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0 On the sidelines of the 1987 Commonwealth Heads of Government conference in Vancouver, Brian Mulroney’s official photographer snapped what would become his most cherished image of the former prime minister.
As mourners filed past Mulroney’s casket in Ottawa on Wednesday, Bill McCarthy, who has been hired by the Mulroney family to record the week of commemoration now unfolding, said that photograph captured “the most touching thing” he’s ever seen.
McCarthy said Rita MacNeil had just finished performing at the summit’s opening dinner when the RCMP marched in to inform the assembled world leaders that they’d received a serious bomb threat and the room needed to be cleared.
“I remember walking down through a kitchen with (then Indian prime minister) Rajiv Gandhi behind me and (then U.K. prime minister) Margaret Thatcher in front of me,” McCarthy told CBC News this week. “Within 30 seconds, we’re in this room where we’re going to hold.”
Bill McCarthy, Brian Mulroney’s former official photographer, reflects on the picture of the prime minister that he cherishes most
The prime minister stood next to a grand piano with his wife Mila facing him. McCarthy said Mulroney appeared visibly worried that Canada would be embarrassed by the incident.
“It’s the most touching thing I think I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Mila Mulroney walked over to him and reached up and grabbed his earlobe and started talking to him.
“It just simply focused him, totally. And it was like, very much, ‘You know, Brian, it’s going to be OK. Canada is not going to be embarrassed, don’t worry.'”
McCarthy said that photograph has been hanging framed in his bedroom “since that time … because to me it represents love and a very deep bond, which my wife and I have and Mr. and Mrs Mulroney did as well.”
McCarthy said that over the almost five years he spent working with Mulroney, Mila occasionally repeated the gesture.
As official photographer, McCarthy was regularly in the room when Mulroney met with foreign leaders and dignitaries.
“The world stopped when his children walked in the room,” he said. “I have any number of times been in that room, where he was in a very serious meeting, and the door would open and one of the kids would walk in and everybody who was in the room would stop, premiers, presidents. And the child was the centre of attention.”
“When he was around his family, he was always dad first,” said McCarthy, whose son Adam Scotti is now Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s photographer. “There’s no doubt that he cherished his family and they always came first in his life.”
Bill McCarthy, Brian Mulroney’s former photographer, recall’s the former prime minister’s commitment to family
McCarthy left his job as official photographer before Mulroney’s final term as prime minister ended. He said that while he knew Mulroney wasn’t going to run again, he wanted to finish the term but couldn’t.
“When I left PMO it was because my wife had a job in Malaysia and I chose to leave my good PMO job, my great PMO job, job of a lifetime,” he said. “I knew I couldn’t be separated from my wife and my three-year-old for a year.”
Asked what it means to him to have Mila Mulroney ask him to take photographs for the family this week, an emotional McCarthy said “it’s the perfect bookend to my time with Mr. Mulroney.”
