BURLINGTON - That’s a wrap for the Burlington Literary Festival.
For the fourth year in a row, the month of November was a book-lover’s dream courtesy of the Burlington Public Library (BPL).
BurlLitFest celebrated the written word with author talks, writing workshops, insights on self-publishing, events for kids, a virtual speakers series, and an open mic session for local poets, writers and songwriters.
All the literary genres, fiction, non-fiction and more were covered in the 20+ presentations. Mystery writers shared their tips on plot lines, children’s authors spoke on publishing picture books, politics, personal accounts and life stories came to life through their authors’ observations and anecdotes.
To close the month, award-winning journalists Elizabeth Renzetti and Doug Saunders came to BPL to discuss their careers, their postings abroad, the process of writing about social issues and the power of journalism to create a more just future in a session title Journalism About Issues That Matter.
Elizabeth Renzetti was an award-winning journalist at The Globe and Mail for more than 30 years. In 2020, she won the Landsberg Award for her reporting on gender equality. Her recently released book, What She Said, is an exploration of women's rights and issues filled with personal insights.
Doug Saunders is the international-affairs columnist for The Globe and Mail, and a seven-time winner of the National Newspaper Award. His most recent book, Maximum Canada: Why 35 Million Canadians Are Not Enough looks to the future through our immigration policies.
A journalist interviews two journalists
In an exclusive, BurlingtonToday spoke with Renzetti and Saunders before their author talk last night (Nov. 28) to a packed audience at the Burlington Central Library.
Since both authors had written about social issues in their books, Saunders on immigration and Renzetti on gender issues they were asked about the impact of the recent U.S. presidential election.
“I already knew it was a real possibility,” said Saunders. “Americans are in a strange mood. It’s a bad situation for Canadians. My most recent book was about population and our realization about how much trouble we may be in. The thought of a U.S. president imposing a 25 per cent tariff on every Canadian export is big trouble for Americans but even bigger trouble for Canadians.”
Renzetti was asked about pay equity, a topic in her book.
“The Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that this is the first time in 20 years that the gender pay gap has widened in the U.S.,” noted Renzetti. “In Canada we measure the gap in a variety of ways. But what’s not in dispute is that the wage gap in some places continues to actually grow. And that is partly because women in STEM, like a lot of other industries, have a retention problem. It has a leadership problem in terms of gender, definitely also in terms of how many racialized people are represented in leadership. So when you’re losing people at lower levels and they are not advancing to leadership, that also contributes to a pay gap.”
In her book, Renzetti said she balanced issues such as the challenges facing female politicians, access to health care and reproductive justice, and sexual harassment and assault with the prospects of hope, on a systemic level and with various individuals she spoke with.
Later Renzetti said, “Society has to respond to change. I think young men and boys and young women too, have to understand that everyone is fully human, including people who are trans-gender and non-binary. People think that’s a given but women have not legally been persons for 100 years in this country. So we really have to do a better job of understanding women’s full humanity and capability and respecting that.”
When asked about the flow of migrants around the world and specifically immigration to Canada, subjects Saunders covers in his books, he responded, “Our population tripled between 1945 and 2005. However, at other times in our history, the full numbers of incoming people don’t take into account the other big figure which is outflows, which most years of Canadian history have outnumbered the inflows. Some level of immigration is needed for the economic well being of Canadians.
“We’ve developed a housing crisis over the last 30 years because we’ve had relatively modest immigration. The problem was not with permanent resident immigrants, it was with (the number of) foreign workers and international students who don’t invest in housing but create a demand for housing. I would watch out for people’s alarm at images of people walking across the border because that’s such a tiny percentage of people coming into Canada.”
During the evening event, Parampreet Khanuja, BPL’s events coordinator, asked questions of both Renzetti and Saunders about their books, their motivation to write on their related topics and included several quotes from the authors’ books.
The pair took turns explaining their viewpoints on how news is consumed by the public.
Saunders noted, “Readership hasn’t gone down. It’s just how people get their news that’s different. People are turning to social media and while I applaud the fact that just about anyone can post things on the internet, people have to examine their sources of information better. It’s the quality of journalism not the quantity. There’s this notion that people have to simplify things to be understood so they listen to the ‘shouty guy’ with the podcast rather than take the time to understand the context of events. People don’t think the ‘news’ or government speaks to them anymore”.
Renzetti took solace in the fact that young people are responding to what they hear and read via their own social media feeds and applauds “the small, scrappy news outlets like ‘The Narwhal’ and others for their good reporting."