Can you write in your head?

Pierre Berton could. I've always needed a notebook or a computer.

ONE OF THE first magazine profiles I did as a young writer was commissioned by a smart, feisty editor I’d gotten to know in Toronto (RIP Don Obe). The piece was for a publication that slid out of thick weekend newspapers back in the day, and the subject was a well-known Canadian “personality”— the then-ubiquitous author, broadcaster, and journalist Pierre Berton.

Pierre Berton was a national celebrity when Canada had precious few of them.

In the flesh, at his townhouse/office in Toronto, Berton seemed larger than life, with an ego to match—an imposing man whose lush white sideburns and elevated comb-over tended to turn his head into a rectangular solid. He towered over most people and had the Trumpian habit of assuming he knew more about a given subject than you did (unlike Trump, however, he was usually right). He was born the same year as my parents (1920), and he shared my father’s views on such matters as social justice, religion, the environment, welfare, and official hypocrisy. Though I felt intimidated at first—I was really green, and he was legendary—he quickly made me comfortable in his presence.

I’d been allotted an hour for our interview, and it passed quickly. Since he was staying in town overnight, rather than returning to the family home northwest of the city, he suggested we meet again later for dinner. “I could use a good steak—we’ll go to Barberian’s.”

Dutifully I explained that I didn’t have an expense account. In a breech of journalistic ethics, acknowledged by both parties, the writer agreed to allow the subject to bribe him with a fine meal.

At the restaurant, Berton was greeted familiarly, as he was most places. The reach of CBC television at the time can’t be overstated, and Berton—with his confidence, stature, and bowtie—was instantly recognizable to most Canadians, thanks to Front Page Challenge (good show, actually) and The Pierre Berton Show (interesting guests) and Close-Up (meh). He wrote and edited for Maclean’s, which had a huge circulation, and he seemed to turn out a new popular-history blockbuster roughly every two weeks: Klondike, The Last Spike, Vimy, The National Dream, The Invasion of Canada, Drifting Home, et al. His ego could not let him fail to add that a book bearing his mother’s byline—I Married the Klondike, by Laura Berton—was actually something he’d ginned up for her over a few weekends.

Berton with Betty Kennedy, Allan Fotheringham, Jack Webster, and host Fred Davis. Front Page Challenge ran weekly for an extraordinary 38 years.

WHEN I ORDERED the filet at Barberian’s, Berton suggested I get the rib steak instead: “It’s the best cut, for flavour and texture and marbling.” So we both ordered the rib steak, medium rare. The first bite, to my grad-student’s palate, was absolutely delicious.

“This is overcooked,” Berton said of his, and explained what medium rare was supposed to mean and why his meat failed to qualify. He didn’t send it back, but genially educated the waiter. The wine he found acceptable: “Chateauneuf-du-Pape and steak are always a good combination.”

Berton had a military background and a certain rigidness of bearing, but was remarkably free-thinking about the issues of the day. He was an early proponent of cannabis who, on TV, showed the world how to roll a joint. He railed against the internment of Japanese Canadians in the Second World War, and he scandalously announced that he didn’t care if his children had sex as long as they used birth control. Dubious police practices, problems on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, entrenched hypocrisy (The Comfortable Pew, an evisceration of the religious establishment, was a huge bestseller)—all of it was grist for Berton’s extensive media mill.

“How do you manage to be so prolific?” I asked.

“I work hard and I write fast. I have research help, and I have a lot of bills to pay.”

He also repurposed his material expertly, turning research for a book into a Maclean’s column, a news story, and an interview for a TV show. He liked to brag about selling essentially the same piece (on the Headless Valley in the Northwest Territories) no fewer than two dozen times over the years.

THAT WEEKEND I stayed overnight at the Berton home, a place somehow made placid by Berton’s gracious wife, Janet, despite a maelstrom of children (eight), cats, doorbells, friends, food, and ringing telephones. Berton held forth in the big comfy chair he always sat in, not only answering my questions but also telling me what else I should be asking him.

The next morning he drove us both downtown. In the car I asked how he managed to turn out a daily (as I recall) 1,200-word column for the Toronto Star while also travelling to the Yukon (where he was born and grew up), giving speeches in Vancouver, flying to London, researching and writing his books, and taping television shows (to say nothing of sessions at the Roof Bar at the Park Plaza with cronies like his publisher, Jack McClelland, and the time required to be a discreet but unapologetic philanderer).

