Gotlieb had been fussing over the seating arrangements and other
preparations for days, and evidently slapped her social secretary on the face
thinking that the woman had hidden important guest attendance information. The incident was witnessed, was duly reported in the media, and became an
embarrassing and awkward moment for many Canadian officials as well as Gotlieb
herself.
This was when I first heard of Sondra Gotlieb. Her husband Allen was a former Rhodes Scholar
and a high powered Oxford and Harvard educated lawyer, who had worked abroad
and at the highest levels of government in Ottawa as a deputy minister and advisor
to Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
Now as the Ambassador to Washington, he was known in part for his wife’s
sumptuous parties at their official residence and for her gossipy column on
life in the U.S. Capital for the Washington Post. The columns under the heading “Dear Beverly”
took the form of letters to a fictional friend back home in Canada.
Knowing little else and being a biased political hack in Ottawa,
I presumed in the 1980s that she was trading on her husband’s position for
self-promotion and gratification at the expense of others.
But Sondra Gotlieb had firm credentials as a writer and
journalist before she arrived in Washington and, I now realize, was merely
applying her trade to a new and peculiar circumstance.
Like her semi-fictional character “Verna” in the
Leacock Medal book True Confections (1978), Gotlieb was born and raised
in the mixed cultures of North End Winnipeg where she developed the love of varied
foods expressed in her first books, the nonfiction cook books The Gourmet's
Canada (1972) and Cross Canada Cooking (1976). She thus entered the Washington social scene
equipped to entertain and feed guests well.
As the jack cover to my copy of True Connections says, she also contributed to Maclean's and Chatelaine magazines
before starting her columns in the Washington Post. Over her career as a writer, she also
produced articles for Saturday Night, the New York Times, and, more recently, The National Post newspaper.
Gotlieb apologized over the “Slap Flap” affair immediately after
it happened and in varied ways over the years, and she tried to explain what is
ultimately unexplainable in interviews and writing such as her memoir from that
period.
But the acts and events that put it perspective best are the
self-deprecating comments Gotlieb has made in relation to her behaviour. It resonates with her True Confections ruminations about privilege and weight control in the
pre-Washington, pre-Slap era.
My reasons for cutting her some slack include the personal life events that always dwarf the
triviality of a public persona and media musings.
Like the fictional Verna, Gotlieb was born in 1936 and married her
older, scholarly husband in 1955. They
had three children Marc, Rachel, and first of all Rebecca, who was born just a
few years after the marriage which was commemorated and echoed in the closing
pages of the Leacock Medal book.
By the time True Confections was
written, that baby, Sondra Gotlieb’s first child, was entering university and starting
studies that would lead to several degrees and as a career as a lawyer. Sadly, Rebecca, who also wrote columns on
occasion, passed away with cancer at only 44-years of age in 2003.
The Gotliebs have lived in Toronto for many years. Sondra continues to write for the National Post, and the now elderly Allen
remains active in law, business, and other public concerns.
Review of True Confections - 1979 Leacock Medal Winner