Wondering what prompted me to write a political novel? Wondering if I had any political experience of my own? Wondering if anyone aided me in my political researches? Read this missing Author’s Note:
AUTHOR’S NOTE
At the risk of shaking readers’ confidence in my sanity, let me make confession: I was once an ambitious (though inept) politician. As a young lawyer running for the New Democrats, I’d made two disastrous tries for Parliament and one for the BC legislature, in Vancouver Centre, ultimately proving myself so hapless at hustling votes that I was punished by losing a nomination — by a single vote — for the succeeding election. Without me to drag down the ticket, the NDP went on to win handily and formed a government.
I quit politics, morose with shattered ambition, disenchanted with what the fifteenth Governor-General of Canada, John Buchan, called “the greatest and the most honourable adventure.” (Fact check: he was a fiction writer, his fortés espionage and horror.)
In sublime irony, that one-vote loss freed me to pursue a different dream, long held. Had I achieved office, I might never have written anything more entertaining than a sitting member’s cynical memoir of frustration, compromise, and lost ideals.
So Snow Job is a tribute to Buchan’s great (if not so honourable) adventure, from an incurable political junkie. To the snide, a Canadian political thriller may seem oxymoronic, but I’ll wager there’s more vibrancy and intrigue and fun and foolishness on Parliament Hill than in Washington’s Congress of millionaires or in Britain’s bloated Parliament.
Many thanks are due. At the beginning of this exercise, I hashed around thoughts and plots with Brian Brett, the Saltspring Island poet, artist, raconteur, and renegade, and I thank him for his off-the-wall, outside-the-box genius. Garry Dudley, master mechanic, provided monkey-wrenching expertise and Catherine Mori corrected my Latin.
Doug Small, Global’s former bureau chief in Ottawa, unwisely exchanged houses with me for a month, requiring him to tough it out on BC’s temperate Gulf Islands while I enjoyed the capital’s bracing cold and its second-heaviest snowfall in history. He also vetted this novel at an early and critical stage and, as a life member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, helped smooth my way into its confines.
Heather Bradley, director of communications for the House Speaker, got me in the door, so to speak. Terry Guillon, chief of the press gallery, and Normand Gagnon, its technicien principal en multimédia, took over, guiding me everywhere I sought to go, even MPs’ routes of escape from the press.
Senator Carolyn Olsen, who was Mr. Harper’s press secretary at the time of my researches, was exceptionally generous in arranging visits to the PMO Centre Block, including the Prime Minister’s parliamentary office, the so-called round room, and the cabinet room. The tour was amiably hosted by Jacques Fauteux, then deputy director of communications, who has also since graduated from the PMO.
Jack Layton and his press secretary, Karl Bélanger, toured me through the Opposition Lobby, then after sharing mugs of fair trade coffee, through the NDP’s Parliamentary office and several befittingly cluttered private members’ offices.
Elizabeth May joined me for a chat in the Charles Lynch Theatre after one of her typically peppy appearances, and we shared memories of our convergence over the logging of Clayoquot Sound (12,000 protesters, 850 arrests, and at least one provincial NDP membership ripped up, by this author.)
Lieutenant-Commander Kris Phillips at National Defence, Pacific Region, went beyond the call of duty in organizing a team effort to vet military data and jargon.
Ann Ireland and Tekla Deverell laboured mercilessly over the manuscript. Not least but last, my tireless and exacting editor at M&S, Dinah Forbes, has damn well earned a raise.
William Deverell
Posted by William Deverell on Dec 06, 2009
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