Since You Asked

Pauline Carey is an actor, playwright, and fiction writer. She is the
author of Magic and What’s in a Name?

Her Saskatchewan school reports were good but often stated she talked
too much. Now there’s a news flash, she dryly comments. She goes on to
tell us she had her career mapped out while still in school; she was
going to be a French teacher. University brought out the latent feminism
and social activism that led her to start talking and this in turn
landed her a job with CBC Radio in Ottawa. For many years, she committed
herself to the Ottawa political scene, working in radio, print, and
television; other life events have ranged from doing her dead
grandmother’s makeup to covering the Falklands War in Buenos Aires for
CTV. This is a success story full of ups and downs, of career changes
and personal upheavals.

Wallin’s memoir is full of quiet humor and written in accessible,
unpretentious prose. There is no malice, though the pain she experienced
while serving as cohost of the CBC’s Prime Time News is evident. She
is generous to those who have helped her along the way. One of her best
stories concerns an early and inept interview with Pierre Trudeau in
which he raked her over the coals; she later thanked him publicly for
the lesson in how not to do an interview.

Wallin presents herself as loyal and fair without arousing our
suspicions. It is these qualities that may have provoked the outpouring
of support from friends and strangers when she was abruptly fired by the
CBC. Once again she changed her life, put her money where her mouth was,
and started the interview program that carries her name. In her calm
way, she presents a picture of a woman who won’t give up.