About Rosemary Keevil (née Parrett)
I cut my teeth as a TV news reporter for Canada’s CTV Network. I have since had numerous jobs in the media including host of my own current affairs, drive-time, radio show (called The Rosemary Keevil Show: original, I know) and managing editor of a professional women’s magazine, Scarlett (now defunct: not my fault).
I grew up asking people questions—my friends sometimes call it “interrogating.” My mother used to always tell me to “draw people out” whenever I had the opportunity. This would mean that if I ran into somebody I knew on the bus ride home from school, like neighbour and U of T professor, Mr. Lynch, I couldn’t just daydream on. This nagging voice inside my head would urge me to go over and “get him talking.”
When I was a bit older and feeling awkward going to teenage parties, Mom suggested I approach the most boring looking person and start a conversation to “get them talking about themselves.”
Hence, I have always been the one to ask the questions. Everybody has a story. And I became a reporter. Go figure. I am actually uncomfortable when I am the target of questioning.
Patrick Kennedy, Naomi Wolfe, Pierre Salinger, Matt Dillon, and Amy Grant are among the thousands of people I have interviewed during my career.
I grew up in Toronto, Canada, the youngest of four children (boy, girl, boy, girl: only five years apart in all) in a chaotic household with two cats and two St. Bernard’s.
Tragedy hit me in 1991 when my husband died of cancer, my brother died of AIDS, and I became a single parent of two very young girls. While still high-functioning (which doesn’t make me any better than the bum on the street—we suffer the same demons) and working as a journalist, I fell into the grips of alcohol and drugs. I went into recovery in 2002 and have been clean and sober ever since.
I received my master’s degree from the University of British Columbia School of Journalism in Vancouver (2011). I also have a Bachelor of Journalism from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and a Bachelor of Arts from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
I live in Whistler, British Columbia, with my partner and two doodles, Romeo and Hamlet. I have two adult daughters (and two granddaughters) who have learned how not to parent from their mother. They are content in their chosen careers and have their own stories to tell…or not.
I am an exercise fanatic: a good skier, a skilled but fearful water-skier (I like to brag that I dated a waterski instructor when I was 17!), a bad golfer, a pitiful yogi, and a breaststroke junkie. I swim for almost one hour at 5:30 every morning. In the summer it is in a cold lake in Northern Ontario and in the winter I swim in a heated, outdoor swimming pool. When it snows, I laugh out loud. I am also a memoir junkie. Oh, and I drive a mean motorboat.
Favorite Jobs and Assignments:
- News reporting for CFTO (CTV National TV Network) in Toronto, Canada
- Host of The Rosemary Keevil Show, a live, drive-time, current affairs talk show: CFUN Radio (CHUM National Radio Network) in Vancouver, Canada
- Guest relations for the Vancouver International Film Festival
- Managing editor of Scarlett magazine for the professional woman, in Vancouver
- Can-can dancer at Diamond Tooth Gerties Gambling Casino in Dawson City, Yukon
- Destination representative for Sunflight Holidays in Tahiti, French Polynesia
