Recently, I have received a great volume of mail from Canadians.These are people who really want answers about our government and about my husband. I will answer your most frequent questions first because they are the easiest.
My husband did not sue the government (of which the Senate is a part) because his $48,000 pension cannot fight the billions of dollars that the government has. Some wealthy people offered help. Even a former Prime Minister entered the picture. But it seemed pointless to engage in a long and costly battle.
Why did he not resign when his health became worse?
Again, that is easy to answer. In order to fulfill the role he had chosen (remember, every senator has to invent his own role to a large extent), he needed the tools that the Senate provided - an office with computers, faxes telephones.
With those tools, he could reach out all over Canada to people and communities that were in need. Often, the need was pressing, and my husband was able to cut through the bureaucratic maze quickly. To him, the Senate was a tool for helping people and not an end in itself.
Therefore, he stayed. He found that he did not always need to make the trip to the Senate to do his effective work. Faxes, telephones, and computers were at his fingertips.
I know that it is entirely possible. My husband has represented Canadians abroad - in Holland, he was with the veterans, in Ireland he marched together with two women (later Nobel Prize recipients) and others to establish a fund in Canada to help the children of Ireland.
My husband believed in a hands on policy in all his activities outside the Senate.
During the Czechoslovakian revolution, he represented Canada and advised on expediting refugee immigration procedures in Europe.He visited our immigration offices in Europe. He sat and observed in the
line-up of refugees and watched our immigration officers at work. He visited personally our immigration centers where immigrants slept. He lined up and flew back on a refugee Canadian plane with the first group of refugees.
When he was in Mexico for treatments of cancer, he used his healthier times to visit drug habilitation centers, centers for abused women, an orphanage, old peolpes homes, psychiatric hospitals, prisons, etc. Seven Canadian airforce planes from Trenton have brought hospital equipment- even a discarded school bus - to aid disabled children. The equipment, desperately needed, was collected in Canadian communities by volunteers.
They believed, rightly, that their work enhanced Canada's humanitarian reputation.
He was asked to confer with Prime Minister Harold MacMillan and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, John. F Kennedy, and later, Senator Edward Kennedy. They wanted to discuss the speeches he had made in the Senate, his humanitarian works, and projects that he had initiated.
In Canada, he championed minorities (loosely referred to as ethnic groups) throughout his life. When he was a young man, he set up citizenship offices all over Canada. At that time, many new citizens could barely speak English. They certainly could not cope with problems that needed bureaucratic assistance. My husband saw the need and tried to fill the gap.
He lived for a week with a poor Italian immigrant family in Toronto,in his efforts to understand their needs. He went with them - wearing workman's apparel - to see personally the reception and the help the Italians got from immigration, employment, and other government agencies.