Free Talking with My Mouth Full by Gail Simmons Page B

mother!
    The food editor and the magazine’s restaurant critic became my idols. I was like a lost puppy following them around as much as they would let me, picking their brains and hoping they would eventually offer me their scraps. Finally, the magazine let me write. The first thing I published was a sidebar called “Rex Appeal,” about a new exhibit of dinosaurs at the Royal Ontario Museum. Eventually the food editor allowed me to do “$25 and Under” restaurant reviews and a feature reviewing the city’s best movie theaters, which meant I saw a movie every day for two weeks. Not exactly Pulitzer-worthy, but it was a start.
    Not only was I learning about magazines; I was also learning about the Toronto I’d grown up in but never had a chance to explore as an adult. I loved Toronto, but I didn’t really come to know its ethnic communities and all it had to offer until I started working. It was invigorating and inspiring.
    Even lunch when I was at Toronto Life was a thrill for me. The offices were right on Front Street, almost at the lakeshore, just two blocks from Toronto’s Saint Lawrence Market. It’s a covered market open every day, all year round.
    I interned at Toronto Life for four months and then freelanced for them for another six, even after I got my next job, at the National Post . How I landed that one was total serendipity.
    At summer camp, when I was thirteen, I idolized my beautiful camp counselor, Rachel. She was only four years older than me, but when you’re thirteen, that’s a huge difference—especially where your boobs are concerned. We stayed friends through the years and I always looked up to her.
    Flash-forward to the summer of 1998. Shortly after moving home, I met my next boyfriend (this one not a musician, thankfully), and about three months into dating we decided to take a weekend trip to New York. Rachel, who had graduated a few years before, had moved to New York and gotten a job at Marie Claire . We had lunch and, again, she enthralled me. She had this wonderful magazine-world life in New York City.
    Just a few months later media magnate Conrad Black announced he would launch a new national paper in Canada, aptly named the National Post. He poured boatloads of money into it. It was the biggest newspaper launch the country had seen in decades. And it had a glossy, full-color Saturday magazine, with entertainment, fashion, food, and arts coverage.
    Black hired the smartest minds in politics, culture, sports, and art from around the country and around the world. Rachel was hired as an editor and moved back to Toronto to work there. She was on staff with her friend from Marie Claire , Colleen Curtis (who has come back to my life many times since, in ways I could never have anticipated), and Kate Fillion, a legendary Canadian author and journalist. Rachel tracked me down to tell me they were hiring and I jumped at the chance to work with her. At first I was hired as the Saturday magazine’s editorial intern.
    Again, I felt drawn to the editor of the food pages. I wrote as much as I could for the section and as much about food as they would allow. The first food-related story I published with them was a sidebar about McDonald’s specials all over the world, like the lamb burger in India or the New Zealand “kiwi burger,” with an egg on top. Hey, it was a byline, right?
    Another story I wrote was about the air service industry, and how much pilots, air traffic controllers, TSA agents, and flight attendants were paid. It showed that you needed very little education to get many of those jobs. Because of it, I got my first piece of hate mail. “How dare you belittle what we do?” They were appalled. “Who is this Gail Simmons?”
    I took the letter to my editor. “Do we print a retraction?” I had fact-checked it, but I was still horrified I had upset someone.
    “Frame it,” he laughed. “It’s great! You caused a stir. You provoked an emotion in someone. They read what you wrote