Sizing up Canada’s premiers — how they (literally) stack up to Manitoba’s new, 6’ 8” leader

The assignment was simple: call the premiers’ offices and find out how tall they are. But simple doesn’t necessarily mean easy. As it turns out, getting a premier’s height can be as difficult as getting their SIN number, and the accuracy of some of the answers is yet to be determined.

Like the rising sun, I started in the East, and made my way westward. Despite a record-setting Spring snowstorm, the receptionist at Dwight Ball’s office in Newfoundland called me back almost immediately with an answer: the premier is six feet tall.

Stephen McNeil, the premier of Nova Scotia, is 6′ 7″. That one was pretty easy — his receptionist knew the number off the top of her head, saying she gets asked that question “all the time.”

So far so good — until a few “I’ll have to call you back with that one.”

And then I got to Saskatchewan.

Premier Brad Wall, understandably, has other things on his plate than answering the calls of a journalism intern, but despite that, he got back to me via his receptionist with by far the best answer of them all:

“Unless you are measuring me for a new, free suit. I am keeping it a secret,” his receptionist wrote me in an email. “But somewhere between Pallister and Clark.”

She guessed he is 5′ 10″ based on her own height, and was kind enough to indulge me in several emails back and forth on the matter.

But I would not be dissuaded from finding the truth.

Thankfully, I had the help of some Edmonton Journal reporters who were just as keen to know as I was.

No longer able to avoid me and my onslaught of tweets, Premier Wall got back to me.

Still not an exact number, but an entertaining answer, which opened the floor to some wordplay.

Thus, we may never know the exact height of Saskatchewan’s premier, in the same way Kathleen Wynne’s answer remains contested. After three days of phone tag with her communications officer, Ontario’s premier is going with 5’4″, but I’ve been told by others that she isn’t that tall.

In a surprise twist, Bob McLeod of the Northwest Territories takes the prize; he is 6′ 1″, but he said “to the Métis, I am considered 10 feet tall.”

Originally published at nationalpost.com.