Authors launch compilations of columns
Showplace packed for event for Rosemary Ganley, David Goyette
Examiner columnists Rosemary Ganley and David Goyette each launched a book of collected writings at a packed celebration at Showplace, on Wednesday evening.
Ganley’s book, Positive Community, is a collection of columns published over the last three years in The Examiner.
Goyette’s book, Politics in the Patch, contains his City Hall columns from the last three years. At the Nexicom Studio at Showplace, master of ceremonies Paul Rellinger - a longtime reporter who is running for council in the next election - said the two columnists share a common attribute.
“They’re courageous - and that’s a breed of journalism that’s going by the wayside,” he said.
Ganley is a lifelong feminist, retired teacher and co-founder of the charity Jamaican Self-Help (with her late husband John).
She’s also a member of the advisory council that offered leaders of the G7 guidance on how to advance gender equality. She was at the G7 summit in the Charlevoix region of Quebec, last week.
Her column, which appears on Thursdays, chronicles and comments on positive events in Peterborough and Canadian culture.
Goyette is a writer, academic, public affairs consultant and political advisor. But that’s not all, says his book’s biography: he’s also a painter, a guitarist and a songwriter.
His column - which also appears on Thursdays - covers politics and culture in Peterborough.
During a question-and-answer period, Goyette was asked for advice for young columnists.
“When you write, have an attitude about something,” he said.
Never sit on the fence, he added - find an attitude that falls within your belief system and stick to it.
Ganley said it isn’t difficult for her to find inspiring topics that are as positive as the title of her book suggests.
“Peterborough’s been good to me,” she said. “So I don’t have trouble seeing positive things. And I want to tell about them.”
Several people spoke about the columnists at the launch: Coun. Dan McWilliams called Goyette “a classy guy” and a “true friend” who is generous with political advice, for example.
Anyone who’s running for city council ought to give him a call, McWilliams said: “He knows what to say and what not to say at council.”
Meanwhile Joe Webster, a teacher at St. Peter’s Secondary School, called Ganley an “opinionator” who is very much a part of the community. “I cannot imagine Peterborough without Rosemary.”
Kennedy Gordon, managing editor of The Examiner, said he was happy to have these two columnists add their voices to the paper three years ago. They reach an audience he wanted to serve, Gordon said: namely, readers who want to hold government to account.
Examiner reporters collect information, he said: “And these two columnists pick it apart for you.”
Ganley said that while her columns are generally positive in nature, sometimes she writes when she’s “bloody mad” about topics such as reproductive choice. But she says that’s OK much of the time she finds optimistic stories to keep her column positive. That’s important to her, she said. “I believe positivity builds on positivity.”