liberal Party, he was an opponent of the NDP government of prime minister Dave Barrett. He won a Social Credit nomination for Kamloops in May 1975, proceeding to defeat incumbent NDP Gerry Anderson in a December election by 14,639 votes to 10,975. Mair won re-election four years later with 3,309 votes. He held a chair until retiring from politics in 1981; the chair was taken over by Claude Richmond, also from the Social Credit Party.
Mair served in Premier Bill Bennett's cabinet in various portfolios, including health and education. During negotiations in 1980 and 1981 to negotiate the Canadian Constitution, he was the head of the BC delegation on constitutional matters.
Media personality
In 1981, Mair left the government and served as a radio talk show host in Vancouver at CJOR. The station shot Mair in 1984, replacing it with former prime minister Dave Barrett. Mair moved to rival CKNW.
In the early 1990s, he gained a national reputation and supported equally for his role as an outspoken opponent of Meech Lake and Charlottetown's constitutional treaty.
Despite high ratings, his show was canceled by CKNW in 2003, and he was later hired at CKBD (600 AM), an oldies station, to start a morning talk show until the end of the show in 2005. In the fall of 2005, he became a guest of the comments regular on the main event program on Omni Television, The Standard (seen in Vancouver on CHNU-TV).
Mair contributed three comments a week to January 2006 when the Comment segment of the program was fired. However, he continues his relationship with The Standard , becoming the program's guest host from time to time. Until his death, he was a regular columnist for the community newspaper chain and also for Tyee's online magazine and often appeared nationally as a political commentator for several outlets including CBC Radio.
In 2008, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously voted in favor of Mair at Rafe Mair v. Kari Simpson , his appeal to the provincial court's decision that he had slandered social activist Kari Simpson in his editorial in 1999.
Views
Though traditionally regarded as a political conservative, Mair's views are moderate on certain issues; especially the environment and social welfare. Disappointed with three major federal parties, he became an important supporter of the Green Party urging people to vote in their recent federal and provincial elections. Although he avoids the support of all parties, he supports individual candidates, such as New Democrat candidate Svend Robinson at the Vancouver Center.
In 2009, Mair publicly declared that he chose the NDP in the election that year. He has written why he thinks that Premier Gordon Campbell failed on British Columbians; among the reasons he mentions is that the BC Liberals destroyed public utility BC Hydro and granted British Columbia water rights to the interests of international companies.
Mair is the spokesperson for Save Our Rivers, a group organized to combat the construction of river power plants.
Personal life
Mair is a type II diabetic and announces his experience with depression in 1995 while working as a broadcaster.
Mair wrote several books on Canadian politics, including his memoirs, and became a regular columnist in Tyee's online news magazine. He was a major contributor to The Common Sense Canadian, a news and opinion website with the focus of British Columbia until his death. He hosted a program called Searching with Rafe Mair on Joytv.
Mair died on October 9, 2017 in Vancouver at the age of 85 years.
Selected works
- Canada, does anyone listen? (1998) ISBNÃ, 1-55263-000-5
- Rants, raves and recollections (2000) ISBNÃ, 1-55285-145-1
- Still Ranting: More Rants, Raves, and Recollections (2002) ISBNÃ, 0-8020-7458-8
- RafeÃ,: a memoir (2004) ISBNÃ, 1-55017-319-7
- Hard talk (2005) ISBNÃ, 1-55017-374-X
- Over the Mountains: More Thoughts on Important Things (2006) ISBNÃ, 1-55017-371-5
- I Remember Horsebuns (2015) ISBN: 978-1-987857-25-2
- Politically Incorrect: How Canadians Lose the Way and Home the Simple Way (2017) ISBN 978-0-9953286-2-4
Awards
- 1977 - Medal of Commemoration of the Queen Elizabeth II
- 1993 - B.C. Broadcasters Association of "Broadcast Viewers of the Year"
- 1995 - Haig-Brown Award for Conservation work
- 1995 - Received the prestigious Michener Award from the Canadian Governor-General for bold journalism, the first radio announcer to do so (nominated on two other occasions)
- 1997 - BC Branch of Canadian Mental Health Association "Persons Media of the Year"
- 1997 - Canadian National Mental Health Association, People's Media of the Year (along with Pamela Wallin)
- 1998 - BC Branch of Canadian Mental Health Association "People of the Media of the Year"
- 2003 - Bruce Hutchison's Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Jack Webster Foundation
- 2005 - Entered into the Canadian Broadcasters Hall of Fame Association
- 2005 - Dubbed by Georgia Straight readers' poll (78,000 responses) as best talk show host in Vancouver
See also
- Rafe Mair vs. Kari Simpson
References
External links
- Official website
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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