Brian Harvey went on a two-month sailing trip around Vancouver Island to better understand his late father
Ryan B. Patrick | | Posted: October 23, 2019 2:55 PM | Last Updated: October 23, 2019
In Sea Trial, Brian Harvey takes a boat around Vancouver Island with his wife, dog and a box of his late father's documents. The box contains records from a malpractice suit that Dr. John Harvey, a retired neurosurgeon, never recovered from. Harvey sifts through the court transcripts and expert testimonies for the first time, finally understanding what happened that night in his father's operating room.
Harvey is the author of three works of fiction and two works of nonfiction. He lives in Nanaimo, B.C.
Sea Trial is a finalist for the 2019 Governor General's Literary Award for nonfiction. The winner will be announced on Oct. 29, 2019.
A two-month tour
"This is an adventure story about going around Vancouver Island. I wanted to tell the exciting parts and leave out the boring stuff. I'm an ordinary sailor, but I wanted to write the sailing scenes in a cinematic way. I love writing and I love creating images but you can't really embellish because it is not a novel.
This is an adventure story about going around Vancouver Island. But I wanted to tell the exciting parts and leave out the boring parts. - Brian Harvey
"Books on sailing intimidate me because they are often about people who have done these extraordinary things. I'm not that person. I have sailed a lot, but I'm not in the league of people who cross oceans. We kind of bumbled our way around Vancouver Island. We're much better sailors now than we were when we set out on that trip."
Writing two stories at once
"I write a thousand words a day, every day, no matter what I'm writing at the time. For Sea Trial, it was nice to have two stories to write because you get a break from each of them. I would alternate them as I was writing.
"Along with the sailing parts of the book, I'm also writing a memoir about my dad. I never, ever imagined myself doing that. I'm still wondering about it. But they were both good stories. I thought maybe I could tell them both and make them work together."
All about the accuracy
"In a sense, I was trying to finish something that my father had started. He tried to write about his trial and the effect it had on him — and that's the stuff that I inherited. He wasn't leaving it to me, but I found it in a box and he was dead. So I had to do something with it."
When people read this book, they can hopefully see that I was trying not to 'set the record straight' or prove someone wrong or right. I was trying to stay out of it and let the reader decide for themselves. - Brian Harvey
"I had to do it right. I had to read everything. I had to be sure I understood it. My biological training came in handy as I found that there was no problem for me to read the medical and scientific papers. I had to be sure that my understanding of the legal aspects was not totally faulty. I did lean on other experts; I had to be very careful I got the facts right."
Telling the right story
"The story about my dad presented a lot of different problems. There are real humans involved here who suffered, on both sides. I had to be fair, but I also had to give people their privacy. When people read this book, they can hopefully see that I was trying not to 'set the record straight' or prove someone wrong or right. I was trying to stay out of it and let the reader decide for themselves.
"There was an understanding that I was writing about my own family, especially my dad. You have to be pretty darn sure that you're not treading on too many toes. But you also have to tell a story."
Brian Harvey's comments have been edited for length and clarity.