Gary Harvey: “I’m disabled and I’m a director”
In February 2018, YVR Screen Scene spoke with veteran director Gary Harvey about the cancer diagnosis and surgery that changed his life for an article entitled Gary Harvey’s Before and After. In honour of National Disability Employment Month, we asked Gary to reflect on his experiences as a working disabled director. He does just that (and more) in the essay below.
Earlier this year, I was on a Zoom call with a dear friend and colleague where we spoke about disabilities; during the call, I found myself describing what the word “disabled” meant to me, and how I’d only recently embraced it as part of my identity.
My friend was momentarily slack-jawed. “I never saw you as disabled, just as you,” he said. It’s a classic response that our BIPOC colleagues will surely recognize. I gave him a pass, for a few reasons. For one, I’d always delivered the show. And he and I had never openly discussed my physical impairment and what it meant to me. Openly discussing this as a disability with a colleague would have meant I’d capitulated – that I’d let my disability win, that I was giving the world permission to use it against me. For seven exhausting years, I avoided wearing the label “disabled,” instead pretending whatever I had was temporary.
I’d been a television director and producer since 1995. My resume numbered in the hundreds of episodes on several different TV series. Jump forward nearly two decades to 2014, and (fuck) cancer takes my entire tongue. Two shockingly incorrect diagnosis and a bumpy road of failed radiation and chemo protocols in the first quarter of that year led to a lifesaving near-emergency surgery in the last quarter. In my case, they took the entire organ in a 13-hour procedure called a glossectomy. None of this extreme outcome was in the cards that August when I was told my fully intact tongue was healing well. Nearly three months later, I woke following this brutally invasive surgery to an entirely new landscape and without a roadmap to follow.
NEW LAY OF THE NEW LAND
For 20 years, the most employed and honed element in my director toolkit had been my speech. I had a reasonable vocabulary, was generally congenial, and mentally sharp enough to drop a decently timed punchline with the right setup. I felt I excelled in working and talking with actors and I was confident in my role managing TV sets with humour and respect, whether I was producing or directing. But what emerged post-cancer surgery was a blunt instrument for speech that left me with an inability to say something as simple as my name. Hello, humiliation.
I cannot describe for you what it’s like to relearn to speak without a tongue, let alone how to eat, drink, run, sleep, take medication, brush my teeth, use a Waterpik, sit in a reclined dentist chair, have a conversation while eating, wear a mask, talk via cellphone, use Siri, leave a voice message, work strenuously, have a cold... I’ve learned to manage most of this in the background; it’s honestly not that hard now. But it is hard to imagine the complexity of that specific organ and how involved it is in nearly everything that flows into your body. And of course, you don’t truly consider its importance until you are without it.
Today my speech is pretty good. If you haven’t spoken to me in the last three years, you might be surprised. I can comfortably manage most one on one conversations in good settings. I now measure my success equally with the engagement abilities of whomever I’m talking with. Active listeners equal better outcomes. In those ideal conditions it’s more or less effortless now. If we’re more than one in a group, I might drift onto the sidelines and let others take the lead. But seven years ago, when all bets were still off, that all seemed like a fantasy. I felt like a boxer without arms who still had one fight to finish.
In 2014, I was a decade away from when I expected I’d need to start thinking about my retirement. I believed that any small legacy I might have imagined worthy in this industry was not going to survive this. The surgery had left me feeling disqualified for anything that didn’t also require “excellent communication skills.” I couldn’t start from zero at my age with that hanging over me. Hey! It’s humiliation again, offering to give me a lift to the employment office.
Any attempted career change at that age would have been a failure and I would have joined the nearly 650,000 disabled Canadians my age who have the potential to work but don’t get the opportunity. That’s two out of five disabled Canadians my age – an astonishingly large resource left untapped.
And so I returned to the only profession I knew. I’d depend on my history and my wits to make it through. I knew how high I had to raise my own bar and I knew where I fell short. I’d been doing this a long time; how could I not know? But I believed I had it in me to find way. I had always found a way in this business. Less than a year after surgery, I cautiously dipped my toe back in with a short film for Joely Collins, Steve Neufeld, and Storyhive. Shoring up my team with an AD and DOP I’d had a history with gave me confidence to deliver what I knew I could deliver despite the communication barriers and very quickly see where the new holes were in my process. That short led to a six-episode pick-up. There’s a win! It felt like maybe I could do this.
Later that year, I was in Toronto for my longtime friend and showrunner Peter Mitchell (Shaftesbury). The day after my surgery in October 2014 and amongst the hundreds of lovely messages from well-wishers, family, friends, and colleagues on my Facebook page, Peter had simply added, “I got your back.”
