by Terry Fallis
“Fear not, we’ll send out a search party,” I responded. “Why don’t we head into the boardroom?”
I wasn’t kidding about the search party. Armand Gelinas wasn’t answering his cell phone. So after studying his photo on the Internet, a team of about half a dozen or so Turner-King staffers fanned out from our office in search of the spooked head of the CSA. It took about an hour and a half but they did in fact find him. He was cooling off in a Starbucks down the street trying to figure out his next move. He was not very happy when he learned that the ambush interview had been staged by our media trainer. He had thought it was an actual reporter lurking in our lobby.
Armand calmed down in the end and only raised the elevator confrontation thirteen more times over the course of the afternoon. I’d had many more dealings with Armand over the years than I had with Martine. Even after what had transpired in the lobby, he may have appreciated seeing a familiar face at the boardroom table. By 6:00 p.m., Martine was still very skilled in the way she handled the simulated interviews we threw her way. Armand? Not so much. But he did improve. His first few simulations were not unlike the shower scene in Psycho. But by the end of the day, he could quite ably complete an entire interview and deliver at least a couple of key messages without fainting. I have no idea how he came to be head of the Canadian Space Agency, unless it was someone’s idea of putting him out to pasture. We agreed that Martine would try to take the lead when it was time to field questions from the floor at the newser. Armand Gelinas seemed relieved.
We used the Great Hall of the Ontario Science Centre for the NASA/CSA news conference. With Hoberman spheres hanging from the ceiling, slowly expanding and collapsing like living planets, it seemed a fitting venue for our announcement. Amanda was beside herself with anxiety. I’d organized a dozen or so news conferences for my minister in the previous few years, and they’d all gone without a hitch. Then again, whenever a minister of the Crown was holding a newser, reporters always showed up. Apparently, not all news conferences attracted journalists, even though that was the sole purpose of holding them.
“What if no reporters show?” Amanda said to no one in particular. “I’d never live that down. And please don’t let me trip on the riser steps and eat the floor.”
“Amanda, calm yourself. You’ll do just fine. And trust me, reporters will show. It’s a joint NASA/CSA announcement. There’s never been one on Canadian soil before, so by definition, this is news and they will come,” I replied.
The set-up looked great to me. A skirted table on risers sat at the front, with a deep blue backdrop featuring both NASA and CSA logos, along with the words “Citizen Astronaut.” There was theatre-style seating for about twenty reporters, and then another set of risers at the back for cameras. Eli, our mailroom camera guy, was already set up to record the announcement so we could post it on YouTube and our Citizen Astronaut website.
Amanda was back on her cellphone again to the office to check on the status of media calls to confirm attendance.
“I don’t care that they’re not picking up, call again! We have got to have this place filled with reporters, and that means you have to keep calling!” Amanda snapped closed her cell with a look that said keep all sharp objects out of her reach.
“David!”
I turned and saw a beaming Kelly Bradstreet striding my way. Amanda saw her too and moved to intercept.
“Welcome to Toronto, Kelly,” said Amanda, as her hand shot forward for the shake.
“Hello, Amanda. Hi, David. This place is perfect. Very appropriate. Nice choice,” Kelly said. “It’s a bit of a distance from downtown. Do you think we’ll have any trouble getting journos here?”
“While it’s not downtown, the Science Centre is very easy and fast to get to,” Amanda explained. “We’ll get them here. It’s a NASA/CSA announcement. There’s never been one on Canadian soil before. That’s news around here.”
She didn’t even look at me when she said it.
We did a last-minute run-through with Kelly. I explained the proper pronunciation of Armand Gelinas (Armon Gelina) and Martine Juneau (Marteen Juno) and made sure she spent a few minutes with them in the green room before zero hour. Amanda was now in the zone. With plenty of media showing up, she had calmed down from completely freaked out to excessively agitated.
