B.C. Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry answers questions from the media in Vancouver on Dec. 15, 2020.JENNIFER GAUTHIER/Reuters
Dr. Bonnie Henry, the Chief Medical Officer who has steered British Columbia through the COVID-19 pandemic, has co-written a book on her handling of the outbreak to be published in March.
Be Kind, Be Calm, Be Safe, which echoes Dr. Henry’s repeated call to British Columbians, was co-written with Dr. Henry’s sister Lynn, publishing director at Knopf Canada. It deals with the early days of the pandemic, from mid-March to mid-April. It will be published March 9, 2021, by Penguin Random House Canada.
“There was a story from my perspective that I wanted to share, and as it turned out it was almost therapeutic in many ways for me to write that story out,” Dr. Henry says in a question-and-answer document with the sisters that was released by the publisher.
“It was a personal catharsis but also ensured some of the thinking that went into the many challenging decisions we had to make was recorded. It was good, I believe, to provide some detail and background to those decisions that are not reported in daily briefings or short media stories.”
In the Q&A, Dr. Henry says she is donating her advance to First Book Canada, which supports reading and literacy for marginalized youth. (Her sister is donating to another charity.)
During a news conference update Monday on the state of the pandemic, Dr. Henry didn’t answer a question on whether she would donate revenues from the book, beyond the advance, to charities.
Of the book, she said, “[It] really is about the personal story of what we went through, my sister and myself, during a period of time in March where we were all going through many challenging times.”
Dr. Henry also wrote the 2009 book Soap and Water & Common Sense: The Definitive Guide to Viruses, Bacteria, Parasites, and Disease.
Health Minister Adrian Dix said, at the same news conference, that he will be first in line to read the new book and expects it to be “vastly readable” and consistent with her commitment to public service.
“The fact that she is able to write anything in her off hours is a matter of extraordinary achievement,” he said, adding he doubted there would be any concerns around whether Dr. Henry would speak candidly about her private discussions with the Premier and cabinet ministers in whatever she writes.
Political scientist Hamish Telford said the project raises some issues including whether, given the limitations of confidentiality, Dr. Henry would be able to produce a book that is truly candid or inevitably superficial and based on disclosures that have already been covered by the media.
The professor from the University of the Fraser Valley noted that Dr. Henry may be getting her version of events on the record ahead of the inevitable inquiries, both provincial and federal, on how the pandemic was managed. “[That version] could cloud future inquiries,” he said in an interview.
“The question is going to be how critical is Dr. Henry going to be of her own work,” he said.
The Q&A document says Dr. Henry’s sister arrived for a visit from Toronto the day the pandemic was declared in March, recognized the potential of a book and wrote a proposed outline.
Based on that outline, Dr. Henry added her material, largely writing during about six days she took off in August and on “many late nights and many Sundays between my morning calls and trips to the office.” She says she wrote about half the 216-page book.
Adds Lynn Henry, “It’s not as if Bonnie was sitting around in the evenings thinking, Hmm. I’d like to preserve my thoughts for posterity; and it was not as if she had the leisure time at all to write.”
Dr. Henry acknowledges the criticism of some of her measures to control the pandemic. ”After a crisis like this goes on for so long, people are tired and are searching for a simple answer to get out of the situation. I know from my past experiences that people like me would be blamed and second guessed.”
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