Lt.-Gov. Filmon healing and in high spirits

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This article was published 05/01/2020 (1816 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Just minutes into an interview at Government House, Lt.-Gov. Janice Filmon wants to know: “Are we having fun yet?”

Seconds later, her husband Gary, a former Tory premier, comes into the sitting room to kiss her goodbye. He accidentally trips over a photographer’s equipment on the floor and catches himself flying across the room, looking like Bobby Orr scoring an overtime winner in 1970.

The assembled quartet — Filmon, one of her assistants and two Free Press staffers — can’t help but laugh, as does the former premier.

So yes, we are having fun.

Janice Filmon knows, perhaps better than anyone in the province, how to put others at ease. Her way with people is partly why former prime minister Stephen Harper appointed her Manitoba’s lieutenant-governor in June 2015.

“Janice Filmon is a strong leader who has been extensively involved in her community for decades,” Harper said about the appointment. “As a champion of health care and education, she has been an exemplary volunteer who has helped a wide range of Manitobans through her tireless efforts.”

Filmon is the former chair of the board of directors of the CancerCare Manitoba Foundation, and she is the founding chair of the Nellie McClung Foundation. Those are just two of her many community pursuits.

Filmon, a former social worker with the Children’s Aid Society, has received the Order of Manitoba and Order of Canada.

A lieutenant-governor’s first term can be no more than five years and Filmon is rounding that corner in the next six months.

She’s uncertain whether she will be reappointed and doesn’t want to talk about it for the record. The Prime Minister’s Office also wouldn’t comment on whether she’ll be appointed to a second term.

Filmon does want to talk about her bucket-list for the next six months, regardless of whether they are her last as the Queen’s representative in Manitoba.

Not among the bucket list items is viewing The Crown on Netflix, by the way. Filmon said she’d like to see the show, but rarely watches television, unless it involves sports. She also made a point during her husband’s political career to not read the news, but she makes exceptions nowadays. She prefers books and currently has about six on the go, including a daily meditations book, and Jean Teillet’s The North-West Is Our Mother.

But back to the bucket-list.

The lieutenant-governor has made a point of hosting public events at Government House. She invites Manitobans to wander in, usually for her Conversations and Celebrations series of talks with distinguished guests, including Teillet, who discussed the history of the Métis Nation, and Keith Macpherson, who will be there Tuesday to discuss mindfulness. She plans to host more events, which have always sold out.

But Filmon, 76, has had to pare back her busy schedule in recent months after undergoing surgery for breast cancer Sept. 30.

Thirty years after her last round of cancer treatment, she was under the scalpel again.

“I, at the time, didn’t know that I had a problem. I was feeling good. And that’s the thing about cancer: it can be cultured in a perfectly healthy body, right? One minute you’re fine and then, a week later you go to the doctor and they tell you something,” she said.

“That’s the thing about cancer: it can be cultured in a perfectly healthy body, right? One minute you’re fine and then, a week later you go to the doctor and they tell you something.”

Filmon said she’s doing well now and pacing herself. Doctors said it would take two to three months for her to start feeling like herself again and get her energy back.

On Dec. 5, she made her first public appearance since the surgery, granting royal assent to Bill 7, the Employment Standards Code Amendment Act.

The bill gives employment leave to victims of interpersonal violence, whether or not they know the perpetrator. Previous legislation only granted such leaves to victims of domestic violence.

Filmon said she recognized how significant the bill was when she made her first visit back to the legislative chamber.

“So I was aware of that for sure, and equally aware when people stood up and clapped,” she said of MLAs in the legislature.

“That will be one of the memories in my memory bank that was quite extraordinary, forever. Because that was about the humanity. That wasn’t about bills or about anything else — that was about a person to a person.”

“I can’t tell you how I’m just so lucky. I have to be the luckiest person… And if I get another 30 years out of this cancer operation, I’ll have been really lucky.”

When she was installed in 2015, there was a less-than-full turnout among members, some of whom were in their constituencies for community events. A small number of Tory members were absent, while more than half the NDP government caucus was away.

Filmon instinctively shuts down any question about having won them over; she doesn’t want to comment on politics. But she appears to have charmed many Manitobans, including strangers, who sent flowers and gifts while she was recovering from surgery.

“I have had incredible, and I don’t know — I want a better word than that… leave it at ‘incredible’ and I might be able to come back to it — support, encouragement, love,” she said.

“And honestly, to think in 2019, now 2020, that you can be in some kind of public office and feel loved? I mean, honestly, it’s quite remarkable.”

The lieutenant-governor said she’s done a lot of reflecting recently, not to mention brainstorming about “little mini explosions” of monthly events she can host at Government House this year, which is Manitoba’s 150th anniversary.

Those will include a conference with Gov. Gen. Julie Payette and all her provincial and territorial representatives in Winnipeg from June 22-24.

Otherwise, her bucket-list is full of more personal tasks. She wants to write a book and be a significant figure in the lives of her nine grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. And she wants to take good care of herself physically.

“I can’t tell you how I’m just so lucky. I have to be the luckiest person,” Filmon said of her life so far.

“And if I get another 30 years out of this cancer operation, I’ll have been really lucky.”

— with files from Dylan Robertson, The Canadian Press

jessica.botelho@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @_jessbu