“Just about everything in my life is because I was blown off course. I never intended to sail to Saturna (her Gulf Island home) but I got blown off course. I never intended to leave the newspaper business, but I got blown off that course. I never intended to get into politics, but I was blown off course. Everything I’ve done was unintentional.”
And now at 82, Pat Carney, newspaper columnist, businesswoman, MP, Senator and Member of the Order of Canada, has carved out yet another career, this one as a best-selling author. Her book, On Island: Life Among the Coast Dwellers, a collection of short stories about island life topped the BC bestseller list in 2017 and continues to sell well throughout 2018. And yes, she stumbled into this one as well, the result of an innocent request to read at a local book festival.
“Chris Tanner of Tanner Books in Sidney phoned me to say they wanted me to read at the Sidney Book Festival, and I said what chapter do you want me to read, thinking she wanted me to read from Trade Secrets (an earlier book) and she said we’d like you to read from your new book. Well, I didn’t have a new book. I had nothing.”
Better get busy, she said to herself.
No problem. The writing roots go deep in the Carney clan. Her mother was a journalist and her aunt edited Chatelaine magazine for 20 years. Her twin brother, Jim, was a sports stringer for the campus newspaper before he carved out a career for himself writing and producing National Film Board and UNESCO documentaries. “We were brought up with the theory if we couldn’t get a real job we could always write,” she says.
And write she did. As a business columnist with the Vancouver Sun, Pat met the movers and shakers that kept the economy going, especially in the energy sector. But when the paper went on strike in 1970, she had to change direction, blown off course as she puts it.
“I was a high-profile columnist, a single parent with a mortgage and I had to go to work. I found people would pay me for my knowledge of the Northwest Territories and the Arctic and I could freelance. The idea that someone would pay me to advise them on working in the North; I thought that was a pretty good deal.”
So, she and her brother, Jim, formed Gemini North Productions, set up shop in Yellowknife and stick-handled studies on pipelines, satellite communications and labour relations. In 1979, she attracted the attention of the federal Progressive Conservative Party who asked her to run in the riding of Vancouver Centre. She lost but won the seat the second time around and served in three Cabinet portfolios under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney where she helped dismantle the National Energy Plan, engineered the Atlantic Accord (sharing oil revenues with Newfoundland and Labrador) and negotiated the first Canada-US Free Trade Agreement, the precursor to NAFTA.
“Curiosity has run my life,” says Pat. “What if? What would it be like to be a business writer? What would it be like to go live in Yellowknife? What would it be like to go into politics? Even writing On Island is a total accident. I’ve always reached a safe harbour, but it’s not where I expected to be.”
A circuitous route to be sure. Writing a chapter to read at the Sidney Book Festival led to another chapter and another until Pat had created a cast of memorable characters: the church warden at odds with the newly-installed Rector; the flirtatious harbour girl who pumps gas at the local marina; and two brothers who squabble over water access, among others. Gulf Islanders identify with the book because they assume Pat’s writing about their island, their village and their family.
“They sit in the bar and try to figure out who I’m writing about,” she says, adamant that the book is a work of fiction inspired by years of observation.
“I’ve spent 50 odd years on this coast and all these little stories are pieced together from events or phrases. I observe people. Somebody will say something, a comment, and it will start ticking away. I was sitting in Maui and I saw this girl sitting next to me in the nail salon with fabulous black nails. I said what colour is that and she said Siberian Midnight. I write it down in my notebook, Siberian Midnight, and eventually the harbour girl emerges. Most of these events are disguised, but they’re true,” she says. “People tell me stories.”
A proud coast dweller, Pat says she was anxious to dispel the stereotype. “So often we’re considered eco-freak oddballs. I wanted to tell stories that reflected that we’re legitimate, authentic people who live a life of difficulty, but with a lot of ingenuity.” It’s a carryover from her days in government where she fought vigorously for her constituents in her belief that Ottawa habitually dismissed the concerns of the west coast.
And there’s another theme that runs throughout the book.
“What does it feel like to lose your identity? When I lost my identity as a reporter, I was stumped. Take the church warden and his wife,” she says referring to a passage in the book. “He’s lost his identity and she’s decided she doesn’t like hers. So, what does he do? What does she do and how do they work out their relationship? That’s why it takes so long to write because you have to get into who these characters are and what is it that they do.”
It took Pat 10 years to write On Island and another two years to find a publisher. She had written her autobiography, Trade Secrets, 15 years earlier. That one, too, was loaded with colourful characters, fearless bush pilots and high-rolling entrepreneurs. They were real people doing real things, like the time she and her Northwest Territories pals tried to land their Twin Otter at the North Pole. They didn’t. The weather was awful. But On Island was different; it was a piece of fiction. Thanks to its popularity, Pat is writing a sequel.
“It takes all my energy to try to write two hours a day,” she says, hampered by arthritis, which has forced her to cut back on her charitable work. She’s a founding member of the Arthritis Centre of Canada and serves on the advisory board of Equal Voice, an action group dedicated to promoting women to elected office.
Nevertheless, she’s happy to be rooted on Saturna Island, where, despite her notoriety, she’s just ordinary folk.
“That’s where I’m feeling most comfortable. We have a community,” she says. “You don’t have to like your neighbours, but you have to help them out. You also have to be very non-judgmental. They may do things that would horrify you in another environment. I actually had to take out a chapter called Swing Your Partners Round and Round because it would be just TOO authentic,” she laughs.
“I’ve returned to my original harbour of writing,” she says. “I feel more myself writing than when I do anything else. I learned to be a good politician. I learned to be a good businesswoman. I’m a really good planner, but I am most myself when I go back to the profession where my parents said, if you can’t get a real job you can always write.”
A safe harbour indeed.
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