When I met Mark Stewart at the Caledon Inn, it had been a long day for him in Ottawa. First there was helping the Minister of Finance prepare for a lunch with the British High Commissioner, then it was time to entertain the new Japanese ambassador while waiting for the Minister to return from lunch. All in a day’s work for Mark as parliamentary assistant to Jim Flaherty, current Minister of Finance in the Conservative government of Stephen Harper.

“The Minister was going to lunch at Earnscliffe, the official residence of the British High Commissioner, so I gave him some notes about the house itself. I knew this house had been lived in by Sir John A. MacDonald, and I thought it might give them something to talk about. It’s also a part of the rich Conservative heritage in this country, and we need to keep those connections alive. The Minister is a graduate of Princeton and a very smart guy. He reads everything you give him.

“Earlier in the week, I had an interesting conversation with the outgoing Governor of the Bank of Canada, David Dodge, who was at the office for a meeting with the Minister. When I asked him how he was doing, he immediately jumped into a detailed discussion about Canada’s rising dollar and what effect this has on global markets. In this job I have to keep up with current events - just to keep up with the minister’s guests!”

Mark is currently parliamentary assistant to Jim Flaherty, Minister of Finance and Conservative MP for Whitby-Oshawa. In the previous government, he was parliamentary assistant to David Tilson, MP for Dufferin-Caledon.

With two degrees in history and several years on Parliament Hill, Mark has come a long way since that fateful day in 1995 when he was told he had osteosarcoma in his left femur – the same cancer that had stopped Terry Fox on his cross country run 14 years earlier.

“In May of 1995, I was playing catch with my Dad, and I twisted my leg. It hurt really bad. I was on the Robert Hall baseball team at the time, and I had to tell Coach Connolly that I couldn’t play – the pain was too great. I limped to the podium to get my graduation diploma a month later and had to go home right after the ceremony because of the pain in my leg. We went to the doctor and he prescribed an anti-inflammatory. I headed for my summer job in Cold Lake, Alberta where I was going to be a staff cadet at the military base there. I ran out of pills and a large mushy lump appeared right above my knee and wouldn’t go away. I flew back to Ontario and ended up at Mt. Sinai Hospital where I was diagnosed with cancer.

“I started chemotherapy in September - six treatments each lasting about 3 weeks. The first one was bad, and each one was progressively worse. After the third treatment, they operated. They inserted a titanium prosthetic best described as a metal femur with a knee joint and a metal tibia. They also removed 75 per cent of my quadriceps muscle because it was infected. I was in a huge cast for three weeks, then had to learn to walk again. I came back to school with two canes and a baseball cap to cover my bald head.”

“I knew my life had changed forever. This was not like some cold. It was never going to go away. I realized I had to deal with this.”

“I had been a ski coach and ski instructor at Cedar Highlands. I would never race or ski again. I had to turn my attention to the other things I was good at. I turned to cerebral activities. I decided to run for student council president with the single campaign promise that we would have a Terry Fox Run. There hadn’t been a run at Hall till then. We did the run and were the 15th highest grossing school in Ontario. Darryl Fox, Terry’s brother, whom I had gotten to know through my work with the Terry Fox Foundation, came to Hall to receive the cheque.”

“After Hall, I went to the University of Guelph where I majored in history. I did my third year in Aberdeen, Scotland where I was part of the debating club and got to travel all over the U.K. debating. One of our team’s best moments was beating the team from Oxford!”
“After finishing my degree, I worked for 13 months in Tokyo, Japan teaching English. That was a great experience for me. It was the first time I was really on my own. I was independent like I’d never been before, walking a tightrope between success and disaster. I have friends all over the world now as a result of that year.”

“After Japan, I knew I wanted to continue my study of history. I was accepted into the master’s program at Ottawa where I did my thesis on the constitutional development of the East India Company in the eighteenth century. It was a topic that attracted me because I had been to Asia and knew a lot of that history, but I also love British history. It was exotic, and I’ve always seen myself as something of an explorer.”

I asked Mark what advice he has for young people. “If you’re true to yourself and you keep your integrity and you believe in yourself, it doesn’t matter what ‘they’ think. You will find people who believe in you. Find what you’re good at. Life will throw obstacles in your direction, and you’ll have to re-evaluate what you’re doing. Look hard and look long. You’ll eventually find it.

“As odd as it may sound, I do appreciate what happened to me. I’m reminded with every step I take what happened to me. It has helped me focus my life. It has helped me to find what I’m good at.”

Michael Reist is head of the English department at Robert F. Hall Catholic Secondary School in Caledon East. www.michaelreist.ca