True North Rising by Whit Fraser

Author:Whit Fraser [Fraser, Whit]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House of Canada
Published: 2023-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

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Mary’s journey to the stature of leader is still a marvel to me. There was a time when we sat on the same side of the table, both getting paycheques from the CBC, with Mary working in Montreal, covering national and international events in Inuktitut. After she reported on the 1970 October Crisis and the fallout from the FLQ separatist movement, her bosses at the CBC became nervous that her political interests were growing and assigned her a Saturday morning cooking show on TV. So there was Mary May, baking traditional dishes like bannock and blueberry pies—all of it in Inuktitut, her shows broadcast across the North.

She didn’t know it at the time, but I was a fan. I was watching her show at home early one Saturday morning, when Dianne asked sharply, “What are you watching that for?”

“Oh,” I said, scrambling, “I’m just trying to see how many words I understand.”

When CBC Newsworld was created in 1989, I was transferred to Alberta to anchor the six-hour prime-time evening slot out of Calgary. It meant working every weeknight, but after twenty-five years of constant travel, it also meant I was at home every day. Which also meant that it was time to confront the fact that my marriage to Dianne had been eroding for years. Sometimes people just grow apart, and the older the children become, the more pronounced the differences are in how each spouse views the world around them. Thankfully, we live in a time when people are no longer expected to stay together in unhappy situations. Given that our youngest child was almost twenty, we agreed that a separation was in both our interests. Dianne found and made her new life in Ottawa. Hard feelings have long been reconciled: we share children and grandchildren and are both part of large family gatherings, including Christmas and birthdays at Rideau Hall.

Incredibly, and one more time, Austin Curley, the man who’d hired me in the Summerside air force base parking lot so many years earlier, would (and this time unwittingly) direct my fate. As Dianne and I were going through the early stages of separation, I got a call to speak at the party honouring him as he retired from CBC Northern Service. The party was to be in Ottawa, and I was eager to attend.

Some months earlier, I had heard that Mary and her husband George had also separated. I got in touch with her and suggested she also come to Ottawa. She knew Austin from her time with Northern Service and, like so many others, had the greatest respect for him. She said she’d be there. I think we both knew that an eighteen-year friendship was about to take a new direction.

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