Louise Penny turns the tables on The Next Chapter's Shelagh Rogers and interviews the celebrated broadcaster
'I have to give credit to my crew who felt these were stories that needed to be told'
When Shelagh Rogers began working at CBC Radio in 1980, her hiring board said that Rogers represented the future of broadcasting. In 2023, author Louise Penny had the chance to ask her what she's learned in her final year as host of The Next Chapter.
Canadian mystery writer Louise Penny can relate to much of Rogers' experience as a reader and former CBC broadcaster herself. As an author, Penny is most known for her mystery series following Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. The series is up to 18 books, including Still Life, Bury Your Dead, A Trick of the Light, Glass Houses, The Madness of Crowds and now, the latest in the series A World of Curiosities. In 2013, she was named to the Order of Canada.
As a host of The Next Chapter, CBC Radio's award-winning weekly magazine show on Canadian authors and literature, Roger's has shared her love of storytelling over the past 15 years. Currently based in B.C., Rogers announced her retirement this spring.
While Rogers is leaving, The Next Chapter will continue. The summer edition of the show will be hosted by CBC Books producer and The Next Chapter contributor Ryan B. Patrick, and the search for a new permanent host will begin soon.
Back in February, Rogers interviewed Penny about her latest novel A World of Curiosities at the Ottawa International Writers Festival. Afterwards, Penny was handed the mic and asked Rogers about moments early on in her career.
Tell the people about Timothy Findley.
Oh dear! This was before I came to the CBC and I'd never interviewed a writer before. I'd gone from two years in country and western music at a station in Kingston and I ended up hosting a half-hour daily TV program called Talk of the Town. It was news and current affairs, but it was also performance. I got a call from this woman in Toronto saying Timothy Findley had just won the Governor General's Award and asked if would like to interview him.
Findley arrived about a week later. We walked into our little studio and I turned to him and said, "What did you do to win the Governor General's Award?" He said, "I wrote a book." I said, "You can win the Governor General's Award for writing a book?" and he said, "Yes, well it is a literary award."
I got everything conflated in my little 22-year-old mind thinking: governor general, The Wars, Timothy Findley must be a veteran. What war did he serve in? These were the list of questions that I prepared. Bless Findley's great big heart, he said, "Would you like me to tell you what happens in my book?" So for half an hour he talked about his novel. Years later, he told me he thought he was being interviewed by Shirley Temple. I did interview him a lot over the years.
There's always a lesson and there are a couple in this one. Timothy Findley was so generous, he could have just walked off but he didn't. I was absolutely mortified about this story for many years. I didn't do my research, and research is our lifeblood. I learned a big lesson there too.
One of your early interviews was also with Richard Wagamese.
This was an interview with Richard Wagamese who went on to write Indian Horse, Medicine Walk and Embers. This was about his very first novel, Keeper'n Me. I didn't know anything about Richard Wagamese, but I had read the book. I learned my lesson there too. Keeper'n Me was the story of a young Ojibwe man learning about his culture. Richard was going to tell me about his life and I cut him off. I brought it back to the book, to a safe place but this story came from somewhere very important, and I had a hugely bad case in those years of interruptus.
That's how we learn, we make mistakes. We grow and we feel appalled and try not to do it again. This was another interview with Wagamese 20 years later. Maybe you can set this up as well?
We were talking about Medicine Walk, which is just such an exquisite novel about a young man becoming reacquainted with his father who he hasn't seen for most of his life. His father knows he's dying and he's asked his son to take him to the mountains to be buried in the Ojibwe way. This was just at the beginning, probably of the last year of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It was 2014 we had only one more year to go after that, and we talked about what honour it meant to Richard.
The explosion of indigenous literature has been so exciting and It's been easy to do that because it's good.- Shelagh Rogers
You gave voice to the Indigenous stories that were out there and you brought it to a wider audience. An audience that didn't always want to hear them but you insisted. This was part of the future by also reflecting the past. What you have done is really extraordinary and I know that this was a vocation for you, a calling in many ways, hasn't it been?
I became friends with Richard and I got to know what his life was like because of what had happened to his parents, who were residential school survivors. Richard himself had been fostered out 17 times and he went on to become this incredible writer. Again, I have to give credit to my crew who felt these were stories that needed to be told. The explosion of indigenous literature has been so exciting and It's been easy to do that because it's good. That's what we look for, the stuff that's good. What's new, who's playing with form, who's doing things we've never seen before — telling us stories we've never heard before in every sphere.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
