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pleasingly symbolic for a ninety-one-year-old man who had devoted his life to Canadian life and culture. Alas, the holiday meant that there were few people on the news desk; consequently, Southam’s demise slipped under the radar and, even though I had a long obit waiting in the morgue, we were a day late in reporting his death.
    That conversation with Southam was the first and last time I relied on the “piece for the files” ruse to get an interview. The deception still makes me cringe. From then on I resolved to tell the truth, however difficult. Novelist Tom Rachman has a variation on that scenario in his chapter about obituary writer Arthur Gopal in The Imperfectionists . Sent to interview Gerda Erzberger, a terminally ill Austrian intellectual who has been championed and then dumped by feminist activists, he arrives, notebook and tape recorder in hand, to interview her for a “profile” for the paper, although the only newsworthy thing about her is her approaching demise. She has no time for subterfuge and pinions him with a direct question: “‘So can I assume,’ she asks, half turned toward the kitchen, ‘that you’re writing my obituary?’”
    As Rachman’s character learns, people who are elderly or ill know full well that their lives are coming to an end. They are thinking about their impending deaths and interested in reflecting on their lives. Sometimes they have things they want to say, especially if they trust you to keep their confidences until after they are dead.
    In my experience, it is the people around the dying — the dear friends, close colleagues, and devoted family members — who are squeamish, not the person who is actually dying. Still, there is nothing worse than going on a fishing expedition for biographical facts with somebody who is ill. I research the life to figure out the themes and the questions that I want to ask, then I make the phone call. I introduce myself and say that I would like an interview to talk about their significant contribution to Canadian life, explaining that while I hope the obituary may not be needed any time soon, I want to do the best job possible by preparing in advance.
    I let this sink in and then I make sure I promise that nothing said to me will be printed before “such time as it may be necessary.” (So far nobody has confessed to stealing the Crown Jewels or to other misdemeanours that would put my vow of confidentiality into conflict with the laws of the land or the news imperatives of my employers, but I am cognizant of the ethical dilemmas such a disclosure would present.) Another long pause, and then I explain that in my experience the only people who die are the ones I haven’t written about. Besides, I conclude, I update every five years. When I made that pretty speech several years ago to politician Flora MacDonald, who was then in her late seventies, she retorted: “You’ll have to do that, because my mother lived well past a hundred.”
    By chance, in 2005 I was in the audience for one of William Hutt’s farewell performances at the Stratford Festival. He was Prospero in The Tempest , a role he had first played on that stage more than forty years earlier. Looking like a haggard bloodhound after a fruitless hunt for a rabbit, he delivered his final lines: “As you from crimes would pardon’d be / Let your indulgence set me free.” I was haunted by the poignancy with which he stood alone on the stage, garbed in a white bedsheet of a robe and holding a bouquet of red roses, while the waves of applause and love lapped over him. When I heard nearly two years later that Hutt was suffering from leukemia, I phoned and asked him for an interview for an eventual obituary.
    â€œI will be happy to talk with you, but my days are short,” he said, in a voice that was commanding yet courtly. “I am looking on my demise as a project, and I am the project