Adrienne Clarkson - Heart Matters

PENGUIN CANADA

HEART MATTERS

ADRIENNE CLARKSON became Canadas twenty-sixth Governor General in 1999 and served until September 2005. In her multi-faceted career as an accomplished broadcaster and distinguished public servant, she has received numerous prestigious awards and honorary degrees in Canada and abroad.

A Privy Councillor and Companion of the Order of Canada, she now lives in Toronto.

HEART MATTERS

ADRIENNE CLARKSON

a m e m o i r

PENGUIN CANADA

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First published in a Viking Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada),

a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2006

Published in this edition, 2007

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (WEB)

Copyright Winding Stair Productions Inc., 2006

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LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Clarkson, Adrienne, 1939

Heart matters / Adrienne Clarkson.

ISBN 978-0-14-305669-0

1. Clarkson, Adrienne, 1939. 2. Governors generalCanadaBiography.

I. Title.

FC636.C56A3 2007 971.072092 C2007-903372-5

ISBN-13: 978-0-14-305669-0

ISBN-10: 0-14-305669-7

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In honour of my parents

William Poy, 19072002

and

Ethel Poy, 19131988

and for

Kyra and Blaise and our Chloe

INTRODUCTION

I HAVE A TRICKY HEART. I believe now that the important thing in life is not knowing how many heartbeats you are going to live, but deciding how best to live the time in between those heartbeats.

Before my heart behaved like this, I used to think that I lived a perfectly normal life and that everybody wanted to put forth the same kind of effort I did. It had never occurred to me that it might not be physically possible to exert the force necessary to accomplish what you wanted to accomplish. In July of 2005, it was suddenly necessary for me to have a pacemaker inserted because my heart had stopped beating for seven seconds. It all happened so fast that it was only afterwards that I realized what it was all about.

The medical explanation was a bit daunting. A pacemaker is inserted just under the skin and stitched into position in the chest wall. One wire is guided into the right atrium and the other into the right ventricle. The pacemaker will stimulate the heart when it is beating too slowly, but if the heart is alternating between fast and slow rates, drugs may also be used to slow down the fast heart rate And so on. For a number of years I had been experiencing an irregular heartbeat, and I was told after my crisis that this had masked another problem, which was that of my heart not pumping well.

On that day when seven seconds separated my heartbeats, everybody around me was alarmed. But I did not feel any anxiety or fear. I wasnt in any pain; I felt that I could just close my eyes and drift away. Of course, I had long believed that we must live every day of our lives as though it were going to be our last. Yet, paradoxically, we must take a long-term view that we will continue to have a future.

Now, whenever I have my pacemaker reset to beat a certain number of times a minute, I think of the wires going down into the ventricle and the atrium and regulating the way in which the whole system works. Does a heart that works, pumps blood, keeps you alive, in any way reflect the metaphor of the heart?

The ancients all believed that emotions began in the heart and that personality traits lurked in other organs like the spleen and the liver. What I have discovered is that the consciousness of both the fragility and the mechanization of what keeps me alive has made me aware of my life in a totally different way. I know with certainty that the heart can break down mechanically, but there still exists within a force that tells us to go on living, to push with the beat, to live the life.

The journey I have travelled, the dream that was dreamt for me and in which I took my part, is one that I now regard with other perspectives. During my life in Canada, I have moved from a triplex at 277 Sussex Street, opposite the Canadian Mint, to One Sussex Drive, Rideau Hall. By an amazing coincidence, they are the same street. When I was a child I used to pass the gate of Rideau Hall riding in a streetcar with my family from our house to Rockcliffe Park on Sundays. It had, and still has, a brass plaque that says Residence of the Governor General. It would never have occurred to the little Poy family to walk in and look around. It was special, with its black wrought-iron railings separated by impressive grey pillars. We knew we were to be kept out.

After my installation in the Senate Chamber on Parliament Hill on October 7, 1999, I was driven in the state landau to Rideau Hall, which was going to be my home for at least five years. I couldnt help but think, as I saw the grandiose entrance in carved stone, about the house at the other end of the street that had been my familys first Canadian homea house with a coal furnace that terrified my mother and a backyard that became a Victory Garden with Swiss chard and tomatoes. As soon as it was in good shape, Mr. Robert, the landlord, evicted us to place members of his own family in it. Now I had moved up the street, which was called, grandly, an avenue.