Lunch with Jan Wrong:
Burgers with Shania Twain

[Note: My friend Chieu asked me to channel Jan Wong for the Eyeopener's 'Globe and Mail' parody issue. I received no credit for it because the whole issue was anonymous. Cowards!]

When you’ve interviewed as many celebrities as I have, you lose that ‘star-struck’ quality ordinary people get. Nevertheless, Shania Twain’s publicity people remind me how lucky I am to get this chance to sit down for a full conversation with Canada’s latest expatriate pop sensation. Well, like her song says, that don’t impress me much.

Shania was born in Windsor and raised in Timmins. After months of touring around the world in support of her popular collection of country-pop ditties, “Come On Over,” I figure she may be longing for a taste of home so I’ve arranged to have her meet me at a Kelsey’s Roadhouse. However, Shania has apparently become a vegetarian and, realizing this, the Kelsey’s staff rushes to prepare her something called a ‘nature burger’. Shania seems pleased and settles into the booth with grace. She’s wearing jeans and a blouse cut looser than the leopard print and leather numbers she squeezes into for her videos. At 34, she’s still quite lovely, in that Central Ontario sort of way.

Born Eilleen Edwards, Shania gained an Ojibwa stepfather at the age of two and took on his last name. She now likes to trumpet her legal native status in interviews — “The Americans find it exotic,” she giggles. I, unlike Adrienne Clarkson, am a full-blooded Chinese-Canadian who’s wrestled with identity politics (outlined in my best-selling book, “Red China Blues”) and not fooled like lesser journalists by Ms. Twain’s ‘down to earth’ act.

Shania was pushed to sing by her mother and, by the age of 8, was performing in local bars for $20 a gig. It saved her, she says, from the depression of her poverty-stricken upbringing—the sort of Dickensian ‘rags to riches’ story the media adores. “We had to huddle round the stove because we couldn`t pay the heating bill. We went to bed wearing our coats. You can die in those conditions.” I take this moment to ask her if she’s ever had to haul pig manure in Maoist China patty fields. “Um…no,” she replies, her brow furrowed. My point is made.

The food arrives and Shania digs in with obvious delight as she continues her tales of woe. “I had to grow up very quickly when I was 21. My parents were killed in a car crash. It devastated our life. But you know what?,” she asks, looking earnestly into my eyes, “My life prepared me for what is happening to me now. This whole thing is overwhelming, and very challenging, actually. So I'm grateful for all the bad things that happened to me.” She pauses, as if to let this wisdom sink in, and takes a massive bite of her drippy burger. As I watch her chow down, I realize that you can take the girl out of Timmins but you can’t take Timmins out of the girl. “Ultimately,” she continues, between bites, “the experience I went through, I'm glad. Without that I'm not sure I could have coped with this.”

Indeed, to hear Shania tell it, world-wide fame, vast wealth and cover-girl beauty is a horrible curse. “The problem is I have to plan my life so far ahead. Way, way in advance. So there are times I'm not up to it, and I have to do it anyway.” I’d feel more sorry for Shania had I not become mesmerized by the big, green piece of spinach stuck in her teeth and she realizes she’s losing me. “Don't get me wrong, it's not "poor me!" The escape from the stress of not having enough money for so long in my life is wonderful. But I don't get to see my husband enough. I get lonely. I mean, everybody gets lonely. I get lonely for smelling firewood in the air. I get lonely for snow-mobiling with my nephews. I get lonely for those sorts of things.” And, at this point, lonely for a toothbrush, I think to myself.

Desperate to stay focused on Shania’s life and not her terrifying eating habits, I ask about her husband, superstar producer Robert ‘Mutt’ Lange, the Svengali behind her hit second and third albums (but not her first flop album). “We work together, we write together. Musically we have a great thing going, because we share something so intimate, so natural. Mutt's a great guy. He's a very deep person, very gentle.”

Shania pauses to wipe her mouth with a napkin, missing the huge blob of mayonnaise in the corner, then continues to speak of her husband with the beaming pride of someone who’s struck gold without having to dig too deep: "When we met, I didn't think of him romantically at all. But, he was like someone I'd known for many years. We were married within six months, in 1993. I mean, we were meant to be together.”

By now, my stomach is turning, due to a number of factors, but I’m saved — Shania’s publicist informs me that my time with her is almost up, not unlike his client’s fifteen minutes. Shania says she chose her new name because it’s Ojibwa for "I'm on my way" and, as she happily waves goodbye to me and the staff of Kelsey’s, I find myself wondering what’s Ojibwa for “May I have some extra napkins, please?”