Throughout his 24 years in public office, many as a senior cabinet minister with successive B.C. Liberal governments, Rich Coleman says he often relied on a gift – one that he received from his Catholic faith – to help him get through the day: the gift of prayer.
“I think the biggest advantage you get [from being a Catholic] is something that other people may not have, and that’s when you’re making a tough decision and you’ve got a quiet moment, you’ve got prayer,” Coleman said in an interview.
Coleman, 66, announced in February he would be retiring from provincial politics, which means last month’s provincial election was the first he did not contest since he first won office in 1996.
A member of St. Nicholas Parish in Langley, Coleman was busy cleaning out and packing up mountains of files and political mementos in his Langley office when The B.C. Catholic caught up to him.
Coleman said that during the years he represented Langley in Victoria he would often find time for prayer while travelling on a plane or ferry. “It’s not something that I plan, but I think there is time when you need to go to a place and have your peace,” he said. “And I think it has incredible value when you’re lucky enough to have prayer.”
Raised with five siblings in a Catholic family in Penticton, Coleman has been quoted as saying his “passion for public service” was shaped by his parents. “They taught their children that community came first, and that serving others was the noblest thing a person could commit themselves to,” said Coleman, who served eight years with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police before starting what proved to be a successful security business.
Coleman’s commitment to public service was evident long before he entered politics. He served as a governor for the B.C. Kinsmen and oversaw fundraising and construction of the Aldergrove Kinsmen Community Centre; he was Langley’s Volunteer of the Year in 1988; and he was president of the Aldergrove Chamber of Commerce.
Coleman confided that something other than a commitment to public service was also in play when he decided to run for elected office. In the early 1990s he had grown increasingly opposed to what he saw as the high-tax, anti-business policies of the NDP government of the day, leading his daughter Jacqueline to challenge him by saying, “You have opinions. Maybe you should start doing something about it.” And so he did.
He had a long and distinguished career and points to successes like instituting a province-wide police records information system, playing a leading role in the 2006 U.S. softwood-lumber agreement, “stabilizing and modernizing” Community Living B.C., the provincial Crown corporation that supports adults with developmental disabilities, and overseeing the Kitimat LNG Canada project, “the largest capital investment in Canadian history.”
Surprisingly, however, the accomplishment he is most proud took place at a more individual level. Coleman cited his work on behalf of a constituent who had been refused bone-marrow treatment because he was too old to qualify. Coleman intervened and believes his help not only saved the man’s life, but added a decade to it.
As a Catholic, Coleman is unabashedly pro-life. He was a member of the original board of the Fraser Valley Pregnancy Centre and has participated in the annual March for Life in Victoria. His friend, John Hof, one of B.C.’s leading pro-life activists, told The B.C. Catholic that in the 30 years he has known Coleman, “never once, in all that time, did he ever compromise his dedication to life issues.”
At the same time, Coleman said individuals who support life causes can be found in all political parties, and he has always looked for ways to build bridges and find common ground.
That said, he is increasingly concerned about growing intolerance toward opinions that run contrary to politically correct, left-wing views, and more worrisome, toward anyone in politics who professes to be a Christian.
“There’s a movement out there, and I saw it in the last election,” he said, “where some people said, literally, on Twitter, that people of any faith shouldn’t be allowed to run in politics.”
How does he respond to the attacks? He searched for the right words before answering, “I tell them, look at how I have done my job. Always been dead honest. Always been straight up. So why are you trying to judge me based on your perception of a person of faith?”
He has never tried to hide his Catholicity and last spring he shared on his Facebook page his disappointment at not being able to attend Good Friday services because of the COVID-19 pandemic. “We are, however, thankful for our loving family,” he wrote. “Faith will pull us through. We will all get through this.”
That post did not generate any anti-Christian attacks, but the abuse he has seen is enough for him to declare it represents a form of bigotry. “Absolutely,” he said. “I think it’s a tough word, but you know what, it is [bigotry]. It’s worse now for someone in public life. Today, the stuff that goes on online is just despicable.”
Coleman’s long-time friend, former Langley Mayor John Scholtens, agrees anti-Christian prejudice is at an all-time high in politics. “The whole ‘Christo-phobic’ situation in our society these days is frightening,” said Scholtens, a member of the Canadian Reformed Church.
It’s a problem that has recently afflicted the B.C. Liberals, said Scholtens, who cites Coleman as an example of how a person of faith can act in public life. “He certainly was always very upfront about his religious conviction,” Scholtens told The B.C. Catholic. “That’s what drove him. He’s been a pillar in our community and a great humanitarian. We were always very proud of him and his wife, Michele.”
Coleman credits Michele and her strong faith as being key to their shared life as Catholics and their successful raising of their two children, Jacqueline and Adam, who have given their parents seven grandchildren. “My wife’s faith is phenomenal,” he said. “To me, that’s the greatest gift anybody has ever given me.”
Family features strongly in key moments of Coleman’s political life, and on reflection he admits his biggest disappointment is the negative impact his political life had on his family. The toll would have been even worse had he become Liberal leader after Christy Clark’s resignation in 2017, he said. “I just thought, you know what, it’d be too hard on my family,” he said. “I had seen what it had done, how hard it was on other families, and I just couldn’t. I didn’t think I could put them through that.”
His decision to leave public office earlier this year was a difficult one, but after talking it over with Michele he concluded that after two and a-half decades in office the time was right to leave.
Coleman admitted he’ll miss the satisfaction of working on behalf of the people in his community, but said he’s not finished yet. “I’m looking for the next movie now,” he said. “I don’t know what it will be, but it will be something.”
Something that lets him combine his Christian convictions with public service, one suspects.
