secure - because I know I’m right, and I know he is
wrong. And there is no point worrying about all
the other people who... Anyone who wants to
believe that will believe it, but they are prone to
that belief anyway, so it doesn’t change anything. _
But I think more people will read that and say,
“what a peculiar thing to say. That man is advocat-
ing giving up hope,” and they wouldn’t agree with
' that, the majority. When it’s the other kind of
thing, where you’re being smeared or attacked or
depicted in a particular way, the only real answer is
silence, because you have to let it work its way
through the system. You have to let people believe
those things about you until they know better - as
themselves. Which they can only come to do, not
if you stand up and say, “Hey. Wait a minute. That
guy’s painting a false portrait of me.” They have to
discover that for themselves, by witnessing me, not
by listening to me defend myself. The only place
where I would defend myself is where - if someone
blatantly lied about something I had done myself.
Lied, as opposed to misinterpreted or willfully
misinterpreted, which could be called a kind of
lying. But I mean where, if they said, “Timothy
Findley was seen at a pub the other night throwing
glasses of beer in everybody’s face,” I would have
to say, “I’m sorry. That didn’t happen.”

POTA: In “When you write about this country”,
you talk of a piece that the CBC Radio asked you
to write about . ..

TF: (laughs)

POTA: | They were asking you to write about a
book that you were reading at the time, which was
Time Bends, Arthur Miller’s biography. You made
the connection between the politics of the 1950's
and the politics of the 1980’s, specifically,
Mulroney and Bush. It was just before Canada’s
federal election in 1988...

TF: (laughs)

POTA: And they wouldn’t air it...

TF: On the grounds that if they did air that, Mr.
Mulroney had to have rebuttal - had to be allowed
rebuttal. And I said, “This is my rebuttal. You give
him 85 hours of free airtime every day during the
election.”

POTA: So, it’s five years later, just before this
election.

TF: (laughs) That’s right.

POTA: Do you want to say anything about the
election and where the country is going, specifically
in terms of the arts, or in terms of human rights or
civil liberties . . .

TF: It’s gone down the tubes in terms of human
rights. That’s certainly... The whole business of
Clayoquot Sound and the sentences being dis-
pensed as an answer to a situation that the govern-
ment finds intolerable. Period. End of story.

Well, I mean, where the hell do these bloody
people think we live? And who do they think they
are? That’s incipient fascism, and that is what that
is. And they are now doing it in the world where
we read. Aside from cultural questions, they have
now, I think, embarrassed the country terribly with
the seizure of [American writer] David Leavitt’s
novel [While England Sleeps] as it crossed the
border and was destined for gay and lesbian book-
stores. But they didn’t stop him from crossing the

border. And he is going to have to stand up on the »

stage, as Our guest - as our guest in our country, in
the face of an international audience of interna-
tional writers who are going to go home and say,
“Jesus Christ. Did you understand that this is what
they do in Canada?” They are all going to carry
this back to their countries with them. We will be
the laughing stock - rightly - of the cultural world.
I mean, everybody else has solved this problem
about censorship, except in countries like Iran
where they are in the thrall of a dictatorship. And
there is our government and that is its attitude.
Somebody said, yesterday, at an open session, “Do
you have anything to say about the election in
terms of the customs situation and so on,” And my

answer was, ‘Well, she can be made to go.’ We
have to get rid of that government. We simply have
to.

POTA: And in the future. Assuming that this
government is gotten rid of, then what? How
would you work toward. .. Is it by participating,
by writing and by artists creating?

