It is a tremendous honour to speak and recognize my friend and colleague Daryl Kramp, and I want to thank my colleagues from across the aisle for their heartfelt tributes to Kramper as well today.

Three quarters of our caucus would love the opportunity to stand here and tell stories about Daryl Kramp, because there are so many, and I will try and limit it to just a few here today.

Welcome to the family. I’m not going to look there, because I won’t be able to get through this; this is going to be one of the hardest tributes that I’ve ever had to deliver. But again, I am extremely honoured to do so. His family is here, his friends, his campaign workers, his staff. And Denise Gray is here. I don’t think she was introduced, Speaker, but Denise is here.

He would always say his staff don’t work for him; they work with him, and it’s one of the things, one of the many lessons, that I learned from Daryl Kramp. He was a tremendous role model. He was a mentor for me. He was certainly a mentor for this guy, MPP Bresee, who holds the Hastings–Lennox and Addington seat that Daryl held in this Legislature for the four years that he was here.

While he certainly was steadfast in his service to community, Kramper always maintained his priorities were faith, family and friends—in that order—and your presence here today is a testament to just how he lived his life.

When we speak about political legacies, and we do it all the time, we often talk of community leaders as giants, and Daryl was a giant. He was quite literally a giant, most often a friendly one—I’ve seen him get mad a few times, however—a larger-than-life personality, an uproarious laugh. I look back at some pictures of us together in our time as MPP and MP, and I think, in three quarters of the pictures, we weren’t just having a laugh; we were having all of those all-out belly laughs, because he was just one of those guys. He made everyone around him welcome—and that’s regardless of their party affiliation, Joel. It might not be what you’d expect from one of the most imposing fastball pitchers that Hastings county has ever seen, a hardened cop or a hockey promoter who brought the big, bad Russians to town on more than one occasion.

He and Carol Ann, the love of his life, hosted people at Moira Lake. His entire family lives on that lake, south of Madoc.

He loved watching his grandkids. Some of them are here today. It was funny; when Bill Walker and I had a chance to go out for chicken wings and beer with him a couple of weeks ago, he was wearing a Yale baseball cap, because that’s where his granddaughter Anna Belle was a goaltender, playing hockey. We made fun of Daryl wearing an Ivy League baseball cap, as you can understand. But he loved watching kids play hockey and volleyball.

And he enjoyed music. His favourite song, I think, was the national anthem. If you ever heard him—I’m still a little deaf in this ear from standing next to him while he was singing the national anthem, because he really belted it out.

He was a real treat. If you had the pleasure of visiting his former restaurant, Two Loons, right across the lake from where he lived, Daryl would cook up his famous chicken wings, and quite often, they had the infamous Friday-night seafood buffet. The whole family worked there. Daryl was just an incredible host, just a friendly guy, and quite often, he would be holding court at the restaurant as well. Of course, they continued that tradition at their home, with people coming in all the time, day or night.

I remember 2018, when Daryl came out of his short-lived retirement to run provincially, owing to his sense of obligation to see the books balanced and wanting to be a part of Team Ford or Ford Nation here in Ontario. He took that new Hastings–Lennox and Addington riding with 50% of the vote. I’m told he was beaming as his girls updated him throughout the night on the polls as they were coming in.

I was busy in Bay of Quinte that night, so I wasn’t there, but I’ve seen this team in action on election night before. It was 2004 when Bruce Knutson was running. Former Chrétien Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief decided that he was going to retire. He was a Prince Edward county farmer. He didn’t reoffer for election, so Bruce stepped up for the Liberals. I was a news reporter at Quinte Broadcasting at the time and I was assigned to cover the Prince Edward–Hastings riding. The Liberal and Kramp campaign offices were literally across the grocery store plaza parking lot—like, Liberals on one side, Conservatives on the other. So yes, while it was a long walk that night for Mr. Knutson, it was actually a very short walk.

But the funny part of the story is, expecting to see another Liberal victory, because it was a Liberal stronghold for quite a time, I was positioned at the campaign office of the Liberal candidate. The early poll results started to come in and they were quite favourable for the Grits in Prince Edward–Hastings that night. So I listened to, and recorded on my tape recorder, a victory speech from the Liberal candidate. I walked across the parking lot to get what I thought was going to be a concession speech from Daryl Kramp. And there was a lot of scurrying going on. The family was there, of course. They decided, “You know, we’re going to wait until the north votes come in.” Kramp was the king of the north in Hastings, and he cruised to victory and really started the political legacy in Prince Edward–Hastings. A lot of those team members are here, and they’ve been introduced by you, Speaker, and they’ve stuck by Daryl Kramp all these years. So, that night, I recorded two victory speeches and a concession speech as well.

