Happy Canada Day 🇨🇦.

The Fulcrum’s official publication date was June 10th and I hit the ground running!

First off, my birth town of Winnipeg on June 14th at one of Canada’s most successful indie booksellers, McNally Robinson.

It was such a delight to have family and long-standing friends turn out, including Ed and Lily Schreyer.

My first job after university was working in Executive Council Office, the central department in Manitoba that supports the premier and cabinet. Ed Schreyer was Premier at the time (later Governor General of Canada, then High Commissioner to Australia). Premier Schryer was very generous towards the young Turks like me who worked for him and we were all in love with Lily.

Next up, the Ottawa launch at Perfect Books. A smaller but enthusiastic house, with the added pleasure of getting to see that day not one but two former Governors of the Bank of Canada – John Crow at the launch and David Dodge for coffee – and talk about Canada’s future.

Then back to Toronto, where I was invited to speak by Chris McLeod at his law firm Cambridge LLP. Every author should be treated as well as Chris treated me. The room was packed, there were delicious refreshments, and I was provided the opportunity to read from and speak about the book, followed by a really insightful Q&A.

Best of all – Chris bought copies for everyone in attendance! It makes an author’s heart sing to know that sixty more people will be engaging with their characters and ideas. I even had a few copies of Shadow Life, my first novel, for those who wanted to read both.

My whirlwind first month tour culminated at one of my all-time favourite book stores, Ben McNally Books. When my office was still down on Bay Street, wandering over to his gorgeous mahogany-lined shelves at lunchtime to buy books was a salvation.

He’s now on Queen Street, still with the same great bookshelves and best of all, an amazing curation of books.

The store was full, spirits were high, and it was lovely to see several people from the Toronto book community come out in support. These included:

Anna Porter, a book publisher for over 40 years and author of 12 books.

Poet and author Molly Peacock.

Poet Moira McDougall.

Novelist and founder/president of Diaspora Dialogues Helen Walsh

Sarah Miniaci – publicist for Shadow Life and now publisher of White Cap Books and Director of Publicity for Sutherland House.

Steven Skurka, lawyer and novelist.

Pratap Reddy, novelist and short story author.

And my sister Ann, who has written and published two novels, and was publisher of McGilligan Books for many years.

At each event, I read a brief excerpt from The Fulcrum, then spoke about why I wrote the book. I paraphrase my remarks below, in case you’re interested!

Publishers always tell authors to hold up their book. When my first book, Healing Medicare, was published, Peter Gzowski invited me on his wonderful show Morningside. I held Healing Medicare up for nearly 25 minutes.

When the interview ended Mr. Gzowski, the ever kind journalist, said to me, “You know Michael, this is radio. Holding the book up did not do you a lot of good.”

I read a brief passage from near the beginning of The Fulcrum when protagonist Matt is driving down to Boston to see his new girlfriend Mary-Louise. He receives a call from his successor at the City of Toronto.

Gordon’s looking for a report called Noah’s Arc that Matthew commissioned when he was city manager. The reported tested Toronto’s vulnerabilities and estimated the impact and mitigation of a few extreme climate scenarios including atmospheric rivers. In the book, the Mayor squashes the report, only to have it leaked, thus exposing the city’s inadequate preparedness.

Matt weighed how technical to get. He could cite peer reviewed studies, recall dismal figures from memory, advocate for the umpteenth time the long-standing scientific consensus. He could throw numbers at Gordon and tell him the planet was well on its way past the temperature increase of 1.5°Celcius, probably even 2.5 or three. But he opted instead for sober realism and practicality – that’s what a city manager needed.

“Extreme events are a certainty, “Matt said, “Bottom line: Forest fires and heavy rains. Take them as a given. The hundred storm. Imagine it happens three times in the next ten years.

“That’s a hell of a lot gloomier than the official government line,” Gordon said.

“I am no longer in government. No need to soft-pedal or mislead the public about what is coming. I can be as honest and blunt as I like.”

Gordon issued a wouldn’t-that-be-nice kind of sigh.

“But listen, as gloomy as it may be,” Matt went on, “don’t fall for the ‘existential crisis’ rhetoric. It’s a trap, navel-gazing. Focus on risk mitigation. Start with the Noah’s Ark study. It spells it out.”

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Three motivations compelled me to write The Fulcrum.

First, I like the characters who emerged in my first novel Shadow Life. Matthew Rice, Mary Louise and Professor O’Connell. They all wanted to go on another adventure, so I gave them one.

My second motivation came from Ron House, an astute reader of Shadow Life. He wrote to say he thought Shadow Life had two writers. One was an autobiographer, and the other was a novelist. With this second novel, I wanted to allow the novelist to triumph over the autobiographer. Readers will judge whether I have succeeded!

A third and most important motivation was my deep concern over climate change and the risks to many cities and some entire countries.

I asked myself the question, what if an entire major city faced near destruction from a severe climate event? What would they do?

The Fulcrum is the fictional answer to that question.

Many years ago, I sat beside former Jean Chretien at a dinner. I asked him what he had learned about climate change in his time as our prime minister. He gave a very Chretien answer – both short and insightful:

“Too many economists, not enough engineers.”

Over many years his answer has not only stuck in my mind, but it has resonated. I was born and raised in Winnipeg although I have also lived in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

When I launched The Fulcrum in Winnipeg two weeks ago, I noted that the 1950 Winnipeg flood came close to destroying the city. The evacuation of its 107,000 residents, nearly the entire population of the city, remains the largest single evacuation in Canadian history.

In the 1960s when I was a high school student, we were excused from classes during spring flood years to sandbag the banks of the Red River.

Duff Roblin was elected Premier of Manitoba in 1957. He had a vision for a massive diversion of the Red River around the east side of Winnipeg to protect the city from flooding.

At first, the project was derided as Duff’s ditch. But it has saved Winnipeg from flooding many times. Later known and celebrated as the Red River Floodway, it was deepened and expanded to handle even more overflow after the flood of 1997.

Hardening of infrastructure is what we must do even as we struggle to find alternative forms of energy generation. Climate change is not a distant threat. It is a clear and present danger.

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Now, I have a favour to ask! In our digital age, book sales are driven largely by mathematical algorithms. These algorithms are embedded in places like Amazon and Indigo and they impact how easily you appear when people search for the book. These algorithms are driven in turn by reviews.

If you read The Fulcrum, I’d really appreciate you rating and/or reviewing it. It’s hard to over-estimate how beneficial this is for authors.

If you bought the book at Amazon or Indigo, please review it there. And if any of you are on Goodreads, that’s important too.

Thank you for your support.

Michael