Victoria journalist Tom Hawthorn regularly faces an unusual writing challenge: to create a brief profile that not only reports the fact of a deceased person’s life but tells an engaging and memorable story. It is a challenge that many writers could use to hone their skills. Hawthorn’s new book, Deadlines: Obits of Memorable British Columbians (Harbour Publishing, 288 pages, $26.95) tells 50 fascinating stories within the constraints of a newspaper obituary. It’s a lively read. Lorne Daniel asked Tom Hawthorn five questions about his challenges and his craft.
What are your criteria for selecting deceased people to profile for an obituary? How did you decide which profiles to include in Deadlines?
I write obituaries mostly for the Globe and Mail, so the person’s life needs to be of interest to a national audience. I also have to get the editors at the Globe interested in the person. Canada’s a big country, so competition for the obit page is fierce.
Did the person lead an interesting life? Did they have a public persona of note? Were they unique in some way? Does their life tell us something about life as it is lived in British Columbia, or Canada?
From nearly 500 obits written over the past decade, I’ve culled Deadlines to 50. We were looking for a cross section of people from a variety of backgrounds. Otherwise, we could have published a book of 50 hockey obits. Hmmm. Maybe next year.
What are the factors that result in there being relatively few women in Deadlines?
Let’s see, we’ve got an obit of a pioneering aviatrix (Margaret Fane Rutledge), a pioneering doctor (Dr. Josephine Mallek), a pioneering aboriginal leader (Gertrude Guerin), a pioneering rock journalist Jeani Read). I’m seeing a trend. Roles for women were limited until recent years. People who died in the previous decade mostly made their mark in the 1930s, ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, when opportunities for women were restricted. The obit pages of the future will have more women subjects than they’ve had in the past.
In Deadlines, you’ll also read about the Cougar Lady of Sechelt, about Pearl (the Elephant Girl) Edwards, about Norma Macmillan (the voice of Casper the Friendly Ghost), about Leila Vennewitz, a translator of global renown, and about Jean Crowley of Avalon Dairy.
An obituary is a relatively constrained piece of writing in that the writer is expected to cover certain bases. When you are drafting and revising your work, what do you do to keep each article fresh and engaging?
An obit in the Globe does carry a responsibility to touch on the person’s public life. Honours have to be noted. Like any piece of good writing, an obit can be fresh and engaging if a story is told. I seek out anecdotes that capture personality, details that offer insight on the person.
In your Acknowledgements, you quip that “the subjects are in no condition to complain,” but no doubt many other readers scrutinize each obituary quite closely. What is your approach to fact-checking your work — and do you have any tips for other non-fiction writers?
Whenever I write for the Globe, I am all too aware that among the reading audience will be at least one expert in the area about which I am writing. It is a sobering realization.
I am an obsessive researcher. I feel like I can never have enough newspaper clippings, or book citations, or interviews completed. Still, errors do happen and one can only try to be diligent to avoid the most common and to correct mistakes when they are spotted.
I do make that quip, but in doing so I ask readers to inform me of errors. I’m keen to get the story right. Even after it is written and published. Even after the subject is no longer with us.
Tips for non-fiction writers: When in doubt, leave it out. Keep asking questions until you’re sure about the answer. Never guess.
The British Columbians in Deadlines may not have been ordinary or typical citizens but do you see their lives and experiences as saying something about the nature of British Columbia in general? Are certain story lines more pronounced in BC than we would find elsewhere?
British Columbia attracts (and encourages) dreamers and schemers and Utopians, as well as scammers and scoundrels and con artists. It’s at the end of the road, so it is where people go to re-invent themselves. The province is also a place without the chains of church and class and tradition you’d find in more established societies, so it is not surprising that you find so many pioneers and trailblazers here, from Douglas Jung as the first member of Parliament of Chinese-Canadian ancestry to avant-garde theatre provocateur John Juliani. Life is different out here. Describing how so keeps it interesting.
Lorne Daniel’s selected poems, Drawing Back to Take a Running Jump, was published in 2012. He is working on a book of creative non-fiction about Alberta’s fur trade and oil frontiers.