When he was first at Queen’s Park, I had an invite from Paul Miller, the long-time NDP representative from Hamilton, to come up to his office and join him for a couple of cocktails, which we tend to do from time to time. Because Daryl was new here, I asked if Daryl could come up. I wanted him to meet some of the members opposite. It turned out that Daryl had worked in Hamilton East–Stoney Creek as an OPP officer when he faced off against some of the toughest biker gangs in the Hammer and organized crime down there. It turns out that Paul Miller knew all the same people that Daryl did. I remember sitting there just listening to the two of them go on for hours and hours telling stories. That was Daryl Kramp; that really was Daryl Kramp. Needless to say, he got to know a lot of the people on the opposite side of the bench just as well as in his own caucus.

This isn’t to say that Daryl couldn’t be tough when he needed to be. You always knew where you he stood with him. When he believed in something, he fought hard for it. He was crucial—and Don Bonter is going to put a big smile on his face here—to the construction of a two-lane bridge joining Prince Edward county to Brighton. They were going to build a one-lane bridge; can you imagine that? Don Bonter and Daryl Kramp went toe to toe on that one and they fought for that bridge.

He dug in his heels for equitable rural funding, better broadband, the Eastern Ontario Regional Network. A large part of Daryl’s legacy, as you say, is he built large parts of Belleville and Prince Edward–Hastings.

He also travelled to China a lot, which wasn’t mentioned this morning. He negotiated a number of trade deals on behalf of Prime Minister Harper. As a matter of fact, Daryl Kramp is responsible for bringing the pandas from China to the Toronto Zoo. That’s actually a fact. They had a 10-year stint as residents at the Toronto Zoo. They’ve since had to be returned. But often, and Carol Ann will know this, when Daryl would be in China, and sometimes the Prime Minister would be there, they could care less about seeing the Prime Minister. They only wanted to see their friend Daryl Kramp.

His work with local agriculture producers and Minister Lecce ensured that food literacy will be on Ontario’s education curriculum. He secured long-term-care beds across his riding, including in his beloved hometown of Madoc, and the reconstruction of what’s known as “Kramp crossing,” which is an old train track that joins the trail system to the village of Madoc across Moira Lake.

One could argue, though, that his biggest challenge here at Queen’s Park was keeping our massive caucus that was elected in 2018—as our caucus chair. There’s now a big guy here, his dear friend Will Bouma, who’s filling that chair, and I know he learned a lot from Kramper.

Kramper’s leadership tied with his well-curated motivational quotes—he loved his quotes, we all know that—and I’m going to wrap up shortly, but I hope you’re entertained.

It was a different caucus meeting where one of my greatest memories of Daryl Kramp came to pass. Now, I wasn’t there, but Minister Calandra and Minister Rickford were there. And it happened in his last year of an 11-year run on Parliament Hill as part of the Harper government. We all remember the day, October 22, 2014, when a masked gunman fatally injured Corporal Nathan Cirillo. He moved west uphill on Rideau Street, entered Centre Block just below the Peace Tower. The gunman and security guard sparred. There were gunshots ringing out in the hallway, and just to the left was the Conservative caucus meeting that was under way in that caucus room. And I’ve heard this from many people, Daryl put his training, put that booming voice to work in a power of persuasion. He ordered that the Prime Minister be put in a closet in that caucus room. He barricaded the doors with his colleagues, and they had flagpoles as spears ready just in case the perpetrator came through that door.

He’s quoted as saying, “We didn’t have any idea what was there, if it was one or more, or what the armament was. Once the whole myriad of shots started to ring out, believe me, the activity of barricading the door stepped up quickly—almost instantaneously.”

Daryl and his colleagues were actually heroic that day. He said that returning to the House of Commons the next day was very difficult because they were in lockdown for hours and hours the day that that happened. But he said it was “probably one of the finest days” as all parties came together and rallied as Canadians first—and that’s how he lived his life.

And so, how proud he must have been following that to see his daughter Shelby, who’s with us today, take her place in the House of Commons in 2021 as he was deciding to finish his lengthy political career.

And as was mentioned, Daryl battled cancer in his later years as he served, and I know he had some really, really tough days. Most mere mortals probably wouldn’t have survived the 12-plus-hour surgery that he underwent and then the ensuing radiation treatments. But it was his faith, his family and his friends that pulled him through. He recovered. He was the same gentle giant with the big personality, smiles and laughter.

So we will remember Daryl Kramp, and it seems only fitting that I end with a quote. That’s what Kramper was all about. This one is Ernest Hemingway: “Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.”

Daryl lived an incredible life. He fought off death as long as he could, and he was dignified in doing it. And why wouldn’t he with the love that he had all around him: Carol Ann at his side, an adoring family of daughters and sons-in-law and grandkids and an entire community in his corner. It was a well-lived life.

We thank his family, of course, for sharing him with us. He made a mark not just in Madoc and in Prince Edward–Hastings or Ontario, but in Canada. He indeed made the world a better place.

Applause.