It all went well, despite the power failure. We were a victim of our own success. We had so many cameras plugging into the central audio feedbox that we blew the breaker about five minutes before show time. In the dimness, I could see that Amanda was close to blowing her own breaker. But the Science Centre AV guy, bless him, had us up and running again in about forty-five seconds, with a mad dash to the electrical panel down the hall. No problem.
At 10:30, our scheduled start, I counted nineteen reporters, eight bloggers, and six vidcams set up on the risers at the rear. For a Toronto news conference, this was as close to full attendance as you could get. If the announcement went well, the news would travel clear across the country in the coming hours. If Armand Gelinas threw up on his microphone and it all turned ugly, the news would travel clear across the country in the coming hours. The mixed blessing of a well-attended newser.
At the appointed time, Amanda took the steps very carefully, one at a time, as if she were about 104 years old and needed a double hip replacement. Some minutes later, she made it to the fourth and final step and approached the microphone. She was alone on stage. Deep breath.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, I’m Amanda Burke from Turner King and I’m pleased to welcome you to this very special announcement. My role is simply to introduce our guests and get off the stage.” She smiled a little self-consciously as she said it, but it went over well.
“Here’s how it’s going to unfold this morning. You all have the media kits. There’ll be three spokespersons available during and following the news conference. We’ll also have raw video b-roll of the NASA news conference happening right now in Washington to round out what will be a continental story. So let’s get started. I’d like to welcome Ms. Kelly Bradstreet, chief information officer and head of NASA’S Office of Communications, Mr. Armand Gelinas, CEO of the Canadian Space Agency, and of course, Dr. Martine Juneau, Canadian astronaut and NASA mission specialist. Each will make a brief statement, and then Kelly will open the floor for questions. Thank you.”
Our three spokespersons were already seated at the skirted table ready to go by the time Amanda had finally made it back down the steps. I toyed with suggesting that we use an inflatable slide to get her back down the next time she chaired a news conference, but decided just to keep that one to myself.
“Thank you, Amanda. Good morning everyone and thank you for coming. I’m Kelly Bradstreet from NASA. At this very moment, the head of NASA is making this same announcement in Washington. Ladies and gentlemen, for more than fifty years, space has been the exclusive domain of a very special breed of human beings. Only astronauts, test pilots, rocket scientists, chemists, physicists, astronomers, physicians, and other extraordinary and highly trained individuals at the absolute top of their respective fields have had the singular opportunity to venture beyond our atmosphere and view the Earth from the depths of space. Yes, we’ve seen one or two billionaires buy their way onto a mission, but in general, those who have felt the miracle of weightlessness have belonged to a very exclusive club.”
Kelly paused and made eye contact with the key reporters we’d pointed out, before getting to the heart of the matter.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to change the face of the space program forever. We are about to open space up to average Americans and Canadians, whoever they are, whatever they do, wherever they live. Welcome to the era of the Citizen Astronaut.”
Kelly then proceeded to brief the reporters on the details of the Citizen Astronaut contest, including the eligibility rules and NASA’S final say on who would fly. And she was good. She knew what she was doing, and she knew how to command a room. I’d seen her remarks i
n advance and thought they were fine. But they were so much better when she delivered them than when I’d read them on the page. At the designated point in the program, Kelly invited Armand Gelinas to offer his thoughts on the program from the CSA’S perspective. He was a little nervous. I could tell, and perhaps others could too, because he insisted on holding his notes in his hands. The paper was vibrating in his trembling fingers with enough amplitude to fan the front row of reporters. Okay, I exaggerate. But his hands were shaking. He got through his remarks in French and English and threw to Martine Juneau, who would fly with the winning Canadian citizen. Gracious, self-deprecating, bilingual, funny, and above all, authoritative, Martine was a star. How could she be anything but, with a PhD in aeronautical engineering and a Master’s in philosophy? The media ate it up.
