Starting in 2000, when I was a new reporter at the Kingston Whig-Standard, John Turner and I began a tradition that continued for many years.

He’d visit Kingston annually for board meetings of insurance company Empire Life. That year, hearing of the former prime minister’s pending arrival in my city, I nervously called his Toronto law office. Turner answered the phone in the manner I grew familiar with over the next 20 years. “John Turner,” he always barked.

I stammered out that I was a reporter in Kingston and would like to interview him when he was in town. “Sure,” he said before ending the call abruptly. “Meet me at the train.”

And my journey with Turner began. After picking him up, we retired to a bar at his Kingston hotel. He started with a Scotch – “Gentleman size,” he’d always tell the server – and I joined in.

Over the next two hours he took me on a trip through Canadian political history the likes of which I’d never had before. There were stories about the Kennedys, Richard Nixon, Pierre Trudeau, John Diefenbaker, R.B. Bennett, Mackenzie King and even Roger Bannister, against whom Turner had competed in track and field in his youth.

The experience was repeated the following year and for many after that. One of my favourite memories is meeting at a Kingston eatery. As we chatted, John Crosbie, the legendary Conservative and Newfoundlander whom Turner had often tangled with back during the free-trade debate of the 1980s, entered the restaurant.

Crosbie, in town to receive an honorary degree from Queen’s University, spotted his former Liberal foe and headed directly to him. Then, right in front of me, these two political warhorses relived some of their own House of Commons debates. They laughed, recalled other MPs they’d served with and happily shared with me some of the dustups they had survived. Both men agreed that the group of MPs in the Commons today had nothing on them.

There were smiles everywhere. When his Tory rival was out of earshot, however, Turner leaned down and whispered to me, jokingly: “Arthur, you know he never read the f—- (text of the free-trade) agreement!

I loved the moment and will cherish it always.

In 2003, when I began to work with Turner’s political opponent, Brian Mulroney, on the latter’s memoirs, a letter containing only one sentence arrived in my mail. “Arthur,” my friend wrote, “what’s this working for Mulroney?”

At Christmas that year, his annual card arrived. “Arthur,” he wrote, “keep your eye on Mulroney!”

But more important than his cheeky notes was the style of politics both Turner – and Mulroney – embodied for me. During five years working closely with the latter, I never once – not a single time – heard him make a negative personal comment about the Liberal who faced him for years across the floor in the Commons.