Welcome to our Power Q & A with the amazing Gina Leola Woolsey, author of Fifteen Thousand Pieces: A Medical Examiner’s Journey Through Disaster, published by Guernica Editions. Fifteen Thousand Pieces is a moving and fast-paced biography intertwining the Swiss Air disaster that happened off the coast of Nova Scotia with the life of the province’s Medical Examiner at the time, Dr. John Butt—a closeted gay man who was coming to terms with his own sexuality at the same time this tragedy was unfolding.
In this interview, we ask Gina about the challenges of telling this story.
Bring home Fifteen Thousand Pieces.
Q: What was the most personally challenging part of writing this book?
A: This story of death teaching us how to live fell into my lap at the same time my husband was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
I met my subject, a forensic pathologist named John Clulow Butt, and we immediately hit it off. I was drawn to his story, and curious about how he chose his profession. How, and why, does a person who has gone through the rigours of medical school, and studied life-saving to the nth degree, decide to work with the dead? Of course, life isn’t ever that straightforward, and the answer to that question proved to be long and winding.
I traversed the country twice conducting interviews with several people who were a big part of Dr. Butt’s personal and professional life. I asked them probing questions about the deaths of sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers, all the while considering how it would feel to be the one answering. I often found it difficult to keep my emotions in check. Though I was already in my late forties when I started the work, I hadn’t been touched by the death of loved one yet. My husband’s illness was always at my elbow as I gingerly asked about grief and loss, wanting to understand, but afraid of the answers.
My husband’s prognosis worsened as I began to weave the story of Dr. Butt’s life together to form a compelling narrative. A person’s life is filthy with minutia, and I was searching for the thread to sew it all together while my life was coming apart. The cancer had spread and it was clear I would be a widow before the story I was crafting became a book. It was hard to stay on track, to find a reason to keep writing. But my husband was my biggest fan. He refused to let me give up. He died in August of 2018, at home, with my daughter and me by his side. Though he didn’t get to see the book published, he did read the completed manuscript two months before he left us. Fifteen Thousand Pieces is dedicated to him.
Gina, hard at work!
More about Gina Leola Woolsey:
CBC award-winning author Gina Leola Woolsey writes about people striving to find love, self-acceptance, and belonging in an ever-changing world. She left her corporate career mid-life to pursue an education in creative writing, earning a BFA from the University of British Columbia and an MFA from the University of King’s College. Currently, her time is split between her home in downtown Montréal, her birthplace in small-town Alberta, and her previous hometown, Vancouver.
More about Fifteen Thousand Pieces:
On Wednesday, September 2nd, 1998, an international flight carrying 229 souls crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Nova Scotia. There were no survivors. By Friday, Sept 4th, thousands of dismembered body parts had come through Dr. John Butt's makeshift morgue in Hangar B at the Shearwater military base. The Chief Medical Examiner faced the most challenging and grisly task of his career. Five years prior to the plane crash, John had lost his prestigious job as Alberta’s Chief Medical Examiner. After 14 years of marriage, John began to think of himself as gay, but remained closeted professionally. Then, after serving a handful of years as Nova Scotia's Chief Medical Examiner, the devastating crash in Nova Scotia cracked his carefully constructed façade. Fifteen Thousand Pieces explores one man's journey to accept his true nature and find his place in the world. Chapters alternate between the fast-paced story of the crash, and the history of the man in the making. It is both fast-paced and introspective; gruesome and touching. Ultimately, it is the story of how death teaches us to live. Bring home the book.