TF: Yes. But it has to widen. Something has to
be done which - and I don’t know where it begins.
I think it begins probably in the world of educa-
tion, but that doesn’t just mean in the universities
and school. Somehow, there has to be a broadcast
of the value of a nation’s culture. The value of the
imagination, the value of exploration through the
medium of art, books, music, etc. Because people

‘are no longer being brought into these worlds

necessarily, in the broadest sense, in schools. And
in a lot of school they are disdained. The whole
“boy culture”; the culture of male children. In that
culture, it is made to seen as though you are
effeminate - that your potential manhood is endan-
gered - if you read, for God’s sake.. Reading is the
most intelligent thing that human beings can do
outside of being engaged in-the realities around
them. and I mean reading paintings and reading
music... But the whole thing of reading the
information that is explored by the imagination.
Being a part of it. And yet, young men are made to
feel that it is despicable. That it is effeminate and
that it’s, you know, the business of the other sex -
which is like saying, ‘You’re to go out with a battle
axe and destroy civilization and the women will stay
home and do the mending of it, as you pull it
down.’ Are we really still teaching our kids this
archaic nonsense? You know that’s medieval
thinking. . .

POTA: Well, it is through education and it’s
through... I’m lost in that.

TF: Well it has to happen, and it has to happen
through the way we live.

POTA: And how we take care of people.

TF: Yes. Which includes all of the things we’ve
just been talking about. That’s how we communi-
cate with other people; that’s how we learn to care
for other people. It’s how we learn how to care for
other people - in what manner.

POTA: It isa fight and even at my old home, it’s
always sort of a fight for the arts. A fight for just a
conversation that’s open.

TF: With your parents? —

POTA:. Yes.

TF: And it’s very wide too. It’s as wide as it can
get. This is the danger of someone like Preston
Manning - heading back for just an instance to the
election. There was a letter in the paper this
morning, in favour of Preston Manning, saying, “if
in order to solve the deficit problems, we have to
axe cultural programmes and axe the CBC all -
together, so be it. Solving the debt problem is
more important than having a culture,” and they
say that in so many words. I mean it’s that boldly
stated, and that’s scary. That’s really scary stuff...
BW: Atsome point, tell Scott about our meeting |
with the then Minister of Culture . . .

TF: Oh, can you bare to? Just let me get into this
a bit (drinking his beer).

BW: Well this was about 10 or 20 years ago. And
a group of Toronto people in the arts - writers,
painters, theatre people - who were very concerned
with what was happening about funding for the arts
at the time, asked the Minister of Culture whose
name was Roberts...

TF: John Roberts.

BW: ... if he would come and talk to us and listen

_ to us, and he agreed to. And we gathered in the

house of an historian, Bill...

TF: Kilbourne.

BW: Kilbourne ... And the minister’s opening
words were, “I am here to listen to you and to
answer your questions as best I can, but I do want
to give you a context. I think you should know
that as a politician, I have never won or lost an
election on the strength of my arts policy.” In

/

other words, he was saying to us, you have to
realize you really aren’t very important. What you
do is not a large issue in the political life of this
country. And, I think Tiff and I both feel that this
is not just so of the arts, it’s so of practically
everything that matters. We don’t elect states-
men, we elect politicians, and being a politician
has nothing to do with running the country. It
has to do with staying in power.

POTA: There’s a comment in a student... The
Canadian Federation of Students put out a sheet
about the election and it was talking about art -
students... when everything gets cut,the art
students in particular and that field, because
they’re not creating products, they’re creating
artists. They’re not creating jobs. It’s always the
first to get slashed.

TF: Absolutely. Those are the first courses to go
and the first faculties and... They’re just in the
process of losing the school of journalism at
University of Western Ontario which is a terrific
school of journalism . And they’re going to lose
it. Not important. Isn’t that interesting. Let
alone the fact that, what art communicates and
how that expands the imagination and the critical
powers, journalism is the enemy of government,
basically, or could be.

BW: I once asked Tiff a question very similar to
the very first one you asked him. I was interview-
ing Tiff. Tiff is a painter - does a lot of painting
and drawing. And I asked him, “Since you
obviously see as an artist and are capable of letting
other people see how you see as an artist, why
didn’t you choose to be that kind of artist rather
than one who paints pictures with words.