His Star columns weren’t dashed-off opinion pieces. They were well-researched essays and arguments, often on social issues, supported by quotations from people he’d interviewed, usually on the phone. His columns were generally excellent.

“I write the column in my head as I drive into town,” he explained, “and I type it out when I get there.” It was then about a 45-minute drive in his Mercedes sedan from Kleinburg to the Toronto Star building.

“Have you written tomorrow’s column?”

“Not yet, so I’m going to suggest that we continue the drive in silence.”

IN SILENCE I wondered how in hell you write a worthwhile column in your head. At that stage of my career, writing was like chipping black ice off the sidewalk—one hard-won inch at a time. I needed to see the words I’d written to imagine what might come next. The notion of composing and storing a logical sequence of sentences and paragraphs, infused with factual research and supporting quotations, I found mind-boggling.

The only other person I’ve met with a comparable knack was Michael Pitfield, a big brain and key figure in the civil service during Pierre Trudeau’s terms in office. Magazines sometimes had exceptional people in for lunch (this is when there were lots of print magazines, and magazines put exceptional people and ideas ahead of clickbait, and had editors with offices, and boardrooms, and budgets for lunch), so that the staff could educate themselves on the guest’s area of expertise. Pitfield was head of the Privy Council Office at the time, and an intimate of Trudeau. We asked him about the Liberal prime minister.

A thoughtful pause as he formulated an answer, and then he’d say something like this: “Generally speaking, comma, the obligations of the mandarinate don’t extend to anticipating the response of cabinet members to such matters, period. In the case of the prime minister, comma, I would speculate that his intellectual grasp of the implications of the proposed legislation, comma, were it to pass, comma, might exceed his ability to register the emotional impact on those who, comma, political loyalties notwithstanding, comma, support cultural sovereignty. Period. New paragraph.”

I kid you not. That’s how he spoke. It was as if he’d instantly devised an answer and was reading it aloud, punctuation included, from the printed page in his head.

Michael Pitfield, open bracket, standing, close bracket, overseeing the formal patriation of the Canadian Constitution in 1982, period.

IN THE MANY years since I first met Pierre Berton, I’ve learned to write two or three decent sentences in the shower. That said, a Berton-like conjuring of entire paragraphs still seems to me a remarkable skill, up there with musical genius or the ability to reckon that Christmas Day in 2078 falls on a Tuesday. (Robert Fulford, the great journalist and editor, never learned to drive; I don’t believe he could have caught a rubber ball if you’d tossed it his way; yet he touch-typed at blazing speed—another superpower for a writer, especially before computers.)

Oddly enough, I’ve always had a better memory for what other people have written than for what I myself put on the page. Editing someone else’s manuscript, I’m usually able to bear in mind the conceptual overview while also keeping track of section-by-section and paragraph-by-paragraph structure, line-by-line sequencing, and the grammatical principles governing the use of words and phrases and punctuation. I’m not remembering all the words as such, but rather keeping track of different things on different levels. Which is probably why I’ve always judged myself a more adept editor than writer.

WHEN THE PROFILE was published—the first time a story of mine was featured on a cover—Berton sent me a handwritten note. I imagined he’d thank me, compliment me on a brilliant job, and tell me I had a spectacular future in journalism. After an obligatory pat on the head, however, he got to the point: “You captured me pretty well. I’ll just mention a few things to think about.” He went on to explain how he would have approached the piece, why he would have structured it differently, and why his version would have been better.

NOTE TO READERS: Here I decided to step away from my MacBook and see if I could write a concluding paragraph to this little essay in my head. Gazing out at Active Pass, then walking around the house, munching on corn chips and an apple, I challenged myself to think, think, think. After 10 or 15 minutes I could get no farther than two sentences.

Then again, maybe these two sentences are enough:

I appreciated that Berton took the trouble to critique the article, but I also found his note kind of irritating. All the more so because, no doubt, he was right.

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P.S. My post on the F-bomb a few weeks ago keeps on giving. Recent readers of that piece point out that “I don’t give a fuck” means I don’t care; “feeling fuckety” means feeling off, or unwell; and “the fuck"—as in “What the fuck is going on?” or “Who the fuck is asking?”—adds spicy emphasis to any question.