He was a Progressive Conservative member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1977 to 1990, and served as a cabinet minister in the governments of Bill Davis and Frank Miller.
Pope was raised in Northern Ontario, and was educated at Waterloo Lutheran University and Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto.
In the 1975 provincial election, he ran as the Progressive Conservative candidate in the riding of Cochrane South but lost to Bill Ferrier of the NDP by 1,292 votes.
Pope was rather a populist, who sought greater power for the party's neglected local branches in northern, eastern, and southwestern Ontario.
In that sense, his position in the provincial Progressive Conservatives was similar to John Diefenbaker's role in the federal party a generation earlier.
Miller narrowly defeated Grossman on the third ballot to become party leader, and Pope was promoted to Minister of Health on February 8, 1985.
Pope was named Attorney General of Ontario in a post-election shuffle on May 17, 1985, but did little of significance before Miller's government was defeated on a motion of non-confidence in the house by the Liberals and the NDP.
Furthermore, one of his campaign staff was caught polling party members as to whether religion would make a difference in the leadership race, which was seen by some as a reference to Larry Grossman's Jewish background, and Pope made a public apology.
He wrote a series of articles on the 2004 federal election for the Sudbury Star newspaper, arguing that no party was adequately focused on issues of concern to Northern Ontario.
[11] He was married to Linda Fillion-Pope and they have one son, David and his wife Kirstin Danielson have two children Beatrice and Theodore Pope.