Years later, Dave Broadfoot’s take on Confederation is still pretty apt

“Canada is a collection of 10 provinces with strong governments loosely connected by fear.”
— Dave Broadfoot

As a good Canadian kid in the Seventies, I grew up on Dave Broadfoot (not to mention Sgt. Renfrew and Big Bobby Clobber) and the gentle poking political humour of the Royal Canadian Air Farce.

I would of course encounter and enjoy a much more caustic style of humour later (hey, CODCO!). All the same, I think Broadfoot was of the generation that taught us that holding politicians and leaders accountable was part of their job, and why not do it with a punchline, too?

Broadfoot was quite the performer, but was also a writer, too. For a sense of his wit, and especially his character of oh-so-softly roasting the elites, check out the transcript of his address to the Empire Club in 1978. (I learned in it that he once brought his Sgt. Renfrew right into RCMP headquarters, and was intrigued to find plenty of fans in the red uniforms.)

Dave Broadfoot died in 2016, when he was 90. Here’s the obituary filed that day for The National: