MONTREAL — Michael Finnerty finally has woken up. His awakening is a lesson for us all — in personal struggle and purpose, in renewal and redemption.
Thus, a perfect tale for anyone contemplating a New Year’s resolution.
This story involves two mighty islands, many time zones, sleepless nights, early mornings, bus billboards, toilets, Persille du Beaujolais, Mistralou, Chabichou and Castillon Frais.
Those last four are cheeses. You should get to know them. You should get to know Finnerty, too.
For years, before his version of the Great Awakening, his bedside alarm rang at 3:20 a.m. to rouse the host of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.’s Montreal morning drive show. From 5:30 to 8:30, his voice coursed through the homes of the city’s English-speaking minority, making Daybreak Montreal a cheery wake-up composed of news, commentary and the latest gossip. His face was on buses. His checking account bulged.
Then he stopped.
Quit. Hung up his headset, you might say. Or, more precisely, took a sabbatical, kind of a halfway house to a more substantial life change. Moved to England. Ran out of money. Discovered there was such a profession as “cheesemonger.” Began working at a cheese stand in a London public market. Cleaned the staff toilet. Scrubbed the basement stairs. Apprenticed with people half his age. Put his gift of gab to work behind the counter. Learned the difference between Camembert and brie. Came to appreciate the difference between Camembert and brie. Wrote a book.
Along the way: Changed his life.
“I began a journey of reinvention, a pivot,” Finnerty, 59 years old, told me over a European-style lazy lunch in a French bistro here. He had a salad; I had the onion soup, loaded with cheese. “I make less money. Some of my friends think I’m crazy. Some of them think I’m brilliant. But it’s brought happiness. I didn’t have that in my career as a journalist at the end.”
I’ve known Finnerty, born in Esterhazy, Saskatchewan (population 2,345), for more than 30 years, first when he was a producer for the BBC and he signed me on for daily morning commentaries about Bill Clinton. Later, when I started spending long periods in Montreal, I’d drive to the CBC headquarters, where he had decamped, and do morning commentary with him.
He knew the best stories, and he knew the best restaurants. But for him I wouldn’t have known of the existence of the delicacy known as tartare de cheval. Despite his hectoring, I didn’t order the tartare de cheval. My childhood memories of “Monsiuer Ed,” as he might be called in these French-speaking precincts, were too vivid. I’m confident another diner at the restaurant, a lovely little place called Gus, enjoyed the raw horse meat.
It was an early dinner. He had to go to bed.
Now, seven years later, he’s telling me he saw beauty in “turning milk into this marvelous product that not only immersed you but also leads you to irresistible delight.” Then he tells me that cheese “almost makes you levitate as you consume it” and that it was a bit like wine because, he goes on, “there’s the land, the know-how, the making of it, the keeping of it.”
Had he gone mad? Or had the man who once worked with Louise Penny when the mystery writer was host of the Quebec City morning show simply become the bard of blue cheese, the maestro of manchego, the pastor of provolone, the rector of ricotta?
This new life — it sure was different from the old one, which he came to see as one part fun, many parts misery.
“The waking up to get on the air, the preparation, the tension about interviews thrown at me at the last moment — it was eating my life,” he said. “I felt that the color of life was leaching out of me.”
Writing the book, titled “The Cheese Cure: How Comte and Camembert Fed My Soul,” helped restore the color. Part of it involves the decision to devote a big slice of his life to some slices of cheese.
“This whole period is one of intense confusion and uncertainty,” he writes in his memoir. “We are no longer in the realm of a sabbatical with my job waiting for me on the other side. A return to cheesemongering would mean leaving the microphone definitely, leaving a high-profile, well-paying career for good.”
For good? Or for better?
He’s still doing some broadcasting. He’s doing more cheesemongering. He writes sentences like: “Our star raclette is the Raclette d’Alpage,” and he waxes eloquently on how it’s made from milk from cows grazing in Alpine pastures, brined and washed every two days. He could go on. He usually does.
Here’s some advice from the guy we might call the Cheese Wiz, a fellow who as a Saskatchewan youngster considered La Vache Qui Rit, paired with applesauce, the height of gustatory achievement. He thinks Tomme de Chambrouze might be a good gateway to new heights of cheese, or maybe Tomme de Savoie or Fourme d’Ambert. These are not marketed by Kraft Heinz. You will not find them shrink-wrapped in the refrigerated section of your local grocery shop.
And here’s some Finnerty advice for life: Take a breather. To coin a phrase: Slow down and smell the cheeses.
“My new life that is mongering, writing and some broadcasting has required sacrifices,” he writes in his memoir. “I’m no longer on a presenter’s wage, and while I may be a full-fledged monger, I’m not a manager, meaning I’ve had to downsize some projects I’d had for my future to fit my lifestyle into my more modest means. Honestly, the choice isn’t a hard one, and thinking about it makes me smile because those former projects hold considerably less appeal than what I’m doing now. A simpler life appeals to me.”
That, and a slice of Chabichou, might be all anyone really needs.
Mike Finnerty believes that Chabichou goat cheese works well in a spinach pie, or, if you are daring, with grilled squash. It also pairs well with a dry Loire wine. He thinks you’ll love the gooey cream line that appears just under the rind when you cut it. And when you cut it, it’s clear Finnerty has learned more than what he could share when he delivered only the news.
A Swampscott High School Class of 1972 member, David M. Shribman is the Pulitzer Prize-winning former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
