Eric Volmers, Calgary Herald, February 2, 2024
Anar Ali thinks she can pinpoint the moment when her mother got over her uneasiness about her daughter becoming a writer.
Since leaving a secure and lucrative job at Procter and Gamble in Calgary more than 25 years ago, Ali has published three acclaimed books. Her 2009 collection of short stories, Baby Khaki’s Wings, was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Best First Book prize. Her 2019 debut novel, Night of Power, has been published internationally. She joined the writers’ room for the hit NBC/CTV medical drama Transplant.
But it wasn’t until her mother visited the bustling set of her new police drama, Allegiance, on B.C.’s lower mainland that she seemed fully at ease with her daughter’s chosen career path.
“I don’t know if she has been prouder and more committed to the idea,” says Ali, in an interview from her home in Toronto. “She saw all the people and met people she would connect with immediately.”
Allegiance is a rare breed for sure, a police procedural created by a woman of Indian descent that explores the BIPOC experience through the eyes of a Punjabi protagonist. Played by Supinder Wraich, Sabrina Sohal is a third-generation police officer freshly graduated from the Canadian Federal Police Corps Training Academy and ready to serve the detachment in her hometown of Surrey, B.C. under the watchful eye of her veteran training officer Vince Brambilla (Enrico Colantoni). Ali has had development deals in the Canadian television industry before, but this is the first time her vision has blossomed into a TV series. [Allegiance premiered Feb. 7 on CBC and CBC Gem].
Ali’s career in the arts – particularly after finding success studying at the University of Calgary and then in the corporate world – was a hard sell for her parents, who had brought her to Red Deer in the mid-1970s from Kenya. Ali doesn’t blame her parents, of course. It’s a common sentiment among a generation that has already risked so much to move family to a new country. The fact that, for years, there had not been that many success stories of South Asian TV creators or in the arts in general didn’t help.
Source: Calgary Herald
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