The cover of a file I found at Library and Archives Canada, in the External Affairs document fond called RG25. Researchers aren't allowed to photocopy the documents, because they're too valuable. So the LAC's reading room is full of researchers shooting pictures of the documents, James Bond-style. Click on the photo to expand the image -- it's a pretty cool file.
I spent several days in Ottawa this week conducting a round of interviews about the book that saw me, among other things, placed on the local affiliate of Rogers TV, on a mid-day show called Daytime with hosts Derek Fage and TL Rader. The green room had exactly three occupants: Me, my Ottawa publicist (Jennifer Tiller) and a woman in a shiny blue and silver Lycra outfit that looked like a superhero costume. Before she went on the woman was rehearsing a routine that involved a sparkly striped hula hoop, which she slung around herself as she contorted into about a minute's worth of painful-looking positions. "Cripes," I thought. Would people really be ready to talk about my book after this number?
In fact, it went really well. And it made me think about the strange skill set demanded by the job of a daytime talk show host. Derek and TL shifted smoothly from hula hooping to discussing the collapse of the Soviet empire. In fact, they asked some excellent questions--questions that indicated readers are correctly interpreting the themes I'd hoped the book would get across. They're getting that the book isn't about Soviet politics or even the Cold War, necessarily. That in fact, the book's a case study about the sort of tactics that work when attempting to end a conflict--a conflict that in the book happens to be the Cold War, but could just as easily be a dispute between businesses, or friends, or a couple. The book's about the sort of approaches to use when you want some other entity to come around to your way of thinking. And it turns out that the best approach to use is a set of attitudes that Canadians have come to consider national traits. I guess my point is that if the themes got through to these two daytime talk show hosts, who read the book under the pressure of deadlines and discussed the book amid the after-effects of one serious hula hooping session, then hopefully the book's themes will penetrate with other readers as well.
Actually, I'd forgotten how much I enjoy Ottawa. It's been about eight years since we lived there. I visited the town a lot as I was researching my book, granted. But each one of those research visits was an anxious affair that saw me spending every available moment digging through Canadian government archives. On those trips, I gobbled my meals, I slept poorly, I walked rapidly and drove faster, all so I could devote as much time as possible to finding Yakovlev-related documents in the fonds compiled by External Affairs, the Privy Council Office and Trudeau's staff. (Such as the one seen in the
photograph that begins this blog post.)
Ottawa is a completely different town when you're not freaking out over whether you'll find enough background documentation about, say, the 1978 Soviet spy scandal. This time
McClelland & Stewart put me up in a nice hotel -- the boutique residence,
Arc. I had about a dozen opportunities to talk about my book with engaged, intelligent listeners (including my friend Peter Simpson, the Culture editor at the
Ottawa Citizen). And I ate in some of Ottawa's excellent restaurants, including Flipper's, in the Glebe, and Fresco, on Elgin.
To me, the best part of the trip was the quick run I took on Wednesday morning. At the recommendation of my publicist Jennifer Tiller (a new friend, and a runner herself), I went north from downtown to the gate that leads to the Rideau Canal's final system of locks. Then I turned against the stream and ran along the Ontario shore of the Ottawa River, passing islands, rapids, tunnels and bridges. Once I turned back I opted to take a different route up to downtown and ended up almost immediately alongside the former locus of all my stress, the building that houses
Library and Archives Canada. This time, however, it just prompted fond memories of discovery and exploration. Like I said, Ottawa's a completely different town when you're not stressed out.
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