The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
A million viewers enjoy her work every week, but Penny Gummerson has trouble joining them. â??I have a hard time watching my own stuff, to be honest,â?ù says Gummerson, who writes for the CBC hit Arctic Air. â??Iâ??m always picking out things that I could have changed or done better.â?ù Itâ??s no shock that Gummerson, a 40-something Flin Flon native now living in Vancouver, is a perfectionist. Thatâ??s a familiar trait among writers. What is surprising is the long and winding road she has taken from small-town girl to esteemed screenwriter for several Canadian television series. Growing up in Flin Flon, Gummerson was about as far removed from the entertainment industry as possible. The youngest of five children, hers was an outdoorsy family. â??I spent a lot of time in the bush,â?ù she recalls. â??We grew up hunting, trapping, fishing out at the cottage and on Lake Athapap. It was in my bones. I loved it.â?ù As much as Gummerson loved nature, she also relished physical fitness. A self-acknowledged high school jock, she was part of multiple sports teams. After graduating from Hapnot Collegiate in 1981, she thought of becoming a rec director, a phys-ed teacher or even a physiotherapist. See â??Knackâ?? on pg. Continued from pg. But working one summer for the City of Flin Flon recreation department, Gummerson uncovered a knack for storytelling and conversing with people. She was tasked with writing news releases to promote rec events. She also conducted interviews for brief rec department segments that aired on cable access TV. â??I really, really loved the communication aspect,â?ù Gummerson says. So much so that when it came time to choose a field of college study, she opted for public relations. Off to Durham College in Oshawa, Ontario, Gummerson went. But rather than diving right into PR, she was required to also take courses in journalism and creative writing before picking a major. Her strong writing earned accolades from instructors who urged her to switch to journalism. Still finding her way in her early 20s, who was she to argue? After graduating from Durham College in 1985, Gummerson landed a job at a weekly newspaper, The South Shore News, in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia. The pay was lousy but the work satisfying. Within a couple of years, she had worked her way up to the much larger Halifax Daily News. The pay was better, but she realized the boundaries of journalism were too big of a cork on her creativity. Gummerson headed back west in 1990, this time to Vancouver. She became a freelance writer for regional magazines, penning human-interest stories on everyone from female race car drivers to Hollywood legend Tony Curtis. She also worked as a publicist for a theatre company, where play scripts in search of an audience would often arrive. â??I was watching scripts come in and thinking that what Iâ??d really like to be doing is writing scripts,â?ù Gummerson recalls. Though it had never been her style of writing, Gummerson authored a one-act play for the Vancouver International Fringe Festival. It sold out during its week-long run and garnered Gummerson attention from theatre critics. She went on to write a full-length play, Wawatay, for a medium-sized Vancouver theatre. The setting for Wawatay (it means â??Northern Lightsâ?ù in Cree) was none other than Flin Flon. It told the story of a family forced to come together when its matriarch is dying. â??I always knew I wanted to write about my hometown,â?ù says Gummerson. â??Iâ??m proud of where I grew up. Itâ??s a unique town with fascinating characters.â?ù Audiences loved Wawatay. It even won an award for outstanding original script. Yet the pragmatic side of Gummerson worried about the starving-artist lifestyle of a playwright. Thankfully, the theatre is not the only game in town for scriptwriters like Gummerson. A whole other medium, television, was beckoning. Gummerson, who is MÃtis, saw her big break come in 2003 when she was hired as head writer for Moccasin Flats, an aboriginal drama set in Regina. She maintained that title for the entire three-year run of the show, a collaboration of the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) and Showcase Television. Gummerson would also write for Renegadepress.com, another small-screen series, before moving on to Mixed Blessings, a Prairie-based dramady. While lauded by critics, none of these shows was particularly rich in ratings. Gummerson had to wait before her writing would reach a broad national audience. That opportunity came in 2008 when she joined the writing team of CBCâ??s Heartland, an hour-long drama based around an Alberta ranch that cares for abused horses. â??Itâ??s a family show, so teenagers can watch it with their mom and dad,â?ù says Gummerson, who cherished her two seasons with the series. Two years ago, Gummerson left the safety of the established Heartland to become an executive story editor and writer with the much-hyped Adam Beach series Arctic Air. See â??Adven...â?? on pg. Continued from pg. The gamble paid off. Based around a maverick airline in Yellowknife, Arctic Air became CBCâ??s most successful rookie drama in 15 years, averaging about one million viewers an episode in its first season. â??I think people are just relating to a new world, which is the North, and the adventurers and the adventurous spirits that live up the North,â?ù Gummerson says. â??Iâ??m sort of the resident â??northernâ?? expert. The other writers ask me questions about the North all the time. But Iâ??m a little rusty. â??Last year I had to call my brother Bob about five times to talk me through bear welcome mats, traps and caribou beds. He kept calling me â??city girl.â?? â??Donâ??t you remember anything I taught you?â?? Heâ??s a funny guy. And actually, the real storyteller in the family.â?ù Gummerson is one of six writers on the hour-long adventure show, so the amount of her writing making it to the screen varies wildly from one episode to the next. Each season, the writers hold brainstorming sessions at which they pitch story ideas. If a writerâ??s idea is chosen, he or she will usually author the draft script for that episode. The script will go through numerous revisions with changes coming from the other writers, CBC, the director and the â??showrunnerâ?ù who oversees the day-to-day workings of the show. Budgetary limitations also carry influence; a certain filming location may not be available, for instance. Finally, the episode is filmed. Throughout this drawn-out process, Gummerson rarely stops to contemplate that the words with which she is filling her computer screen will morph into a live-action story beamed across the nation. â??I get so into just writing the story that I actually kind of forget about that,â?ù says Gummerson, who works not just for CBC, but also Arctic Air production company Omnifilm. She and her colleagues are now at work on the third season of Arctic Air, which will air in 2014 and promises to further push the creative limits of the series. Gummerson is also the co-creator of a half-hour sitcom, The Band Office, that is in development with APTN and will likely have a pilot episode shot later this year. â??(Itâ??s) kind of a spin on Steve Carellâ??s The Office, only itâ??s set on a fictional reserve,â?ù she notes. If that werenâ??t enough, Man of the North, a six-part web series written by Gummerson, has just won a Golden Sheaf Award for Best Web Series at Saskatchewanâ??s renowned Yorkton Film Festival. Gummerson has certainly come a long way from writing press releases for the Flin Flon rec department, not to mention earlier ambiguities about how she wanted to share her writing talent. â??I wasnâ??t always interested in being a TV writer or a screenwriter at all,â?ù Gummerson says. â??I thought Iâ??d probably be writing novels if anything.â?ù Viewers across Canada can be thankful for her change of heart.
