A who’s who of conservative East Coast politicians gathered for Elsie Wayne’s funeral services at the RiverCross Church in Saint John Saturday.
Wayne’s family says the former New Brunswick member of Parliament died Tuesday in her home at the age of 84.
Former New Brunswick premier Bernard Lord attended the service and said that while Wayne was outspoken, she was “Elsie.”
“You’re in the middle of a speech and Elsie would just push you aside and start talking,” he explained. “but that’s who she was and she loved the attention, she loved to say what was on her mind and anybody else, you’d be offended.
“(With) Elsie, you just took it and said, ‘happy to be here’.”
The right-wing firecracker was remembered at Saturday’s service by Jean Charest, her lone Progressive Conservative companion in the House of Commons after the party lost all but two of their 156 seats in the 1993 federal election.
Charest compared the duo’s task of rebuilding the country’s Conservative movement as “like being in charge of a trainwreck.”
“I would learn, as her people in Saint John knew so well, that the heavens had sent me as a partner and as a companion, the all-time Canadian champion of lost causes,” Charest told the crowd.
The former Quebec premier said there was “nothing ordinary about Elsie,” citing her reputation as a flamboyant political personality and relentless advocate of causes she cared about — like funding for the Canadian Forces and benefits for merchant mariners.
In one episode of Wayne’s battle to increase compensation for the group of Second World War navy veterans, Charest recalled her bolting from her seat in the House of Commons and making a beeline for Jean Chretien, poking the then-prime minister in the shoulder and demanding he help the “boys.”
READ MORE: Saint John mourns late mayor, MP Elsie Wayne
“She was an Opposition member all her life,” Charest said. “She had a tireless work ethic, and her intensity and tenacity were such that she never gave up a fight until the answer was ‘yes.'”
Wayne achieved the sort of one-of-a-kind-status held by few Canadian politicians, said Charest, so iconic she was known simply by her first name.
“I think it’s safe to say there will never, ever be another person like Elsie Wayne,” he said.
Peter McKay, who once headed the Progressive Conservative Party described Wayne as “very human, very approachable, very real and she drew people to her from all walks of life and that’s a real testament to who she was.”
P.E.I. Senator Mike Duffy lauded her ability to work well with other parties.
“Sitting in an opposition seat she was able to convince a majority government to make major changes that affected the lives of people who needed help.”
Born in Shediac, N.B., Elsie (Fairweather) Wayne became the first female mayor of Saint John in 1983 and represented the city’s riding in Parliament for more than a decade before announcing her retirement in 2004.
Wayne was married to Richard Wayne and they had two sons, Daniel and Stephen.
“I think the world better know she was an even better mom than she was a politician,” Stephen Wayne said. “It was nothing for my mother to load five or six little kids in the car, take us to the beach, and this was long before political life, and she made the best chocolate chip squares you could ever imagine.”
With files from Jeremy Keefe and Canadian Press