Gary Harvey on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean in Newfoundland, 2021. Photo courtesy of Gary Harvey
True to his word, he hired me to direct two episodes of Murdoch Mysteries and these early episode blocks helped me remaster my abilities on the floor with my new, difficult barriers. My work on Murdoch got me hired on another of their Toronto shows and one in Newfoundland. Since my disability began, Shaftesbury and their Toronto-based shows have been my employer for all my series work, with two exceptions. Through Michael MacLennan, I directed the pilot for The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco (Vancouver) and the final episodes of Tiny Pretty Things (Toronto).
I’ve managed to work since my disability began. It’s perhaps a quarter of my previous yearly output but enough to maintain some relevancy in an industry where “out of sight; out of mind” usually means the end for you. But because I didn’t openly “identify” disabled I rarely examined what my disability actually meant to me, and because the idea has remained largely in my peripheral vision, I’ve been blissfully unaware until recently that only 31% of Canadians my age with disabilities continue to work after the onset of a disability. It turns out I’m a Canadian disability success story. I am extremely grateful, for the work and for the friends.
THE WET BLANKET
I’m not an industry success story. I’m a disability outlier.
Without undercutting the years of work I put into perfecting my craft or sacrifices made by my family and myself to do this job in the first place, I need to also acknowledge the privilege I’ve been afforded for my 20 years as a white male director. The sum of these factors is indeed the only reason I’ve managed any relevancy in my career extending these seven years past the start of my disability. But the plain truth is, outside of the shows previously mentioned, I haven’t had an interview or serious consideration for any other TV series in that same time frame. As a freelancer I know it’s competitive, and in the past, I often didn’t get the job. That’s the easiest thing in the world for me to get beyond. But as a freelancer you also want to feel like your abilities get you into the discussion to start with. I certainly never expected my disability to disqualify me from the outset. It’s left me in what feels like the limbo dropdown menu category of “other.”
For much of my career, TV series were the lion’s share of my work. The format took advantage of the best parts of my abilities. Up to my surgery, 80% of my series work was based in BC, both in producing and directing; Hallmark, CBC, CTV, Comedy, etc. In the years since my disability began, I’ve managed two episodes of TV in my hometown where tax credit counts for something. Roughly 90% of my series work is now based in Toronto. 20 out of 22 episodes, 18 of which were for one person. My success as a disabled director today is the result of having two showrunner friends who wouldn’t let me go. Without them in my court and considering the lack of opportunities I’ve had since surgery; I would be finished. They both chose to make my abilities the priority.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to mention that in an industry where we all compete for jobs, it’s not cool to use the priorities of one disadvantaged group as a reason for the lack of priority of another. “Sorry there’s no space available this year; we had to hire minority X.” This is a micro-aggression that does a tremendous disservice to more than one disadvantaged group who struggle daily to get beyond the gatekeeper.
Minorities and less advantaged members of our production teams have always experienced micro-aggressions and attitudinal barriers; I’m the newbie in that discussion and by the unusual nature of my job and film-set hierarchy, I’m also insulated from the worst of it. But I see and hear it now more than before. I am an ally.
Disabilities have stigmas. Some are subtle and hard to spot, some not so much. Stigmatizing is not something anyone easily admits to or would even recognize in themselves right away, but it’s there and I’m reminded of my own past culpability when it’s reflected back at me. People with disabilities who have experienced associated stigmas, or the threat of it, often hide their disability status if they’re able. Today I tiptoe a strange double-edged sword of negative response where my disability has a compounding effect on the negative white male privilege stigma that hangs around my neck. I might escape one or the other briefly but never for long and never for both. Both have proven inescapable, the latter becoming a convenient cover for the former.
This is why some in the disabled community find it hard to publicly disclose if they can avoid it. Why create baseless ideas about you and your ability before you arrive? Deep-seated fears about loss of job potential, a shrinking peer group, dwindling relevancy, and ultimately the end of dreams are all parts of the disability mental experience I can now attest to.
