Praxis Theatre

Confessions of a political convert

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by Aislinn Rose

My name is Aislinn Rose, and I used to be a political staffer to a cabinet minister within the Mike Harris Government.

I began in 2000 as the Correspondence Assistant to the then-Minister of Transportation, where it was my job to infuse our letters (drafted mostly by the Corporate Correspondence Unit on the bureaucratic side) with the messaging of the party, and to make the letters sound like a human being had written them. And, in many cases, I may or may not have got out the old AutoPen.

The AutoPen essentially recreates a signature with a pen even when the signer isn’t in the country. In my day, the minister was getting over a thousand letters a month, most of which crossed my desk and the AutoPen could be useful for the bottom of a letter explaining why you’ll just need to get over yourself and take your G2 driving test again.

Click the image to read Aislinn’s entire confession on the website for Proud, by Michael Healey.