TF: The talent is not in me to express what I can
express... could express as an actor and can express
as a writer and so it would merely be a terrible
frustration. But I often feel my answers in visual
terms, and my response in a... to a lot of things,
purely visual - with the visual impulse is what I
mean. Freeze that. Grab that. You know, and try
to make what happened to me on the paper or the
canvas.

POTA: Do you still paint?

TF: I try, but there’s so little time,-that again I
can’t devote the time to it that I want to.

POTA: Have you ever... worked something out
on a canvas with graphite or something, charcoal
on a piece of paper, work it out for your writing.
Can you use that for a catalyst for...

TF: I did the painting...
BW: He did the Julian Slade painting, for exam-
ple. [A painting in Headhunter]

POTA: Did you?

TF: Yeah, this big. (Indicating a small painting
and laughing) I wasn’t about to cover a wall. But
I had to know what it looked like. I had to know
intimately what it looked like.

POTA: That’s fascinating.

TF: And it was fascinating. Composing it was
really interesting. And learning to think like that,
you know.

POTA: When I bought Headhunter, I was
driving through Nelson on my way back from
Alberta . .. And we went into this bookshop and !
had to buy it. I had to buy a book... I saw
Headhunter and I picked it up and I took it to the
counter. And I asked the sales clerk, “Have you
read this?” and she said, “Yeah.” She had. “It
was really hard sometimes to read it.” And when I
read it... I’d be reading it and I'd close it and ’d
sort of gasp for air. And a friend of mine said, “I
thought you liked... I thought you said it was a
good book.” And I said, “I just can’t... I just have
to take a break for a second.” When you were
writing it, you said yesterday how difficult some
parts were, did you have to... did you experience
the same thing. That sort of gasping for air.

TF: Absolutely. And I... some parts of it, I _
would go to the desk knowing that I had to
accomplish... whatever, and I’d literally dread it
the way you’d dread going through some kind of
TE: When it’s something like that, 'm perfectly
secure - because I know I’m right, and I know he is
‘wrong. And there is no point worrying about all
the other people who... Anyone who wants to
believe that will believe it, but they are prone to
that belief anyway, so it doesn’t change anything.
But I think more people will read that and say,
“what a peculiar thing to say. That man is advocat-
ing giving up hope,” and they wouldn’t agree with
that, the majority. When it’s the other kind of
thing, where you're being smeared or attacked or
depicted in a particular way, the only real answer is
silence, because you have to letit work its way
through the system. You have to let people believe
those things about you until they know better - as
themselves. Which they can only'come to do, not
if you stand up and say, “Hey. Wait a minute. That
guy's painting a false portrait of me.” They have to
discover that for themselves, by witnessing me, not
by listening to me defend myself. The only place
where I;would defend myselfis where - if someone
blatantly lied about something I had done myself.
Lied, as opposed to misinterpreted or willfully
misinterpreted, which could be called a kind of
lying. But I mean where, ifthey said, “Timothy
Findley was seen at a pub the other night throwing
glasses of beer in everybody's face,” I would have
to say, “I'm sorry. That didn't happen.”

POTA: In “When you write about this country”,
you talk of a piece that the CBC Radio asked you
to write about.

TE: (laughs)

POTA: They were asking you to write about a
book that you were reading at the time, which was
‘Time Bends, Arthur Mille’s biography. You made
the connection between the politics of the 1950's
and the politics of the 1980's, specifically,
Mulroney and Bush. It was just before Canada’s
federal election in 1988. .

‘TE: (laughs)

POTA: And they wouldn’t airit...

‘TF: On the grounds thar if they did air that, Mr.
Mulroney had to have rebuttal - had to be allowed
rebuttal, And I said, “This is my rebuttal. You give
hhim 85 hours of free airtime every day during the
election.”

POTA: So, it’s five years later, just before this
election.

TE: (laughs) That's right.

