As a member of the media, I am well aware of the need to take some headline-making stories with a grain of salt. After all, when Joe and Jane Average are upset over some perceived misdeed, the gusher of sensationalized news served up by the press often does little more than drown the masses with misinformation. Politicians often make things worse by stoking the fire for electoral points. As a result, truth is run over by the pandering machine.
In the case of Eleanor Clitheroe, however, I had no idea how misleading the coverage of her forced departure from the CEO post at Ontario's Hydro One actually was until writing about the rebirth of her career last year.
If you don't recall, Clitheroe - now an Anglican priest - was one of the top executives in the land when she was ousted from Hydro One by former Ontario Premier Ernie Eves. He tossed her overboard to try to save his sinking popularity after the public expressed concern over his party's Common Sense Revolution plans to privatize the provincial grid transmitter. Opposition parties got into the act, crying foul over the level of pay and perks offered to energy executives, a story seemingly older than Moses. (For more, click here for my article, "An apology for Eleanor Clitheroe".)
Clitheroe, of course, voluntarily put herself in a position that was vulnerable to backstabbing politicians, because of a sense of duty that led her to accept the challenge of taking Hydro One public. It would have been the largest initial public offering in Canadian history, and one that would have allowed Ontario residents to get in on the ground floor of a $5-billion company. Clitheroe was handpicked for the job by male movers and shakers at the highest level, after years of outperforming men (as a lawyer, banker and public servant) in a man's world. She was well paid - there's no question about that. But she didn't negotiate her pay package, which was well known to the government, not to mention the board that freely offered it. Her pay was also nowhere near what a man would have got, or what men are currently being paid elsewhere.
Today, Clitheroe heads Prison Fellowship Canada, a group that helps people impacted by crime, including the people who committed them. That's why I was so keen on reporting the real story, which is how she handled being steamrolled. That story was recently nominated for a magazine award. The honour would be all gravy if it wasn't for the fact that I introduced the tale with a fund-raising event that featured two former inmates talking about how Prison Fellowship helped them turn broken lives into productive ones.
Trivializing the event, I talked about how a run-in with The Man also landed Clitheroe - who visits prisons - behind bars. Despite my sensationalized intro, she was happy simply to have some truth injected into the public understanding of her case. But she let me know that two women who shared the darkest days of their lives with me at the Prison Fellowship fundraiser felt used. And she drove the point home by sending me a book with first-person accounts of their tales in more detail.
With all due respect to anyone who has ever been wrongly dismissed, including the former head of Hydro One, I now know for a fact that the personal trials and tribulations that result from being canned pale in comparison to the ones described in Women Rising (which is all about women breaking free from criminal pasts). You might think ex-cons deserve what they get. But, for the record, I cover corporate turnarounds for a living, and those stories (riveting to many an MBA grad) can't hold a candle to the heroic life changes made by the woman featured in this book.
Simply put, Vivienne and Dewey deserved more respect than I gave. To them, I say sorry and good luck. To the rest of you, I say, support a worthy cause and buy the book. If you found my telling of the Clitheroe affair at all interesting, you will find Women Rising (Bastian Publishing) better explains the meaning of her life after Bay Street.
Thomas Watson is a senior writer with Canadian Business. Prior to joining the magazine, he was a financial journalist and feature writer at the National Post, where he focused on the technology, auto and steel industries. His column for Canadian Business Online appears every other week.
