When Prime Minister John Horgan famously told the Freedom Convoy truckers en route to Victoria to “get a hobby”, he hadn’t yet considered that he might need one himself. It was in March. Three months later, he announced that he would step down as prime minister this fall. David Eby takes over from the 63-year-old on November 18. As for the hobby, Horgan got right into it. “He said it would be hypocritical if I didn’t have a hobby,” said Ellie Horgan, his wife of 38 years. Horgan recalled that the father of his childhood friend Clayton Booth had a rock at their waterfront home in Brentwood. “John remembers going out there and hearing the rock polisher drop, drop, drop, so he called me and said, ‘Do you still have it?’ ,” said Booth, a Parksville teacher who served as best man at Horgan’s 1984 wedding. The 40-year-old rotary machine was located in Booth’s sister’s basement and delivered to Parksville, where Booth worked on it. It was then taken to the Rockhound shop in Saanich for a new belt. Ellie Horgan gave him another glass for his birthday. Horgan now has the repaired and new machinery to turn rough stones into polished stones – not a bad analogy for his own experience. Pundits said Horgan, who was described as combative and angry in his 12 years in Opposition, had similarly fallen on the rock of political reshuffles by advisers and transformed into a refined and conciliatory prime minister. Horgan has a different version of this story. He said being in opposition from 2005 to 2017 — he was named NDP leader in 2014 — forced him to play a role he played well, which meant he was labeled angry. Once he was prime minister, he could relax into who he really was. Long-time friend Keith Bridge, executive director of the RunSport Victoria Society, backs Horgan’s version, saying: “He really hasn’t changed – he’s become himself again.” “People started to see the real John Horgan and he let it down because he was so comfortable that way.” Despite being called brilliant by friends and colleagues and one of the province’s best premiers by one-time rival-turned-friend Andrew Weaver, the former leader of the BC Greens, Horgan likes to think of himself simply as “John from Langford “, in Saanich’s past. “I’m just an ordinary person who was given an extraordinary opportunity,” Horgan said in his office in the Legislature’s west wing. “I’d like people to believe that I’ve stayed true to who I am and that I’ve always had the people of my community at the center of everything I’ve done.” “He didn’t even want the job” John Joseph Horgan was born on August 7, 1959 to Irish Catholic father Pat Horgan and mother Alice May, née Clutterbuck. He has three older siblings – brothers Brian and Pat and one sister, Kathy. He was just 18 months old when his father died of a brain aneurysm, leaving his single mother to raise four children. During lean times, the family sometimes relied on food hampers. Horgan did not adopt his father’s Catholicism, but embraced the rest of his Irish heritage, keeping his Irish passport and celebrating every St. Patrick’s Day. He also shared his father’s love of basketball and lacrosse. By the time Horgan was seven, his older siblings were out of the house. He became his mother’s “rock”. “I would never want her to be unhappy,” she said. He credits his mother and sister, who had her first child at 16 and twins at 19, with passing on the values he holds dear today – truth, kindness, humility, trying your level and protecting others. Growing up in Saanich, Horgan attended Lakehill Elementary and Reynolds High School, where he was school president. He and his best friends shared a love for most sports. Horgan had a record player in his bedroom and a pool table in the basement. Booth remembers them listening to Donovan’s Mellow Yellow on a 45rpm record. Friend Michael Allabarton, now an international branding expert, said a few days after Horgan’s 18th birthday, the two set off for southern California with the Rand McNally map, listening to Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors in a 1967 Grand Parisienne. he was as lousy a prime minister as he was a navigator, the province would be in trouble,” he quipped. At Disneyland, the couple bought the standard ticket package that came with the “kids ride” tickets. Horgan, who was six foot two and famously lean, insisted they use them. “Well, a couple of 18-year-olds, we go on the teacup rides because he has to use every last ticket,” Allabarton said, laughing at the memory. To save money for university, Horgan held various jobs, but often talks about his job at a paper mill in Ocean Falls on BC’s Central Coast. He later applied to Carleton University’s journalism program, but said he was not accepted. He met Ellie in his first week