POTA: Do you want to say anything about the
lection and where the country is going, specifically
in terms of the arts, or in terms of human rights or
civil liberties

‘TE: It’s gone down the tubes in terms of human
rights. That's certainly ... The whole business of
‘Clayoquot Sound and the sentences being dis-
ppensed as an answer to a situation that the govern-
ment finds intolerable. Period. End of story.
Well, I mean, where the hell do these bloody
people think we live? And who do they think they

. And they are now doing itin the world where
we read. Aside from cultural questions, they have
now, I think, embarrassed the country terribly with
the seizure of [American writer] David Leavitt’
novel (While England Sleeps] as it crossed the
border and was destined for gay and lesbian book-
stores. But they didn’t stop him from crossing the
border. And he is going to have to stand up on the
stage, as our guest - as our guest in our country, in
the face of an international audience of interna-
tional writers who are going to go home and say,
“Jesus Christ. Did you understand that this is what
they do in Canada?” They are all going to carry
this back to their countries with them. We will be
the laughing stock - rightly -of che cultural world.
I mean, everybody else has solved this problem
about censorship, except in countries like Iran
where they are in the thrall ofa dictatorship. And
there is our government and that is its attitude.
Somebody said, yesterday, at an open session, “Do
you have anything to say about the election in
terms of the customs situation and so on,” And my

answer was, “Well, she can be made to go.” We

have to get rid of that government. We simply have
to.

POTA: And in the future. Assuming that this
government is gotten rid of, then what? How
would you work toward... Isit by participating,
by writing and by artists creating?

TE: Yes. Burit has to widen. Something has to
bbe done which - and I don’t know where it begins.
think it begins probably in the world of educa-
tion, but that doesn’t just mean in the universities
and school. Somehow, there has to be a broadcast
Of the value of a nation’s culture. The value of the
imagination, the value of exploration through the
medium of art, books, music, etc. Because people
are no longer being brought into these worlds
necessarily, in the broadest sense, in schools. And.
in alot of schoo! they are disdained. The whole
“boy culture”, the culture of male children. In that
culture, itis made to seen as though you are
cffeminate - that your potential manhood is endan-
gered - ifyou read, for God’s sake. Reading is the
most intelligent thing that human beings can do
‘outside of being engaged in-the realities around
them, and I mean reading paintings and reading
music... But the whole thing of reading the
information that is explored by the imagination.
Being a part oft. And yet, young men are made to
feel that itis despicable. That it is effeminate and
that it’s, you know, the business of the other sex -
which is lke saying, ‘You're to go out with a battle
axe and destroy civilization and the women will stay
hhome and do the mending of it, as you pull it
down.’ Are we really still teaching our kids this
archaic nonsense? You know that’s medieval

thinking...
POTA: Well, itis through education and it’s
through... I'm lost in that.

TE: Well ithas to happen, and it has to happen
through the way we live.

POTA: And how we take care of people.

TTF: Yes. Which includes all of the things we've
just been talking about. That’s how we communi-
‘ate with other people; that’s how we lear to care
for other people. It’s how we learn how to care for
other people - in what manner.

POTA: Itisa fight and even at my old home, its
always sore of a fight for the arts. A fight for just a
conversation that’s open.

TE: With your parents?

POTA: Yes.

TTF: And it’s very wide too. It's as wide as it can
‘get. This isthe danger of someone like Preston
‘Manning - heading back for just an instance to the
lection. There was a etter in the paper this
‘morning, in favour of Preston Manning, saying, “if
in order to solve the deficit problems, we have £0
axe cultural programmes and axe the CBC all
together, so be it. Solving the debt problem is
‘more important than having a culture,” and they
say that in so many words. T mean it’s that boldly
stated, and that’s scary. That's really scary stuft..
BW: Atsome point, tell Scott about our meeting
with the then Minister of Culture ..

‘TE: Oh, can you bare to? Just let me get into this
a bit (drinking his beer).

