Clive Doucet



Clive Doucet (born 1946 ) is a Canadian poet, prose writer, and politician.

Life
Doucet was born in 1946 in London, England to an Acadian serviceman and an English war bride. Doucet grew up in the city of Ottawa, Ontario. He also spent some of his youth in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. Doucet was raised as a Catholic, and his mother was Protestant. He became a Quaker in 1980. He first came to Ottawa in his teens when his father worked there. Doucet played for the Carleton Ravens football team for one season, and then moved to the University of Toronto. A football injury took him out of that sport and into the sport of rowing. In his younger days, he spent a summer working in a rock copper mine in British Columbia and helped build the National Arts Centre as a construction worker.

Political career
Before entering electoral politics, Doucet was a municipal affairs policy advisor.

In the 1997 regional elections, Doucet ran for Ottawa-Carleton Regional Council in Capital Ward, which includes The Glebe, Old Ottawa South, Old Ottawa East part of Riverview Park, Carleton University and Heron Park. He was an activist against the proposed Bronson Freeway, which propelled him to victory.

Central to his political platform is the creation of a light rail rapid transit system across Ottawa manifested to date with the Ottawa O-Train demonstration project. On July 6, 2010, Doucet announced his candidacy for Mayor of Ottawa in the October 25 municipal election. Doucet joins a record number of 115 candidates running for municipal office in 2010, of which 15 are challenging mayoral incumbent Larry O’Brien.

His latest book, Urban Meltdown: Cities, Climate Change and Politics as Usual, was published by New Society Publishers in 2007. In its review, The Walrus wrote "When Doucet speaks from the firm ground of experience as city councillor, his sharply logical solutions to municipal problems seem both hopeful and achievable."

Fiction

 * Disneyland Please, novel, 1978, shortlisted for the W.H. Smith First Novel Award
 * John Coe's War, novel, 1983
 * Gospel According to Mary Magdalene, novel, 1990
 * The Priest's Boy, linked short stories, 1992

Non-Fiction

 * My Grandfather's Cape Breton, originally 1980, republished in 2003 - a memoir of summer boyhood visits to his grandfather on the family farm on Cape Breton Island in the 1960s.
 * Lost and Found in Acadie (2004), a meditation on Acadian history, the Great Expulsion of 1755 and his visit to the Second Acadian World Congress in Louisiana in 1999.
 * Notes from Exile, 1999 - profiles his visit to the 1994 First Acadian World Congress in New Brunswick.
 * Acadian Memories, 2005 - collaboration with photographer Francois Gaudet, a coffee table book keepsake of the Third Acadian World Congress held in Ste Anne, Nova Scotia in 2004.

Poetry

 * Before Star Wars, 1981
 * Debris of Planets, 1993
 * Looking for Henry, 1999 - an epic poem meditating on the deportation of Acadians in 1755 contrasted to the defeat of the Metis Nation in 1885, and how the victors get to write history.
 * Canal Seasons, 2003

Plays

 * Hatching Eggs, National Arts Centre, 1976
 * A Very Desirable Residence, Penguin Performance Company, 1978
 * Chicken Delight, CBC Playhouse (radio), 1978
 * May the Best Man Win
 * The Chez Lucien is Dead (with Wayne Rostad)