An excerpt from 'In Trudeau's Kitchen'
CHAPTER FOUR: A FAMILY TRIP TO OTTAWA
I decided to leave for Ottawa a few days before the taping of my dialogue with Sophie Trudeau at their home—Rideau Cottage. Since my first book was published, I had done hundreds of radio shows and podcasts, but very little on-camera work. I was nervous and wanted to make sure my lines were so solid that nothing could distract me. I was speaking for my whole lineage, after all. I wanted to make them proud.
My current vehicle was a banged-up Dodge Ram, so I booked a rental Jeep in Georgetown, Ontario. When you grow up on the outside looking in, you always worry you’ll be seen as a fraud when you get invited into the centre. It had been years since I’d struggled with those feelings, but the idea of pulling up to the prime ministerial home in a dented and rusty truck brought them back to the surface. I wanted to show up like I belonged.
The weekend before, Susan and I had driven into downtown Toronto to purchase two gifts for Mrs. Trudeau—a t-shirt, and a hat that said “Truth Speaker.”
After months of being cocooned in my writer’s world, I was concerned I would look pale on camera, so I’d been visiting a tanning salon. The last time I was there, I asked about self-tanning lotion. The attendant recommended a small sixty-dollar bottle. I snapped it up. Just before I left for Ottawa, I smeared a bunch of it on my face, upper chest, hands, and arms.
On the morning of Monday, April 23rd, I drove to Georgetown to pick up my Grand Cherokee. All tanned up with someplace to go, I was ready to kick ass. But when I got there, they didn’t have the SUV that I’d booked. What they did have was a giant black Yukon, the kind of vehicle used to chauffeur dignitaries around. I was no dignitary, but I was driving to meet one. Apropos. I planned to stay at a downtown Kingston hotel on Day One and then drive to my Ottawa hotel the next day. Sophie and I would meet for the lunch and video dialogue on Day Three.
I had never driven an SUV this size before and climbed in for the long drive to Kingston. Soon after pulling onto the highway that cuts through North Toronto, I was overcome with emotion. Familiar childhood roads took me back to challenging scenes from childhood. The night my father’s Pontiac Strato Chief was seized for non-payment. The time we were arguing so intensely that we failed to notice we had driven through a red light at Bathurst and St Clair. My mother’s secretarial office above the bowling alley at Glencairn Avenue. Our typical Sunday afternoon visiting up to six relatives at Branson Hospital. That embarrassing moment at Bayview Village Mall when we chose the only affordable—and surely most unsightly—bar mitzvah suit imaginable. My father lying on the couch for months, too depressed to get off his ass and find yet another job. My beloved grandmother’s umpteenth visit to St. John’s Convalescent Hospital. My mentally challenged cousin Gloria riding the bus up and down Bathurst Street to visit a whole team of doctors about her latest medical concern. I loved that woman most of all.
I was by no means feeling sorry for myself. If anything, I was marveling at the remarkable contrast between those life experiences and this pristine moment of triumph. A member of the rough and tumble Brown clan going to the prime minister’s house to have his ideas showcased to the country? It felt both entirely surreal and like some kind of ancestral healing.
My ride down memory lane continued all the way to Kingston. I pulled up to my downtown hotel in the early evening only to find that my massive Yukon was too tall for their underground garage. The entire downtown core seemed to prohibit parking. Across the street was an outdoor parking lot, but paying for it required that I download something called an app. Above my tech grade. In the hotel, someone suggested the hospital parking lot a few miles away. Apparently, they had the ceiling space to accommodate a Yukon. I drove there with some measure of concern: what would happen if I couldn’t find a place to park? Would I have to stay up all night driving my Yuk around? That would surely ruin my sleep in Ottawa, and then I’d arrive for camera day in a zombie-like stupor.
When I finally found the garage, there was no one around to ask if the ceilings could accommodate my Yuk. So, I took my chances and crawled my way through the mostly barren parking lot to an upstairs spot.
In the hotel room, I noticed my face was orange. I called my wife to ask her if I’d fucked up with the self-tanner.
“You’re only supposed to leave it on for a few hours,” she said.
It had now been six hours since I’d applied it. I half-jokingly asked if there was an anti-tanner I could buy to restore my skin to flesh tone. Nope. I’d be going to the PM’s house orange.
When I was young, there was an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show called ‘Put on a Happy Face’ that had stuck with me. In the episode, Mary was nominated for a prestigious “Teddy” award. But she was not in any condition to attend the event. She had a nasty cold, a sprained foot, a hair bump, and a stained dress. It felt like foreshadowing. As I lay down on the bed praying for a good night’s sleep, I wondered if this was my Mary Tyler Moore moment.