Much to my surprise, there actually weren’t that many questions when Kelly opened the floor. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, the concept and rules of the contest were not hard to grasp. They’d been explained very well. And the media kits provided complete details. As well, the vidcam shooters in particular went rushing out the door as soon as the Q&A wound down. They were clearly trying to get back to their stations to cut and produce their stories in time for their noon newscasts. It had been a slam dunk. Diane had watched quietly from the back and gave me a thumbs-up when it was all over.
“Well, we’re out of the gate, and I don’t see how it could have gone any better,” I said as I raised my glass to Amanda.
She’d stuck her head over top of my cubicle divider on her way out at about 8:30 that night and asked if I wanted to join her for a drink to celebrate. I figured yes was the right call. We walked to a bar down the street from the office. She drank three big glasses of Chardonnay in about forty minutes while I nursed a beer. I wasn’t really much of a drinker, but I didn’t want to piss her off by ordering a ginger ale when she was clearly in the mood to celebrate.
“I’m just so relieved that we made it through today without any disasters,” she said before dissolving into giggles. “And I didn’t fall off the stage! Yay!”
“Here’s to not falling off the stage!” I said, offering up yet another toast.
Clink went our glasses. Some of her wine sloshed over the edge of her glass onto the floor – probably not a bad place for it at that stage. I’d never really seen this side of Amanda. She was actually smiling quite consistently and had not looked at her BlackBerry for several minutes. Finally, she could restrain herself no longer and she stole a glance at her BB.
“Oh my god,” she started. “It’s from Crawford Blake. It says ‘Amanda, congratulations on what I’m told was a fantastic news conference today up north in Toronto. I knew with you in charge, we were in good hands.’ Oh my god!”
She was practically trembling in ecstasy and guzzled another huge mouthful of wine. As she stood up too quickly, hoisting her wine glass high above her, both her knees became better acquainted with the small table between us. It was tipping towards my crotch when I caught it and returned it to its normal upright position. I hadn’t caught the beer, but my lap had. She didn’t even notice.
“A toast to David Stewart for coming up with this insane idea in the first place, for working so hard to make today a success, and for not trying to take over my job in the process,” she intoned.
Then she wobbled a bit and took a few steps to keep her balance.
“Uh-oh. All of a good I don’t feel so sudden …” she said, swaying a bit.
With that, she promptly sat back down. Too bad her chair wasn’t beneath her.
I was happy to help her up and escort her out the door. She leaned most of her weight on me. With right my arm around her, I did my best to keep her upright.
CHAPTER 5
The media coverage over the coming week or so was quite simply off the charts. In the three days following the launch news conference, we had over five hundred stories in print, on radio and TV, online, and in community papers. On the fourth day, as the earned media started to recede, the paid media broke from our sister ad agency, Campbell Creative, including TV, radio, print, online, transit, and outdoor. If you were alive in Canada that week, you knew about the Citizen Astronaut contest.
Our media relations effort also yielded 158 editorials and opinion pieces. Predictably, about a third of them were negative, linked most often to the cost of putting civilians in space. There was also plenty of criticism that the contest was simply a “PR exercise” with no real purpose beyond hype. As I read this, I realized that we needed to do a PR job on the term “PR.” Those two little letters attached to my chosen profession were usually delivered with a dismissive head shake, a pejorative tone, and a look that straddled disdain and disgust. In the modern vernacular, “It was just a PR exercise” really meant, whatever “it” was, that it was completely devoid of substance. Or that smoke, mirrors, or both were somehow involved. Or that someone like me was spinning one lonely little positive attribute into a towering all-powerful juggernaut of virtue, while downplaying or even ignoring a boatload of horrific side effects that threatened (please select one or more of the following options) children, animals, trees, water, air, earth, the ozone layer, the Idaho striped blister beetle, and the entire human race. In my mind, that was the old PR, an outdated stereotype in decline. I was a practitioner of the new PR. As far as I was concerned, my job was to tell the truth, and tell it well. And, no, that’s not spin. I believed it.
