Peter Mansbridge, One on One:
Favourite
Conversations and the Stories behind Them, 2010
When Peter Mansbridge
was CBC TV’s chief correspondent, I greatly enjoyed listening to his one-on-one
interviews. I was therefore delighted when I found this book in a little
library in my neighbourhood. I suspect that everyone in this club saw at least
some of those interviews on the CBC.
In this book he offers some of his numerous interviews,
either as segments or as a whole. Each interview is a transcript, introduced
with a paragraph or so of context. Many are also followed with an update on his
interviewee’s present status.
He interviewed many of the rich and powerful, including
several Canadian prime ministers, US presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Bill
Gates, the Agha Khan and the Dalai Lama, three Israeli prime ministers, and
many others. The book has one chapter based on interviews with golfers, another
with hockey players, another on interviews with First Nations leaders.
Another is with speechwriter Ted Sorenson. Sorenson’s
best-known work is the speech John F. Kennedy gave at his inauguration. You
remember it – the one that ended with the words, “Ask not what your country can
do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” That was another great
interview.
I can’t begin to do justice to the emotional power of many of
these chapters. One of many memorable interviews with little-known people was a
discussion with Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. Educated at Harvard, at the time of the
interview she was the president of Liberia – and the first democratically-elected
woman to lead an African nation.
Many of these interviews took place overseas. One, for
example, took place with Tariq Aziz in Baghdad, just before the Western bombing
began in the Iraq War. After the murder of Saddam Hussein, Aziz gained control
of the country and surrendered to the western coalition.
Memorably, Mansbridge describes an interview with Margaret
Thatcher, who was on a book tour of Canada. The Iron Lady bridled at nearly
every question he asked, and repeatedly accused him of never having read her
book. He says he was tempted several times to ask whether she had actually
written it.
