Dalton Camp - Post Politics and The Mulroney Era

Post Politics and The Mulroney Era

Camp ran as a Tory candidate for Parliament in the 1963 and 1968 elections, however after personally failing to be elected, Camp retired as a politician and pursued interests in advertising, political commentary, and journalism. He headed an advertising firm – aptly named Camp Associates. During the 1980s and 1990s, he became a regular political commentator on CBC's Morningside (along with Stephen Lewis and Eric Kierans) and he was a bi-weekly political writer for the Toronto Star newspaper. He also wrote regular columns for the Toronto Sun and the Saint John Telegraph-Journal newspapers for many years.

Camp returned briefly to active politics when he was named a senior advisor to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's staff from 1986–1989, including consulting on the 1988 election which saw Mulroney's government campaign for a free trade agreement with the United States. Camp left politics in 1989 with some disillusionment toward the increasingly Blue Tory policies of Mulroney's government, as well as several decisions which were leading to western disillusionment in the caucus (this would later become evident when the Reform Party was established). In 1993, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Camp underwent a heart transplant in 1993 (the oldest person in Canada to do so at the time) and continued to write and give political commentary from his home in Jemseg, New Brunswick. He experienced a stroke in February 2002, which led to his death a month later at a hospital in Fredericton, New Brunswick. He was survived by six children and eight grandchildren.