Patricia Kearns

On September 11 this year I was in Toronto for an exciting event. Pink Ribbons, Inc., the National Film Board (NFB) feature documentary that I co-wrote with Nancy Guerin and director Lea Pool, was premiering at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival). The project was long in the making as films so often are. Nancy Guerin and I met with producer Ravida Din who initiated this project in November 2006. Fast forward to Sept. 11, 2011. I was finally going to meet, in person, many of the wonderful women Nancy and I had interviewed on the telephone throughout 2007.

It was a gorgeous fall Sunday afternoon. I arrived early for the screening and schmoozed outside the Isabel Bader ­Theatre, an attractive building of glass, steel and slate, part of the University of Toronto downtown campus. Ticket holders started lining up for the sold-out screening. My 85 year-old mother who has never missed one of my premieres (I have written and ­directed 4 documentaries, excluding this one), two sisters and my niece and nephew joined the crowd. They had arrived from Ottawa the night before. They are my most loyal fans!

The film’s subjects – its stars – began arriving. No stretch limos for this gang. They got there on their own steam. Jim Brophy and Margaret Keith were the first to arrive. This  wonderful couple are Canadian epidemiologists who have been working extensively with women in the ­agricultural and plastics industries, conducting research that shows elevated rates of breast cancer in these groups. I first met Jim and Margaret at a Stop Cancer Now conference; we easily caught up on news.

I spied Samantha King whose ground-breaking book Pink Ribbons, Inc. was optioned by the NFB for the film. It was fun talking with Sami (as she likes to be called). Some of you remember her from this year’s Lanie Melamed Memorial Lecture. Sami was a fantastic consultant during the beginning stages of writing the film; we met, brainstormed lots of ideas and she shared all of her contacts.

Then Ravida introduced me to Ellen Leopold whose early conversations with us were fascinating and enlightening. Leopold wrote the first cultural history of breast cancer. In reading her 1999 book, A Darker Ribbon: Breast Cancer, Women, and Their Doctors in the Twentieth Century, I came to understand that although there have been many profound transformations in breast cancer culture, some things have remained steadily in place over much of the 20th century and even persist today. A lovely woman, Ellen Leopold talked about her new book, Under the Radar, which explores the connections between cancer and the Cold War.

Next, Moira Keigher, the NFB marketing manager of this film, introduced me to Barbara Brenner and her partner of 36 years, Susie Lampert. I was anxious to have this meeting; I have watched Brenner’s leadership of BCA and was in awe of her genius, and I remembered very well the first time Nancy and I spoke with her. What a force! She had so much to say and spoke very quickly. I am eternally thankful for recording devices! As busy as she was, Barbara made it very clear that she was always available for us. We had subsequent conversations but I had not spoken with her since her departure from Breast Cancer Action in 2010.  She was BCA’s first full-time executive director and served in that role since 1995, leading the organization to prominence as an outspoken advocate for women’s health issues. Some longtime BCAM members will remember her visit to Montreal when she delivered the first Lanie Melamed Memorial Lecture in 2004. Barbara has recently been diagnosed with the devastating disease ALS. She is still as incisive and truthful as ever; her blog, Healthy Barbs, is where she now shares her questions, her views and her brilliance.

We moved into the theatre – it was close to show time.  After introductions and speeches, the lights dimmed and the film began. What a thrill to be watching the finished film for the first time on the big screen with an audience of 500 viewers in the fantastic Isabel Bader Theatre! You can tell when an audience is with you and this one was. The 97 minute film was holding us in its grasp. When it ended, a standing ovation was followed by the film’s subjects answering questions from the stage, along with the producer and director. Positive response and lots of emotion: anger, sadness – the feelings that come when you learn you’ve been betrayed.

Pink Ribbons, Inc. opens on February 3 in Montreal and in cinemas across the country. Tell all your friends – go see it with them. The more people that go, the longer it will stay in theatres. Sometime after, we’ll invite you to a casual evening at BCAM where we can talk about it together.