| We Canadians tend to pride ourselves on our self-control, our European-like savoir faire and ability to recognize famous people and let them alone – we just say "hi" in a low-key way and leave it at that. Our celebrities seldom have to contend with being mobbed by their adoring fellow Canadians. But Mag Ruffman is one of the few who does.
Waiting for her to join me at the Heartland Café, I have the privilege of watching this phenomenon as she arrives. The café has about 10 people in it and, by the time we leave, seven or eight of them have unashamedly waylaid her en route to this interview, or interrupted the interview to talk to her.
"I watch you on TV."
"I listen to you. You’re very good."
"I read your column every week."
And the ever-popular "Aunt Olivia!"
"It’s so funny, this career I have," says Ruffman. "I wanted to be an astronaut, you know. I just got completely sidetracked. I’m a great disappointment to myself."
Ruffman is an understated mix of funny, ditzy and whip-smart, and she’s not a disappointment to others who know her. Ruffman’s fame comes from odd corners – as Aunt Olivia in CBC TV’s Road to Avonlea for a generation of Canadian youngsters, the intrepid if klutzy ToolGirl in A Repair to Remember for the Women’s Television Network, the unpredictably hilarious couch diva in WTN’s Men on Women, and the author of a weekly syndicated column spinning off the idea of the repair series, called ToolGirl. Her latest endeavour is a book collection of her favourite columns, entitled How Hard Can It Be?
"It certainly wasn’t planned that way, but my career spans a whole host of generations and groups of people," notes Ruffman. "Older people will approach me because of the ToolGirl thing, 20- and 30-somethings because of Men on Women, and teens and young adults because of Road to Avonlea.
"You can always tell who’s going to be who from a mile away. The ToolGirl folks come in and say ‘hiya’ and give me a big old slap on the back. And the Avonlea people always do this…," she says, holding her hands soulfully over her heart. "It’s very sweet."
It might sound a bit disingenuous to claim an entire career as a constant detour from the original plan, but Ruffman’s not kidding. From forsaking rapidly spiralling grades in a physical education degree for the lure of the greasepaint, to acting and waiting tables simultaneously in a restaurant run by the Czechoslovakian mob – "every single thing has been a total fluke," Ruffman says with breezy good-humouredness, if not with a smidgen of pride. This is, after all, fecklessness on a truly grand scale.
"The one time I really tried to take hold of my career, I sold everything I owned and moved to San Francisco. And I was there one day. I had bought a set of sheets (Ralph Lauren – they were awful) and an answering machine. And I got a message that I’d got the job as Aunt Olivia in Road to Avonlea. And I moved back to Toronto. And then I came down to SF again three weeks later – the show had a brief hiatus – and I met Daniel (Hunter, her husband of 14 years). We ran away to Reno and got married three weeks later."
But in the end, the path that seemed entirely without rhyme or reason has led her, if not in a straight line, then at least in the direction of a fascinating life story. A self-confessed klutz who holds a contractor’s licence, a would-be astronaut who’s currently writing the pilot for a CBC show called Forever (about a medieval 12-year-old trapped, through witchcraft, in a 45-year-old woman’s body), Ruffman’s talent for sidewinding has so far stood her in good stead.
"I’d have made a terrible astronaut," she admits. "The people who succeed at that kind of life… are focused, able to march straight forward without deviating (because of) the distractions around them. And I’m all about the distractions. I think you can’t just march forward, you have to take in the feedback that’s all around you." |
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