BW: Well this was about 10 or 20 years ago. And
a group of Toronto people in the arts - writers,
painters, theatre people - who were very concemed
with what was happening about funding for the arts
at the time, asked the Minister of Culture whose
‘name was Roberts...

TE: John Roberts.

BW: .... fhe would come and talk to us and listen
tous, and he agreed to. And we gathered in the
house of an historian, Bill

... And the minister’s opening
words were, “Iam here to listen to you and to
answer your questions as best I can, but I do want
to give you a context. I think you should know
that asa politician, T have never won or lost an
election on the strength of my arts policy.” In

other words, he was saying to us, you have t0
realize you really aren't very important. What you
do is not a large issue in the political life of this
country. And, I think Tiff and I both feel that this
is not just so of the arts, it’s so of practically,
everything that matters. We don’t elect states
men, we elect politicians, and being a politician
hhas nothing to do with running the country. Tt
has to do with staying in power.
POTA: There’s a comment in a student... The
Canadian Federation of Students put outa sheet
about the election and it was talking about art
students... when everything gets cut,the art
students in particular and that field, because
they're not creating products, they're creating,
artists. They're not creating jobs. T's always the
first to get slashed.
TE: Absolutely. Those are the first courses to go
and the first faculties and... They're justin the
process of losing the school of journalism at
University of Western Ontario which isa terrific
school of journalism . And they're going to lose
it. Not important, Isn’t that interesting. Let
alone the fact that, what art communicates and
how that expands the imagination and the critical
‘powers founalis i the eHlenly OF governance
basically, or could be.
BW: T once asked Tiffa question very similar to
the very first one you asked him. I was interview-
ing Tift, Tiffis a painter - docs alot of painting
and drawing, And I asked him, “Since you
“obviously sec as an artist and are capable of leting
‘other people see how you sce as an artist, why
didn’t you choose to be that kind of artist rather
than one who paints pictures with words.
‘TE: The talent is not in me to express what I can
express... could express as an actor and can express
as a writer and so it would merely be a terrible
frustration. But I often feel my answers in visual
terms, and my response in a... 0 a lot of things,
purely visual - with the visual impulse is what I
mean, Freeze that. Grab that. You know, and try
to make what happened to me on the paper or the
canvas.
POTA: Do you still paint?
‘TE: I try, but there’s so litle time, that again 1
ean’t devote the time to it that I want to.
POTA: Have you ever... worked something out
‘on a canvas with graphite or something, charcoal
‘on a piece of paper, work it out for your writing.
Can you use that fora catalyst for .
TE: Idid the painting...
BW: He did the Julian Slade painting, for exam-
ple. [A painting in Headhunter]
POTA: Did you?
‘TE: Yeah, this big. (Indicating a small painting
and laughing) I wasn’t about to cover a wall. But
Thad to know what it looked like. I had to know
intimately what it looked like.
POTA: That's fascinating
‘TE: And it was fascinating. Composing it was
really interesting. And learning to think like that,
you know.
POTA: When I bought Headhunter, I was
driving through Nelson on my way back from
Alberta ... And we went into this bookshop and !
hhad to buy it. Thad to buy book... Isaw
‘Headhunter and I picked it up and I took it to the
counter. And I asked the sales clerk, “Have you
read this?” and she said, “Yeah.” She had. “It
‘was really hard sometimes to read it.” And when I
read it. .Pd be reading it and I'd close it and P'd
sort of gasp for air. And a friend of mine said, “ I
‘thought you liked... I thought you said it was a
‘g00d book.” And I said, “I just can’t. I just have
to take a break for a second.” When you were
‘writing it, you said yesterday how difficult some
parts were, did you have to... did you experience
the same thing. That sort of gasping for air.
‘Absolutely. And I... some parts of it, I
would go to the desk knowing that I had to
accomplish... whatever, and I'd literally dread it
the way you'd dread going through some kind of