by Paul Morden for the Sarnia Observer
(2010) Nicole Chénier-Cullen has written the memoirs that her late husband Bud Cullen never had the chance to.
“I Found My Thrill on Parliament Hill” tells the story of her life working for cabinet ministers in Ottawa, and the love story that came about when she went to work for the Liberal MP from Sarnia during the days of Trudeaumania.
Cullen was born near Sudbury in 1927 and moved to Sarnia in 1956 to found a law practice. He was elected to Parliament in 1968 and joined the cabinet in 1974. Cullen died in 2005, at age 78, of an Alzheimer’s-related disease.
“When Bud was a politician he always talked about writing his memoirs,” Chénier-Cullen said. That may be why he kept scrapbooks throughout his career, which ended up numbering in the thousands of pages, she said. “Everything is in those scrapbooks.”
Chénier-Cullen, a francophone, was born in Ottawa and educated by convent nuns before she went to work on Parliament Hill. She was there eight years before she began working for the newly-named cabinet minister from Sarnia.
“I knew it was always really challenging to work for a new minister,” Chenier-Cullen said. “So I applied for a job in his office and the rest is history.” They married in 1980 and later had a son. “We met at the office and fell in love,” she said. It’s part of the story told in the book, and something Chénier-Cullen said she didn’t believe she could hide from. It was the same, open approach Cullen took, she said.
“We tried never to hide it, without flaunting it. There’s kind of a fine balance to be achieved.” Both were married to other people when they met, in an age when the love lives of politicians on the Hill were often a source of controversy. “Having told the truth from the beginning was a real lifesaver,” she said. “The truth is always discovered anyway, and that’s when it becomes a scandal.”
Their love story is an important part of the book, Chénier-Cullen said, but added, “It’s a part that had to be approached respectfully, because there are children and grandchildren involved.”
The memoir talks about highlights from Cullen’s career in cabinet, from tackling immigration legislation to aiding the settling of Vietnamese refugees in Canada.
After he left politics, Cullen became a federal court judge for 15 years.
He placed all his papers from his political years into the national archives, where they were waiting when Chénier-Cullen decided to tackle a memoir. “I’ve always enjoyed writing,” she said. “The best part of any job I did was when I could sit down and write.” She retired from public service soon after Cullen died and said working on the memoir in the years that followed “was therapeutic.”
Chénier-Cullen said the book has been well-received, with several people telling her its sections on Sarnia have made them want to visit the city.
I Found My Thrill on Parliament Hill, a political memoir by Nicole Chénier-Cullen, is available at The Book Keeper in Sarnia.