Celina Caesar-Chavannes - Can You Hear Me Now?: How I Found My Voice and Learned to Live with Passion and Purpose

EVERY TIME I WAKE up on my own, and not to the annoying sound of my alarm, I am amazed. I am not a morning person. Pre-noon daylight has an irritating hue I cannot stand, especially during the winter, when the sun shines sharpest and brightest on the coldest days.

On the morning of Thursday, March 21, 2019, I opened my eyes to that aggravating light shining through the window of my twenty-sixth-floor condo in Ottawa, and wondered if Id slept through the alarm. I could have checked the time on my phone, but that required energy I did not have. I blinked, and tiny black particles of day-old mascara fell into my eyes. I rubbed them, which only made the situation worse. I sighed. Here I was, conscious before I had to be, dealing with 24-hour mascara dust and the same incredible headache Id gone to bed with the night before.

The headache was from the stress generated the previous day over revealing my new-found freedom from the Canadian political party system. The daythe first in my career as an Independent member of Parliament and not as a part of the Liberal caucushad been long and hard. I felt like an empty tube of toothpaste someone had tried to squeeze one last time.

And then my cell phone began to buzz, message after message reminding me of the previous days events and promising a difficult time ahead. I ignored them, rolled out of bed and went over to look out the window. The neighbouring rooftops had no signs of snow and neither did the streets. That was a good thing: any hint of white on the rooftops or the roadways completely threw off my shoe game, forcing me to wear an oversized pair of Sorels Id inherited from my eldest daughter, who no longer wanted to be seen in them. Today, I could wear a pair of heeled boots. My moment of fashion satisfaction was interrupted by more buzzing from the phone. For heavens sake! It didnt stop. Remember the days when in order to communicate with someone, you had to find a piece of paper, locate a pen or pencil, write the letter, find an envelope, figure out the address, paste on a stamp and walk to the mailbox? I longed for those days.

But there was no getting away from it: everyone I knewand lots of people I didnthad strong opinions about my decision to leave the Liberals after several tense weeks of confrontation with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. And with social media and my public presence as an MP, all of them knew how to reach me to express those opinions directly. What they didnt know was that it wasnt just my issues with the prime minister that had brought me to this point.

Id been swept out of my quiet liferunning a business and raising my family in Whitby, Ontarioby the tornado of an election, and dropped in Ottawa. An Oz, for sure, but in shades of grey. Unlike many of my colleagues, I had never dreamed about being a politician, had never even taken a political science course or been interested in more than the headlines, and had never done the school trip to our nations capital. The first time I entered the House of Commons was when I started my job as a member of Parliament. I thought business and research were my things, and that philanthropy was the way Id give back to society. I had zero political aspirations.

But then Jim Flaherty, the finance minister in Stephen Harpers Conservative government, died suddenly on April 10, 2014, just after he had stepped down to spend more time with his family. A by-election was called in his riding, which was my riding. I found myself running (more on how that came about later). I lost that contest to the former mayor of Whitby: not surprising given that the mayor had name recognition in the community and I did not; that I was a Black woman running in a constituency that was 70 percent white and had never voted in a Black candidate; and that hardly anyone could remember the last time Whitby had voted Liberal.

But I didnt lose by much, and I really dont like to losea powerful motivator. When the next general election came around, in 2015, I ran again. This time I found even more support on the doorsteps of my riding. Peopleand not only Liberalswere looking for a fresh perspective on politics and found it in me: not only a Black woman from an immigrant background who had built her own company from scratch and had the business acumen Conservative voters believed they could trust, but also a person who embodied the values of diversity and inclusion that the times demanded, and that Trudeaus Liberal Party was featuring in its campaign.

This time I won. A fairy tale, right?

So why walk away from the party only four years after that victory to sit as an Independent? That was what all the people buzzing my phone wanted to know: my constituents, who liked the way Id been representing the riding, and were disappointed that I wasnt a Liberal anymore; Black leaders, who thought now that I had a seat at the table I should learn how to compromise in order to keep it, and that I was letting the community down by not playing the game; other politicians who didnt want to lose an ally; and party functionaries who wanted to berate me for what they saw as me piling on against a leader who was already in hot water over the SNC-Lavalin affair and the way he had treated two female ministers who stood up to him. The feminist PM with a female problem.

I had my own point to make and different battles to fight. Something unexpected had happened to me in Ottawa. I would say that I had arrived on Parliament Hill ready to play for the Liberal team. I had encountered many cynical voters who predicted that as soon as I faced my first challenge as an MP, I would become just another politician. I promised them that I would not. Id spoken with others who believed in me, but who thought that the old elite ways were so entrenched I had no hope of changing anything. Id also met voters who wanted me to live up to our campaign promise that we would do politics differently, who hoped I would remain the authentic Celina theyd voted for, who wanted me to challenge the old ways in which our country was run. I promised them that I would strive to bend the status quo, that I would bring change. There were a lot of promises to keep, and Id intended to keep every one.