at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont. in September 1979 while in a pub. It was love at first sight for Ellie and a drunken Horgan, who had to be dumped in bed later that night. The next day, he met a “beautiful blonde” and wondered how she knew his name. “I fell in love with her the moment I saw her, which was a day after she saw me,” Horgan said. “We’ve been together ever since. She is kind and compassionate and always tries to help everyone around her. … It’s everything to me.” “It was just magical,” said Ellie, a biologist by training. “There were sparks.” Ellie, who comes from a Dutch Christian Reformed background, said she blushes whenever John professes his love in public, which is often. Both claim they never fought. (Ellie added, to clarify: “We had a falling out, but that was really more of a long-distance miscommunication than anything else.”) The couple have two sons, Nate and Evan, who are both married and in their 30s. Horgan graduated from Trent with a Bachelor of Arts, studying history, followed by a Master of Arts from the University of Sydney in Australia. Horgan, a self-described politician, went straight into government, where he could work with “smart people solving complex problems.” He rose from legislative assistant in the federal government in Ottawa to chief of staff in the office of then-NDP premier Dan Miller and deputy deputy minister for the provincial finance ministry on energy projects. After the BC Liberals were elected in 2001, Horgan started a management and research consultancy working for private and public sector organizations. After a few years, a family friend suggested that instead of shouting at the TV about the political news of the day, he should run for office. Friend Adrian Dix, who worked with Horgan in Ottawa, suggested the same. “When the Campbell government sacked me I thought, well, I’m never going back into government and Adrian said, well, there’s a way back. You can be elected,” Horgan said. “I didn’t know it would mean 12 miserable years in the O position, but I finally got to work with smart people again.” He was first elected to the legislature in 2005, then recognized as party leader in May 2014. After the BC Liberals failed to win a majority, Horgan signed a confidence and supply agreement with the BC Greens and formed a minority government of NDP. He is the first premier from Vancouver Island since 1941, and often cites the sacrifices of MLAs who travel long distances and leave their families to serve in Victoria, and the privilege of being able to return to his own bed most nights. 30 minute drive from the legislature. Ely suggested a key to Horgan’s down-to-earth nature is that he never planned to run for office, let alone party leader and prime minister. “The biggest thing was that he didn’t even want the job. He didn’t really want to be prime minister. So he kind of got it through the back door — like, ‘well, if I have to I’ll do it’ — and I think that made all the difference in the world, honestly.” Horgan’s popularity – he averaged an approval rating of 54 per cent over five years as prime minister, and was the most consistently popular since WAC Bennett in the 1950s and 1960s – was partly due to his appeal to everyone. Horgan tells dad jokes and is an unabashed Star Trek fan — when he was sworn in as the province’s 36th premier, he gave the Vulcan salute “live and prosper.” He wears his love for the Victoria Shamrocks on his team shirt sleeve. He’s been known to say both “come on dude” and “dude” and drop the odd F-bomb – some of which he regrets, though it makes him relatable. Horgan took the bus home at least once a month while in Opposition, has lived in the same “tiny bungalow” in Langford for more than three decades and has maintained childhood friendships with “a bunch of friends who are not at all politicians’ and who have ‘loved me since we first became friends’. His friends agree that they can say anything to Horgan. During walks in the park, friend Bridge would remind a frustrated Horgan that ordinary people like himself, a businessman for example, “don’t think about politics all the time.” Even in politics, Horgan sought out and maintained close ties to people he saw as genuine – “position invites slander and I can smell that 1,000 miles away”. People he saw as genuine were former NDP leaders Carole James and Adrian Dix. He appointed James as deputy prime minister and Dix as health minister after becoming prime minister in 2017. Horgan continues to take regular walks with James since he retired after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s in March 2020. He still watches over the episode of the so-called Baker’s Dozen — 13 MLAs who opposed James’ leadership and forced her to resign as.. .
