Allan Rock is a tortoise. He plods through life and wins all the races. Give him a goal – the higher the better – and off he’ll shuffle, perfectly content, quite unstoppable.

Rock is a jogger – a serious jogger. Jogging plays to his strengths: miles prudently squirreled away day after day, his fitness steadily compounding. Serious joggers are the Swiss bankers of the aerobic set: get fit slowly.

He is also a case-hardened lawyer, a litigator, lone champion in court for his helpless clients, girdled in Teflon briefs. His massive, plodding preparation prior to the short court-room clash is legendary in legal circles. Long slow distance works for him.

Allan Rock detests change. He spent the first 24 years of life in the small world of half a dozen streets hart by Parliament in Ottawa. He studied there, ate there, slept there, went to university there and qualified in law there. Now he’s back there, in a rented house on Clemow Avenue.

Maybe thriving where you are planted is the Rock way. His mother ran her realty business for years on Bronson Avenue and she passed on worth $400,000. Dad Rock was by turns gas-bar attendant, hardware clerk, and career soldier. He bought a fabulous condo on the thirty-third floor of Toronto’s Palace Pier in 1984 for $350,000 cash.

Rocks seem to get rich slowly too.

In 1973, fresh from University of Ottawa law, Allan Rock trekked the incredible distance (for him) of 420 kilometres, clear to Toronto, then put down at Fasken Campbell, the prestigious downtown law firm. He didn’t budge again for 20 years. He lawyered hard, clove to a lovely wife who gave him lovely children, made senior partner, was honored with Treasurer of the Law Society of Upper Canada, occupied suitable houses tightly grouped in the Kingsway part of Etobicoke Centre. All this happened in perfect obscurity.

In 1989 they bought 106 Kingsway Crescent for $460,000. A cynic might view the $375,000 mortgage as proof to prying eyes four years down the road that the candidate is just as strapped as the next guy in Etobicoke Center. “You’re like me. You like me.”

Whatever. The fact is, put Etobicoke Centre just about anywhere, and Allan Rocks pour out all over your shoes.

Jogs to victory?

It’s early 1993. Legend has our boy a bit restless in his velvet cocoon. Mid-life. Needs fresh hills to jog. His eyes light on Parliament Hill. By happy fluke an election is offing. He literally jogs to victory, door to door, shaking hands. His opponents can’t keep up. Hi is Minister of Justice almost before the paint has dried on his smile.

But freeze that frame. Rewind a tad. That woman who ran his Campaign office. Who is she? Why, it’s Stella Watson, the Ontario Director of the Canadian Abortion Rights Action league (CARAL). Free to choose to work for anyone, who would she plump for some unknown white-male establishment lawyer? And June Callwood. Why is she gushing bright pink in the testimonial for Allan Rock in his campaign flyer?

What hidden depths have these women plumbed in Candidate Rock? Obviously “mi” causes are “su” causes.

He ran on the economy, debt and the deficit, education, medicare, and international trade. Now he’s all homosexual rights, child sex-offenders, gun-control, doctor-assisted suicide: the whole Claptrap Agenda.

Certainly, most anything he’s said in the House could have been penned by his hard-core feminist supporters. Take this ugly classic, culled from the debate over homosexual rights:

“I am by faith a Roman Catholic. My Irish Catholic mother saw to it that I was brought up in the Church. I attended regularly, served as an altar boy and was educated from the beginning to the end of my years at school in Catholic institutions. I developed a deep respect for the tenets of the Catholic faith.”

He goes on to selectively quote from the new Catechism that “they” – gays and lesbians – “must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every element of unjust discrimination in their regard should be prohibited.”

Now seriously, could an eminent jurist famed for his thoroughness say these things without thumbing back through his catechism 16 pages, past ‘scandal’ to ‘abortion’? Of course he couldn’t. Whose words are on his lips? Who could miss A on an eye-test? June Allan Stella Rock, you should be ashamed.

Three years into his run through public life, Allan Rock isn’t faring too well. Politics is a team-sport, his strengths largely useless. In the roisterous hare-brained Lower Chamber our tortoise cannot win.

He came to the hockey-game shod in pumps.