Farewell to Sake, the Emperor of the Rideau

That’s the name then Recorder and Times city editor and master wit Doug Coward coined for ironman Mayor Bill Thake, and it is the most fitting I have heard to date.

Nevertheless, I will also remember a different name for him, one given entirely accidentally by a computer: Sake.

Or, if you’ll allow a bit of whimsy, Sake, Emperor of the Rideau.

Thake died Wednesday, at age 77, as a result of a stroke he suffered on Sunday. He was in his 44th year as head of Westport council, and his 52nd year of municipal politics.

There are many stories circulating about Thake’s long and remarkable career, and they will live on, one hopes, for a long time.

The story I most remember about Bill Thake happens to be the most memorable story I covered involving him: the 2008 controversy over attacks on fishermen of East Asian descent.

Facing charges of racism on the part of locals by no less than Ontario's chief human rights commissioner Barbara Hall, Thake joined then Leeds-Grenville MPP Bob Runciman in organizing a town hall meeting at Rideau Vista Public School in mid-April, 2008, a meeting attended by Donna Cansfield, who was Ontario Natural Resources Minister at the time, as well as Chinese-Canadian community leaders and Chinese-language media.

Thake would have none of these accusations of racism, and he made it clear during that session he felt the real problem was illegal fishing in the Westport area – regardless of the ethnicity of the poachers – and a lack of enforcement by the MNR.

In one notable exchange, Lulien Wang, of the Kingston Chinese-Canadian Association, said not all poachers are Asian, but the violence had been directed entirely at Asians, and condemned the attacks on Asian-Canadians.

Thake reassured her he did not condone beating people.

"We're going to do our very best that it doesn't happen again," said Thake.

And immediately after, he warned that poachers shouldn't provide "just cause for it to perhaps happen."

One could argue the “just cause” comment contradicted the reassurance. But at a deeper level, Thake, a sincere and no-nonsense leader despite his tactical political skills, was giving expression to the contradiction in his constituents’ hearts at the time. The people of Westport were not (and are not) fundamentally racist, acknowledged in their hearts that attacking people was wrong, yet felt in those hearts the frustration caused by the authorities’ inaction, and a sense that, if you break the law, you deserve the bad things that happen to you.

Not all of these feelings were commendable, perhaps, but reality is never morally pure; it is usually messy. Thake expressed this reality, unfiltered, and in so doing served his constituents well.

I would contrast this behaviour with that of another politician in that room, Lanark, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington MPP Randy Hillier, who used the occasion to play to his rural, anti-government base, and stopped just shy of the line between reason and demagoguery when he asked Cansfield – in an implicit way – whether her government was softer on poachers who were Asian-Canadian.

The contrast was clear at that moment between the ambitious politician and the people’s politician. Hillier was scoring political points; Thake was representing his people.

A short while later, I went online to read the accounts of that meeting by my fellow reporters at the Toronto-based Chinese-language papers. Having taken only one year of Mandarin at university, I could not get by without Google translation.

Nor could I get by with Google translation, either.

When translated by the computer, Donna Cansfield became Rumsfeld (as in the former U.S. Secretary of Defence), Bill Thake became Sake (which I chose to pronounce like the Japanese rice wine rather than “for Pete’s Sake”) and the description of the event included “a strong smell of gunpowder in the room” (which I can assure you was not the case).

Sake, Emperor of the Rideau. Consider it the East Asian Google mistranslation of The Colossus of the Rideau.

Bill Thake was the furthest thing from royalty, yet both titles are a fitting (if somewhat cheeky) description of his public life.

There will not be another like him for a long time. Or ever.