THE SENATE CHAMBER, located at the east end of the Centre Block, the main building on Parliament Hill beneath the Peace Tower, is the most imposing and magisterial room in all of Canada. It’s clothed in red, which lends it the nickname the Red Chamber, is adorned with gold leaf and polished oak. Dominating the room are two thrones, one comically smaller than the other, as though borrowed from the set of The Friendly Giant.
The upper house wears its pretensions loudly and proudly, in startling contrast to the more modest — and green-hued — House of Commons located at the opposite end of the Centre Block. It’s where the Queen addresses the country, where the Governor General delivers the throne speech and where royal assent is given to bills destined to become law.
The pomp and circumstance of the nation’s capital — not to mention the backroom machinations of federal politics — is some distance from the Bayview–York Mills area of Toronto where Linda Frum Sokolowski grew up.Yet, when she took her place as a member of the Senate last year, she found the experience strangely familiar.
“You feel like a schoolkid, like you’re back in high school and everything is foreign and strange and a little scary, and you wonder who you’re sitting beside,” she says with a shake of her head and a deep, genuine laugh.
Frum is seated in the living room of the home she shares with her husband, Argonauts co-owner and real estate developer Howard Sokolowski, and her three children. The home, like Frum herself, is bright and stylish and tastefully decked out in taupes and creams and cinnamons, with the occasional slash of grey and black.
Even her dog, a russet-coloured cavapoo named Raffy, is perfectly coordinated with his surroundings.
“I’m so sorry,” Frum says for the third or fourth time as she tries — unsuccessfully and much to my amusement — to convince Raffy that I’m not there solely to scratch him behind the ears.
It’s clear that Frum, an author, Gemini Award–winning documentary filmmaker and former columnist with the National Post and Maclean’s magazine, is less comfortable on the dangerous end of an interview. “I still haven’t gotten used to answering questions,” she says with a pained expression.
As a politician and one appointed by the prime minister, reporters suddenly have free rein to rummage through Frum’s closets looking for skeletal remains. Not that Frum’s life is an open book, just something resembling it.
Frum says she was a “nerdy bookworm” growing up who spent more time at the library than she ever did at the mall or partying with friends.
“There’s nothing my children enjoy hearing more about than what a complete loser I was,” she says. “I spent a lot of time at home and didn’t really hang out a lot. Of course, back then there weren’t many places to hang out. The Swiss Chalet, maybe, that’s about it.”
Her father, Murray Frum, was a dentist and real estate developer, while her mother, Barbara, was a highly respected broadcast journalist who hosted As It Happens on CBC Radio in the ’70s and The Journal on CBC TV in the ’80s.
“I had a pretty strong sense at the time that her work mattered and that she mattered to people,” Frum says of her mother.
Naturally, people assume that Frum was inspired to become a journalist by her mother, who died of leukemia in 1992.Frum even wrote a book, Barbara Frum: A Daughter’s Memoir, published four years later, in which she wrote in loving detail about their relationship and how she would often seek out her mother’s sage advice. But she says that it was actually her big brother, David, a journalist, pundit and political shark, who pushed her toward a career in journalism.
Frum was attending McGill University in Montreal when she despaired at the strong liberal leanings of the campus newspaper.
At her brother’s urging, she resolved to “speak out against this political stranglehold” by starting her own newspaper.
“It was a political impulse more than a journalistic impulse, a response to the singular monolithic discourse on campus. But I wouldn’t have taken a single step if it hadn’t been for David.”
When Frum speaks of her brother, it’s with equal parts affection and hero worship, and she laughs when I mention his notoriety. After all, while writing speeches for President George W. Bush, he coined the term “axis of evil.”
“I know him as someone who is wise and generous and sweet and principled and who inspires me,” she says. “And yes, he is all of the things that you’ve said, as well, infamous, notorious, but his public image is changing, too.”
When I point out that, considering his role in the Bush administration, his image could only soften, she laughs again and shakes her head.
“He’s one of those intellectuals whose opinions will never be so solid as to be impervious to new evidence. He has an extremely supple and rigorous mind. And I would say the same about the prime minister. Stephen has a tremendous intellectual capacity and strikes me as someone who’s completely obsessed with policy and what is happening in the world. He’s an egghead, and he’s a very thoughtful man.”
Just as politics drew Frum into journalism, journalism has returned her to politics. Of course, one wonders why Stephen Harper would choose Frum, a journalist (a profession considered the Enemy by many politicians) for a Senate seat.
“There’s been a very interesting evolution in the Jewish community away from the Liberal Party and toward the Conservative Party, and I’d like to think I played a small role in that process and that the prime minister is aware of that process,” says Frum, a former chair of the women’s division of the United Jewish Appeal and past board member of the Canada Israel Committee.
Every political appointment comes with more than its share of criticism.
Frum even found herself being not-sogently ribbed by her former employer, Maclean’s. The magazine’s 2009 political yearbook issue dubbed her “head cheerleader,”stating that she was “relatively qualified” for the job. And the overall sentiment regarding Senate appointments could be summed up when the article stated that she had been given a “taskless thanks.”
Frum admits that it stung a little, especially coming from former colleagues. She also recognizes that it’s indicative of a wider misunderstanding of the Senate’s role in federal politics. “It’s not necessarily a powerful job but it’s an important job. We review legislation to make sure the intention of the law is as written,” she says.
“You want to do the right amount of safeguarding but don’t ever want to overstep your authority because you’re not an elected representative of the people.”
Of course, sometimes the job can be just as dull and boring as it sounds. “It is like high school,” she says, returning to her earlier analogy.
“You’re not always interested in every single subject — if you’re a Latin person, you’re not necessarily interested in geography.You can’t be an expert on all subjects or all the legislation.”