But I didn’t have time right then to rehabilitate the public’s view of my profession. I was too busy persuading Joe and Joanne Public to enter a contest that could land them in orbit aboard the International Space Station.
My phone chirped. Phones today don’t really ring any more. Chirped is as close as I can come to describing the sound. “TK D.C.” flashed into the liquid crystal screen. I love caller ID. I had no idea who would be calling me from the D.C. office.
“David Stewart.” I opened with my usual greeting.
“David, it’s Crawford Blake.”
Uh-oh.
“Oh, hi, Crawford,” I said. “Congrats on all the great U.S. coverage. You must be pleased.”
“Yep, it was a triumph. I’ve never seen so much coverage on an announcement in my entire career. I reckon it shows just how many Americans actually want to go into space, the dumb fuckers,” Crawford said.
The profanity caught me a little off guard, but I had heard the term before.
“I’m callin’ for two reasons. First of all, you folks up there did a fine job driving coverage of the Canadian announcement. Kelly spoke very well of the TK Toronto team and of you in particular.”
“Thanks so much. We have a great group of PR pros in this office and they worked very hard under very tight timelines.” I was skating. “We were thrilled with the coverage. On a per capita basis, we ended up with more coverage than in the U.S.”
Idiot. I knew it as the words were passing over my palate. But I couldn’t seem to stop them. Why would I say that?
“Well, we’ve got so much more going on here stateside than you folks do up there in the wilds. The competition for column inches down here is fierce. So I’m not surprised you got the front page up there. I mean, what else is going on in Canada right now anyway other than ice hockey?”
“Right …” I had nothing else.
“Anyway, the second reason for my call is to make sure you understand how important it is that we end up with the right Canadian winner. The goal is to help NASA so we need a classic Canadian winner. You know, young and strapping, hale and hearty, maybe even a hockey player in a lumberjack shirt. We want something quintessentially Canadian. Right, David?”
“Um, I’m a little confused. The winner is chosen through a random draw. We have no role in choosing the citizen astronaut,” I replied. “We’re not talking about ‘fixing’ the draw, are we? That would be a huge scandal.”
“Did I say ‘fix’? No, I did not. You said ‘fix’ and you should be ashamed of yourself,” Craw
ford scolded. “I’m just telling you to make sure your winner fits with our notion of the ideal citizen astronaut. Are you hearing me, David?”
“But I’ve got Borden-Bennett all over the mechanics of the draw. If anything is amiss, they’re going to blow the whistle and we’ll be royally … in trouble,” I said. “I think you should probably talk to Amanda or Diane about this.”
“I’m talking to you, David. And I’m telling you to get me a great Canadian astronaut,” he demanded. “Canada will not bring down this program by offering up a lame citizen astronaut.”
I was speechless. So, in keeping with the condition, I said nothing.
“Okay, then. Message delivered. Congrats again on the coverage. I’m looking forward to seeing who wins the big prize up in the land of snow and ice.” Crawford hung up with a bang.
I held the phone to my ear for a moment or so, stuck in neutral. Eventually, I hung up. Had I heard him right? Did that conversation actually happen? I sat at my desk for ten minutes trying to decide how to handle Crawford’s pointed message. After very careful thought, weighing the pros and cons, assessing my options, I carefully conceived an elaborate and brilliant stratagem. I decided simply to forget that I’d ever had the conversation with Crawford Blake. That’s right, it had never happened. “Yes,” I said aloud. “I’m sure that will work.”
Lauren called late in the afternoon to let me know that Mom was having a good day and was reasonably lucid. I left immediately and headed over. Mom hadn’t had many good days in the last month, so I didn’t want to miss her. A nine-minute cab ride and I was there. I let myself in and headed upstairs. Lauren was sitting in the chair placed next to the bed while our mother was propped up on pillows with a magazine opened on her lap. A glass of what was either white wine or apple juice with a straw rested on the bedside table.