A debate has been taking place in Quillblog’s comments section regarding the accuracy and even-handedness of R.B. Fleming’s controversial biography Peter Gzowski. Responding to a letter from the Gzowski family, read on-air last week on CBC Radio’s The Current, Fleming argued that, in researching the book, he had sufficient access to those close to Gzowski to offer a balanced portrait of the famed broadcaster.

Now, Gzowski’s partner, Gillian Howard, has further articulated the family’s concerns, claiming the book not only contains “a long list of factual errors,” but also focuses unduly on mistakes made during Gzowski’s early life. Howard argues that Fleming effectively alienated “the people who knew Peter well from about 1982 onward,” resulting in a work that condemns Gzowski for the person he was in his twenties and thirties.

Howard’s full response is below:

I’m posting this comment in the hopes that those who read it will understand the objections that Peter’s family and many of his friends have to Rae Fleming’s assurances that he spoke with people and that people cooperated with this book.

All of us have now read the biography and we have a long list of factual errors contained within the book. Because Mr. Fleming could not establish an environment of trust amongst the people who knew Peter well, these errors have now been printed and distributed. Throughout the period of Fleming’s research, we were called by many people who told us that they thought he had an agenda and that he didn’t seem much interested in what they had to say because they weren’t confirming his apparent beliefs about Peter. Because of what people told us, I doubt that any of Peter’s family would have consented to a long interview with Mr. Fleming, had he asked. We didn’t trust him.

To see Fleming holding up a few early e-mails as proof that the family cooperated with him “ well, it just isn’t the case and he has certainly read a lot more into a few e-mails than I would have thought possible. It is ironic that Peter could always establish trust in an interview setting and that Fleming repeatedly engendered distrust and suspicion throughout the period of his research for the book. He … also seems to have been rather skillful and [sic] picking up information from what others have written and making it appear as if this information was elicited through conversations he’s had or information he’s discovered.

To set the record straight with regard to my contact with him: he met with me to tell me that he was writing a biography of Peter. He asked that I give him a letter which would request that people speak with him for the biography. I told him that I thought it was up to people to decide for themselves whether they wished to speak with him about Peter. After a period of time, he sent me an e-mail to ask whether the estate had refused permission for access to the archives at the CBC. I wrote a letter to the CBC archives indicating that the estate didn’t think it appropriate to refuse anyone access to the CBC archives “ indeed, the estate had little authority over materials contained in the CBC archives beyond future use. From time to time after that I would get random questions from Fleming such as where Peter had had his surgery or whether I had any unpublished pictures. As Peter hadn’t written about where he’d had his surgery, I told Fleming that the surgery had not taken place in the hospital that he had asked the question about in his e-mail. To the request for photos, I suggested that I thought it likely that universities might well have unpublished photographs. He asked if I would speak to him about the years after Peter left Morningside. By that time, I had heard enough from other people about their encounters with him, so I declined.

In his final e-mail to me, he said that he thought Peter was complicated and asked whether I understood him. My response was short and something to the effect that I understood Peter completely but that that was not the point. The real point was did he (Fleming) understand him?

Having read the book, I would say that he does not and certainly not in the way that those who spent a lot of time with him would know and understand him. And, given Fleming’s approach to people who knew Peter, I’d add that Fleming essentially cut himself off from the people who knew Peter well from about 1982 onward. Simply put, they didn’t want to talk to him.

As we all do, Peter changed and grew over the course of his life and what may have been true of Peter at 26 “ a time I didn’t know him “ was certainly not true later in his life. The biography doesn’t come close to describing or understanding Peter’s generosity of spirit, his great relationships with his children, his warmth, his humour, his ability to share friendships, and his struggles with bouts of depression. No one was harder on Peter than he was on himself. No one worked harder than he did and no one deserves to be frozen in time as the person they were in their twenties and thirties. Could Peter be grumpy when out in the evening? Absolutely, but what most people couldn’t begin to understand is how much of his energy went into making Morningside each day and how draining it was for fifteen years. Rae Fleming appears to have no understanding of what it took to create the radio that apparently kept Fleming sane for a period of time while he was caring for someone in his family. And, I hasten to add that it was a team of people who put the program on the air, all of whom had Peter’s respect and admiration.

In the end, I’d say that Peter deserved a better biography. Not better in the sense of ignoring his failings “ and, were he alive, he’d be the first to say that he had many. But, better in its understanding of what made him tick, how he changed over the course of his life, why he succeeded at almost everything he tried, and why he failed when he did. Fleming has put together a lot of facts, a fair number of errors and he’s come up with some baffling conclusions “ but he has missed capturing the man by a very wide margin.

Gillian Howard