The last time I saw Sam Wakim, he was at the Ottawa funeral of Pat Macadam, a former confidante and “spear chucker” — as Macadam called himself — for former Tory Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
Now word has come that Sam Wakim died last week. He was 85.
Mulroney was at Macadam’s funeral, as well, and sat with Wakim in the pew in front of my wife and I. He was not impressed that I hadn’t called him at his Montreal law office to say that Macadam had finally died after a long wrestle with dementia, but I had called days earlier to let him know Macadam’s death was imminent.
So, I had left a T uncrossed.
“Sam was my best friend in life,” Mulroney told the New Brunswick News, recalling his classmate from the pair’s days at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S., in the 1950s, which Macadam also attended.
“He was the best friend any man could ever hope to have.
“He was friendly, he was intelligent, he was entertaining, he was funny, hardworking, loyal. Most of all, Sam was a fascinating guy. He really was a renaissance man.”
Best friend? It was obviously true to anyone who knew about Mulroney, for Wakim was almost always in the former PM’s shadow at any event of importance or significance.
In a personal journal entry contained in Mulroney’s memoir, he wrote that the two spent their time at St. F.X. eating the Lebanese food Sam’s mother and eight sisters regularly sent, going out to see movies, and “drinking beer while discussing our futures well into the night.”
Wakim, a New Brunswick-born lawyer and father of six, also played a crucial role in every one of Mulroney’s campaigns, according to the former prime minister.
“He was indispensable in my success,” Mulroney told the News, recalling how he put together the youth organization that pumped strength and innovation into his campaign. “That brought in hundreds of delegates that in the end made the difference between winning and losing in 1983,” he said of his successful bid for the Progressive Conservative leadership.
“Few people played a more important role in our victory in 1983 than Sam.”
Mulroney called Wakim an accomplished lawyer who had a keen interest in public policy and politics. He added that Wakim was a “very valued counsellor” to him throughout his life.
“He provided a completely unvarnished opinion to me,” he said. “When I was wrong, he told me point blank.
“From say 1980 on, over 40 years, we probably spoke on the phone at least once a day.”
Wakim once represented Ontario’s Don Valley East electoral district which he won in the 1979 federal election. After serving his only term, he was defeated by David Smith of the Liberal Party.
In 2007, he represented Mulroney in litigation with businessman Karlheinz Schreiber over the Airbus affair. He also represented the former prime minister in litigation with the journalist-author Peter C. Newman shortly after his publication of the Secret Mulroney Tapes.
As the News wrote, Wakim had a stroke roughly a year and a half ago and was confined to a wheelchair with paralysis to his right side. With his friend’s health declining, Mulroney said he made three trips to Toronto in the last two and a half months.
“We had long lunches together, just the two of us, over at the National Club in Toronto,” Mulroney said. “It was just like old times, happy times.
“That was anytime I was with Sam.
