The scent of a mentor
“Smell is a word. Perfume is literatuRE:”
— Jean-Claude Ellena
“Your handbag may not be remembered, but your perfume will be,” said famous perfumer Oliver Creed. And Christian Dior said, “A woman’s perfume tells more about her than her handwriting.”
There’s even a word for the lingering scent — “Sillage” (pronounced see-yazh) refers to the trail of scent left behind from perfume, meaning that someone can still have a presence in a room without even being present.
Well, I think it's a pretty damn cool and magical concept! And describes my mentor, who I will get to in a sec.
Last week, we shaRE:d two huge announcements. The first was the launch of the re:books publishing house, celebrating female voices. You can read about this exciting adventuRE: (which I’ve been sneakily working on for years) and our first batch of authors here!
Our second HUGE announcement was that I’m running the annual re:books #WriteAwaySummer contest again! The winning manuscript is guaranteed a book contract with re:books publishing house. You can read about this fantastic opportunity here.
So maybe take inspiration from my mentor and try something new to inspiRE: you — buy perfume.
And now on to my mentor.
The scent of my first true female mentor’s perfume didn't just leave a lingering presence in any room (or elevator). She left me with life-long lasting lessons that have led to many successes and also failuRE:s, in my professional career.
Jeffrey Stepakoff was right when he said perfume is “a cocktail of memories and emotion.” I'm feeling all the feels right now and smiling as I write about her. So, who is she?
My first real full-time boss/mentor was Sen. Pamela Wallin. She offered me a (paying) internship a thousand years ago during my last year of journalism school and hired me full-time immediately after graduation.
Pamela Wallin was a media personality and a household name when I first met her. She was about to launch her daily one-hour weeknight talk show Pamela Wallin Live on the CBC.
She couldn't even walk four blocks without numerous people shouting, “PAMELA! I LOVE YOU!” I was there to see the dozens of star-struck strangers who came up to her nervously and introduced themselves as HUGE fans.
My team was made up of four other females (yes, it was an all-female superstar office), and every single one of us cheered each other on. What an amazing concept! (We were so close, we even synced up every month…if you know what I mean!)
I suppose I can admit to my parents at this point in my life that I barely attended my last year of journalism school, since I was spending most of my days working on producing Wallin’s nightly talk show, booking guests, doing research, and coming up with questions for her. (Sorry, but please, don't ask me to pay you back tuition!)
Most of all? I got the chance to watch and learn in RE:al time, directly from the force or source, that was Pam, all while making a shitload A LOT of money — at least for someone in their early twenties!
Being around Pam’s presence was the greatest present in my entire working life. This experience led to one person describing the trajectory of my career as “a rise to prominence,” which sounds fancy and is why I’m sharing it.
I don't think I would have been as successful, or successful at all, without that opportunity of being around and watching how hard Pamela worked, the way she worked, and how she treated others. Being around her for 12-hour days, five days a week, included being around her perfume which she used liberally to the point that I sometimes thought, “I’m sorry. What were you just asking? All I can hear is your perfume!”
Even after years of working for her, I knew she had arrived in the office before me because I could smell the scent of her perfume in the elevator. It made me nervous AF. Would she think I was slacking off by not arriving before her? Her perfume became somewhat of a scented slogan. If I didn’t smell her PFFFFT perfume? I would instantly relax and breathe.
(Then again, she did ruin many date nights for me. Imagine telling your date that you had to be home to watch a nightly talk show at 9pm, although guests did include some of the most famous faces in North America, from high-powered politicians to famous musicians.)
When I made the painful decision to join the National Post when it launched, she hosted a celebratory lunch in my honour. There, she gifted me the fluffiest blue bathrobe with white clouds on it — which is fitting since my head is always in the clouds I'm always thinking. And so was Pam.
I still have the bathrobe and wear it often! It’s my “lucky writing robe.” To my children’s dismay, I wore it every single day while writing and editing my 10 books and still wear it, even with its cigarette holes and coffee stains. (What can I say? I’m all class!)
As Christian Dior once said, “Long after one has forgotten what a woman wore, the memory of her perfume lingers."
Many of today’s offices ban people from wearing perfume. But if perfume was banned in my first real workplace, I may have lost out on the most incredible mentor and role model a gal could have ever hoped for.
Every female should be so #blessed. In my case, I was literally following “The Scent.”