I never disclosed my disability up front. I wasn’t daft. I knew my “issue” preceded me across the country and to LA in some circles. And if they didn’t know, they would the moment I opened my mouth. I just couldn’t bring myself to lead with my disability as a “feature, not a bug.” I thought if I could just get into the room with producers and explain to them all the work I’d done… But today with 22 episodes, three movies, and a Canadian Screen Award nomination under my belt since my disability took hold, outside those couple of friends, the door remains closed to all new opportunities. And as I said, my situation is actually good today. I currently have some rewarding and challenging work. I am among a small percentage of Canadians who have retained their careers following a severe disability, and I’m lucky to do so. However, the light illuminating the barriers I face to new opportunities is bright enough to extend to the whole disabled community in all its complex forms. How does anyone who openly identifies as disabled possibly navigate this space? I certainly can’t seem to do so, and I’m a pro. If I hadn’t been friends with two showrunners who could hire me to direct on their shows, where would this disability have landed me?
Yannick Bisson and Gary Harvey on the set of Murdoch Mysteries in 2022. Photo by Stephen Scott
LEVELLING UP
While clearly rewarding, this job can also be brutish, thoughtless, and unforgiving. Navigating this unsettling landscape is an especially heightened experience for me now. I knew early on in my disability that in order to have any hope of succeeding as a director, I’d have to create a workspace around me where my issues didn’t become everyone else’s issues. Most of us operate in a space of personal paths of least resistance. Disabled individuals routinely challenge these paths based largely on ableist projection or outdated ideas that decide our capabilities in advance, on our behalf. The disabled community has already done much of the heavy lifting to keep the paths as clear as possible. We’ve had to. By minimizing the net effect of our disability on everyone else, we attempt to raise ourselves up to a level playing field, “clear paths” being the net effect. We know where the bar is and are stepping up to it ourselves. We’re putting the work into us, so employers don’t have to. And 57% of employers in Canada see no cost associated with disabled hires.
According to the Government of Canada, organizations with inclusive cultures are:
• Twice as likely to meet or exceed financial targets
• Three times as likely to be high performing
• Six times more likely to be innovative and agile
• Eight times more likely to achieve better business outcomes.
If the tax credit in BC wasn’t enough to keep me on the same playing field with peers of my age, resumes, and gender who still work, then I was clearly in a new category of “other” – which was so strange because in Toronto they were forgoing the tax credit to have me on the show. They were embracing my disability. Maybe there is something in bullet points 2 and 3 above.
I had to level up and become value-added in some way. Clear more paths.
Six years ago, I had begun working with an assistant. It started as more or less medical-type assistance, some organizational, food, etc., and dipped into details occasionally. Then 4 years ago I was approached by emerging filmmaker Meeshelle Neal who had a couple of short films under her belt. Meeshelle wanted to shadow me. Instead, I offered her a job as my assistant, shadowing while she worked. Our work together turned into four shows over three years. And this is how I learned to level up.
Meeshelle Neal, Gary Harvey, and Roger Cross on the set of Murdoch Mysteries in 2022. Photo by Stephen Scott
Meeshelle was an active listener – rare in this business, outside of actors – and she learned to unpack a lot of my speech. She became my voice when I needed that support. She’d follow up with each actor after I‘d deliver a note to ensure they understood, re-delivering it on my behalf if needed. She’d spot crew members who’d missed a beat of instruction, and she’d clean it up. She filled any holes that she could spot in the communication roadblocks we’d encounter. By clearing paths around my disability for me, we were creating paths of accessibility for her. She was also my safe space to discuss my disability and learn what that means to talk openly about it. Prior to that, all my cultural cues from childhood to adulthood told me to “Stop whining! Suck it up!” She helped me shed that and get me to where I am today.
Expanding my own capacity by using her skills gave me the confidence to develop more bullet-proof communication tools for the entire crew. My prep material was entirely overhauled to accommodate for others who might want clearer detail. That wouldn’t have been possible without the backup that Meeshelle gave me. I’m grateful to have developed this process with her.
She’s moved on now, as she should. It’s been four years since we started this journey, and she is about to direct her third MOW.
I have a new mentee/assistant ready to work with me when my next project happens. It’s someone I’m happy to report is also from the disabled community of filmmakers that I now identify with.
Perhaps I’ll experience that level playing field again before I’m done. In the meantime, I’ve found a way to bring some of the spirit of my craft back though this new form of mentorship. And in helping the careers of those committed to building a more inclusive industry, I can be a small part of creating a new, fearless space for everyone. Perhaps I’ve begun rebuilding the legacy that I was convinced was gone.
Back on the Zoom call, while my friend sat pondering this new revelation about my disability, I realized that me not leaning into my disability was precisely the thing that prevented others from acknowledging it. They saw it. How could they not? But we all ignored it for a whole host of reasons. As the weight of it settled for him, I said, “Yup. All the shows we’ve done together, a director with a serious disability did those.” He grinned.
I’m Gary Harvey. I am disabled and I am a director.
