OTTAWA–Just as the North American Free Trade Agreement is exploding in the headlines again north and south of the U.S. border, Canada has lost Simon Reisman, the man who helped bring this country the auto pact and Canada-U.S. free trade.
Reisman died of cardiac arrest in his sleep in Ottawa over the weekend, days after he was fitted with a pacemaker at the Ottawa Heart Institute. He was 88.
As a trade negotiator, Reisman had a gruff, larger-than-life presence – "volatile," is how he was described by the Star's Bob Hepburn back in 1987.
Former prime minister Brian Mulroney, in his recently published memoirs, said bluntly that the free trade "negotiations would not have been successful without him." Mulroney described Reisman as "knowledgeable, tough, honest and funny."
He had been chosen for the job, Mulroney said, in no small measure because of his success in the North American auto pact negotiations of 1965 – a deal that exists to this day and is credited with making the car industry such a large presence in Canada and southern Ontario in particular.
Reisman was tough, too, and not shy about expressing his frustration behind the scenes and before the media. That was most evident during a dramatic week in the fall of 1987, when Reisman broke off talks with the U.S., in a high-stakes bid to force the trade negotiations out of an impasse. Days later, the talks were restarted.
The stories about Reisman remain legendary.
"Simon didn't back down," Gordon Ritchie, his lifelong friend and deputy during the free trade talks, told The Canadian Press.
"He even took a swing at me once over a misunderstanding." The blowups were real, Ritchie said, but they don't detract from Reisman's accomplishments as a key player in building Canada into a modern economic power.
"I don't think people realize that the free trade agreement was fundamentally Simon's baby, even though a lot of people take credit for it now," Ritchie said.
Reisman was Montreal-born, but spent most of his working career in Ottawa, much of it as a public servant with the finance department, where he also served as deputy minister. He was educated at McGill University and the London School of Economics.
He also served in World War II as a troop commander.
Reisman leaves his wife Constance and three children.
With files from The Canadian Press