From grit and a great work ethic to grace and generosity, this week, I’m sharing 12 lessons I learned from Sen. Wallin.
Because, as Marilyn Monroe once said, "There are no women who do not like perfume. There are women who have not found their scent.”
The Scent of A Mentor: 12 Fragrant Quotes From Pamela Wallin
To listen to the full interview, click here!
1. “The people I admire most are truly my parents. These people taught me everything that I needed to know in life. What they taught my sister and I was that character trumps genius. You can be smart and that’s really good and it certainly helps in certain situations but if you’re not a decent person, if you’re not fair, if you're not reasonable, if you're not kind then it doesn’t matter. And that lesson is with me every single day of my life and every time I listen to it, and remember it, and act on it, it works.”
2. “What gives me a sense of satisfaction is accomplishment. When you do something that makes an impact, that makes a difference and it can be tiny. It can be that you have showed up on someone’s doorstep when they really needed you even if you could only be there for five minutes. Or if you've finished writing the book. It can be on any level but you want your actions to touch someone and to do that in a positive way. So that sense of accomplishment of mission accomplished in that sense that's it.”
3. “I’m excessive about my work, as well. I'm definitely a workaholic. So obsessive excessive, it falls in that category.”
4. “What I dislike in somebody else is greed because i think it affects their entire demeanour. And I just don't just mean about money, I mean greed about being the centre of attention, or the centre of the universe, or wanting whatever is happening to be about them or wanting people to answer to their needs. I find it offensive. I find it off-putting. It's not self-centredness. It's not any of that it. It really is greed.”
5. “The big challenge I have on any day is to do what I’ve agreed to do. I feel very strongly about living up to my commitments. I don't know. I have some ethic that goes way back. But I always bite off more than I can chew. So it's a constant juggling act. And I know this about myself yet I continue to do it. And so it always comes out at the bottom end of the day. Fortunately, I’m an insomniac, so when I’ve jammed so much in that there are only three or four hours left I can still function. But that's the issue.”
6. “I have received an awful lot of awards in my life but I’ll tell you the one that meant the most to me was that they renamed a street in Wadina, Saskatchewan (my hometown) Pamela Wallin Drive. I just don’t think it gets any better than that. Because it’s your home. And it’s those people who know all of your strengths and weaknesses but mostly your flaws. It's not a jury of peers. It's a jury of your family and friends and that kind of respect and recognition, it topped the heap. You can’t ask for anything more.”
7. I like to buy gifts for people. I think I end up sometimes in situations of embarrassing people because I will arrive with a gift when there is no reason to and it sometimes make them uncomfortable.”
8. “I consider niceness to be the most overrated virtue and I guess I've come to see that particularly by being a Canadian diplomat in America where Canada tends to sell itself as nice. It's not good enough. It’s almost self-denigrating. We've so convinced ourselves that we are nice that it means that anything we do must fall into that category and I think Canadians have to be a little careful of how we treat the outside world. We're quite a very insular country in many ways.”
9. “When the Prime Minister phoned and said 'did I want to go to New York to be Canada’s Council General?’ I mean I said yes in a nano-second. So it’s a combination always of being in the right place at the right time, having worked hard to get to that right place but you've got to stay open to it. I remember a conversation with the late Al Purdy, a poet. He said his mantra in life is ‘to stay stupid.’ I said, ‘But Mr. Purdy, you’re not a stupid man’ and he said, ‘No, no. It's about keeping your mind open.’”
10. “I think we’re constantly in those forks in the road. You have to go primarily with your gut in the middle of the night when no one else is in the room and nobody is offering you advice, what do you really feel is the right thing for you to do, where can you make a difference? And then you go with that one.”
11. “A wise person once said; “If you can’t offer people a vision of what they should do, you won’t be able to persuade them about the things they shouldn’t do.”
12. “My idea of perfect happiness is really spending time with friends. It's such a rare thing in my life. We’re so busy and when I think of a perfect evening, I think of the people I love around me, good conversation, maybe a bottle of wine or two, but just some real time to connect and it’s so rare and I so cherish it.”
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And did you know that Sen. Pamela Wallin is the author of The Comfort of Cats (2002), Since You Asked (1998), and Speaking of Success (2001)
She also is the host of the podcast “No Nonsense with Pamela Wallin,” which you can check out here!
Until next time,
Flip your hair, flip the page (and follow the scent!)
xoxo,
Rebecca