Enriched life, with complications

An Accidental Advocate
by Lembi Buchanan

Victoria: Beresford Press, 2023
$24.95  /  9781738947621

Reviewed by Wendy Burton

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An Accidental Advocate is the memoir of Lembi Buchanan’s life with Jim Buchanan, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and the subsequent challenges of life with a person who, throughout his life, was high-functioning but perilously close to losing everything, including his wife, many times. The memoir is also about her efforts to make the process for qualifying for the disability tax credit equitable and less onerous.

Writing this review, I place myself in the category of people who have spent hours assisting people to access provincial and federal disability payments and tax credits. I know too well the sentence Lembi draws our attention to in her memoir: the yes/no response required to a single question: Is your patient able to think, perceive, and remember? This sentence may change, the multitude of forms required to answer this question may change, but the frustration Lembi describes so eloquently remains.

The book begins in 2001 with Lembi entering court for what she hopes will be the last time, then the memoir goes back to the beginning of her life with Jim. When we return to the story of Fighting for Fairness, most readers will have to go back to the beginning of the book to pick up the facts.

Lembi provides a detailed description of life with a man with bipolar disorder and his manic and depressive episodes. Although manageable, the disorder is relentless and incurable, masked by what Lembi describes as a charismatic personality; the ability to organize and execute complex trips; a love of music, opera, musicals, and plays; a passion for clothes, accessories, furniture, and extravagant gifts; and the capacity to hold senior sales positions. We see her aslant through her candid descriptions of her life with Jim.

The strongest part of this book is her detailed and unflinching description of life with an intimate partner who has bipolar disorder. The description of Lembi’s hospitalization for cancer treatment coupled to Jim’s hospitalization in the psych ward is harrowing, and a classic example of how those who commit to caring for someone with such a mental disorder are often the first to feel the physical, emotional, and mental consequences.

The memoir falters with her frequent description of lavish meals, spontaneous and expensive road trips, extravagant purchases, cruises, etc. while at the same time we hear the refrain that he is a challenge to live with.  Lembi asks herself: “Why do I stay with him?” This memoir is the lengthy answer to that question. She is clear in her appraisal of his actions and never lets the reader forget Jim has a disability not personality flaws or moral weakness.

Lembi never feels sorry for herself. Even when she is describing situations that would cause the strong to buckle at the knees, she writes with quiet dignity and persuasive authority about the intimate facts of her personal life. Given that much of the outward expression of Jim’s illness centres around financial matters, at times I found her word choice either deliberately sarcastic or unintentionally ironic: “While I am deeply indebted to Jim for enriching my life,” she writes while describing her anguish over her inability to stem the flow of music Jim bought online. She cuts up credit cards, revokes lines of credit, deals with the fall out of his disorder daily, and these stories are the heart of the book. Someone living with a similar situation will surely find some solidarity, if not comfort, here.

The book is hinged: one part is the detailed description of Jim’s bipolar disorder and the other is protracted legal conflicts with what is now called Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). Lembi uses effective chronological order to explain the years of their married life, as they and their children live with and cope with his disorder. Jobs are lost. Bills are not paid. Unexpected and unwise financial investments are made. Impromptu trips to exotic destinations are planned, often without notice to Lembi.  

Her years of Fighting for Fairness against the federal government of Canada in the form of CRA  is meticulously described, naming names, providing extracts from communications, recollections of meetings, court appearances, and successful and unsuccessful suits.  She relies on her journals, email, and letters, thus her writing has a compelling immediacy.  She provides scenes with extensive dialogue, so she either kept extensive notes, recorded meetings, and has magnificent recall, or employs fictional devices.

I found the recounting of the Fighting for Fairness unnecessarily detailed, and therefore confusing at times. Having been an advocate for people in similar, less high stakes, court challenges, I could appreciate the detail, but I did find myself doing the dreaded skimming writers abhor. If one wanted to read the second part of the book as a how-to manual for taking on the CRA, this book is not it. As Lembi states, whenever she and others achieve a small victory, CRA changes the rules and qualifying for a disability tax credit becomes as difficult if not more difficult than it was before the successful court challenge.

To be required to complete the application repeatedly is one of those mysteries of Canada’s tax branch. Reading Lembi’s account, one cannot avoid the conclusion that the system she fought for so long was – is? – intractable on this issue and remains so for reasons that have less to do with process and more to do with retribution.

There is nothing accidental about this advocate. Lembi has been advocating for her husband Jim for most of their life together, starting with her starry-eyed recall of their rom-com worthy courtship. Even when beset by her surgery for cancer, her attention was on her husband and his involuntary committal to the psych ward of the same hospital. Lembi managed the successful appeal of Prudential Life’s rejection of Jim’s application for long-term disability long before she embarked on the apparently hopeless quest to make CRA change its policies and procedures about disability tax credits.

Lembi Buchanan writes well. The pacing of her description of Jim Buchanan’s disability is often as frenetic as his manic phases. Anyone on the outside of bipolar disorder should read this book. Anyone wondering – perhaps unkindly – who stays with a person with this disability should read this book. Anyone engaged in – or contemplating – taking on big government should read this book. The memoir is valuable for those who are labouring on similar acts of love, and those who suspect the wildly romantic, spontaneous, devil-may-care person they love might, just might, be mentally ill.

Lembi wants to be known by her husband, and perhaps by the reader, as a woman who stood by her man. She did – does – and at the same time knows exactly what that standing by means. It is no surprise to read the invocation at the beginning of An Accidental Advocate: “To Jim, the love of my life.”

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Wendy Burton is Professor Emerita at University of the Fraser Valley, where she taught academic and work place writing, story-telling, diversity education, and Indigenous Adult Education. In 1997, she earned a doctorate for her feminist analysis of story-telling as knowledge claims. Throughout her work life, she wrote creative non-fiction, long and short form fiction, and poetry. Her debut novel Ivy’s Tree (Thistledown) was published in 2020. She writes fiction and creative non-fiction. Her most recent essay is “Meditations on the Headstand,” Folklife, Winter 2023. [Editor’s note: Wendy Burton has reviewed books by Linda M. Ambrose, Gina Starblanket (ed.), Danny Ramadan, Jo-Ann Wallace, Chris Arnett, and Susan Blacklin for The British Columbia Review.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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