Carol Off wants her new book about divisive language to eventually become irrelevant

TORONTO — Carol Off hopes her latest book will become irrelevant as the years pass. She fears it will not.

The journalist’s new book, “At a Loss for Words,” published Tuesday by Random House Canada, explores how political forces have changed the meaning of six different words: freedom, democracy, truth, woke, choice and taxes.

It is both a history and a warning, one she hopes readers will heed.

“I worry it’ll go in the other direction and we will retreat into our silos, put the defences up and refuse to listen to others,” she says. “That would be my worst-case scenario for 30 years from now.”

Her thesis: that members of the radical right-wing are championing not conservatism but illiberalism, anti-democratic ideology, and wielding language as the ultimate weapon.

Off guides readers through the past as she charts histories both geopolitical and personal: from ancient Greece to the 2022 Freedom Convoy to her father’s lifelong quest for truths that aligned with his beliefs — taking several detours through Donald Trump’s presidency.

She draws on examples from her decades as a journalist with the CBC, first as a TV reporter and then as host of the radio show “As It Happens.”

She helmed the dinner-hour current affairs show, a cornerstone of the national broadcaster’s radio programming, from 2006 to 2022 and became known for her sometimes cheeky tone and compassionate interviews.

Before that, she reported on international affairs, including the war in Afghanistan, the election of Vladimir Putin, and the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

In her book, Off writes about seeing genocidal leaders pervert the meaning of democracy while she covered the Yugoslav wars, and about how insurrectionists called for freedom as they attempted to overturn the result of the U.S. election on Jan. 6, 2021.

She drew comparisons the following year when thousands of unhappy Canadians converged on Ottawa for the so-called Freedom Convoy protesting pandemic health measures.

“They were claiming the word freedom, as far as I could understand, meant the freedom from these obligations to the society that we live in…from having to care about others,” she said.

“I realized that the word freedom did not mean the same thing to them as it meant to me.”

Off said she was “filled with despair” while writing the chapter on freedom, but the last few months have changed her perspective — and if she could, she’d rewrite the section.

“Kamala Harris walked on stage and said: ‘Freedom. We’re going to take back this word,” Off said.

“It was the first time in years I felt hope…The politics of joy, somebody called it.”

She said she found herself returning to American politics in writing this book, not because it’s the same as the Canadian situation, but because the U.S. offers an amplified example of this phenomenon.

“It’s like the petri dish of what I’m discussing in this book,” she said. “You can see what happens when it goes to its most extreme…It’s anti-democratic, it’s anti-tolerance, it’s anti-pluralist. It’s a very closed society.”

She said she hopes conservative-minded readers take that message away – one reader in particular.

“If there’s anybody who I’d like to read the book, it would be Pierre Poilievre,” she said. “I want him to understand where these kinds of populist strategies…where that goes.”

It does not come naturally for Off to speak this way, she said.

Through her career as a journalist, her job was to listen and report rather than to give her opinion. But now that she’s retired from the CBC, she feels it’s her responsibility to share her perspective.

“Yes, this is a point of view, but it’s an informed point of view,” she said.

“I’m informed by 40 years of being in the trenches and really learning and listening — deep listening…So having come from all of that experience, I felt that I was qualified to write this book. It’s not just ‘Carol Off finally gets to say everything that was on her mind.’ It’s a matter that I feel I’m informed enough to be able to write this book.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 6, 2024.

Nicole Thompson, The Canadian Press