Sonja Smits saw a picture of herself recently, taken when she was 38. It struck her that she was then “at the height of her powers.” She had just become a mother. The CBC series, Street Legal, was playing in 25 countries. And she was working on the screen adaptation of Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners.

She explains that fame for a woman is inseparable from her face, body, and age. Her early celebrity hit home when she was recognized on the street in Nairobi, where she was working with an international development agency.

All the same, Smits doesn’t miss her high profile. Instead, she considers herself lucky. As she has evolved, so have the roles that continue to come her way after close to 50 years of almost continuous work.

Raised on a dairy farm by Dutch parents in the Ottawa Valley, the conditions, she says, were ripe for a budding artist. “There was no TV, so we lived in our imaginations, creating our own worlds in the outdoors.”

An encounter with a traveling caravan of players made her realize she was going to be an actor. “It was magic. I didn’t know something like this existed.” A moment on stage in grade school also laid the groundwork. Sonja looked out into the audience and saw someone killing himself laughing. “I saw him guffawing and I thought, ‘wow, I can do that’.” The sense of power was irresistible.

In 1989, Smits and husband Seaton McLean established Closson Chase Winery in Hillier. She was astonished to learn just how much starting a winery is like being an actor in a Canadian TV series.

“All the different tech people on the team, lots of unknowns, the weather(!), the sensory experience, and the challenges of marketing, too.” Both television production and winemaking have limited access to markets — in that there is a shared struggle.

Mostly, she says, both a great TV show and the day-to-day running of a winery are about teamwork and community. She was never drawn to the one-woman show or filled up by the curtain call. For her, acting is, like winemaking, an ensemble production.

The 2021 film, Drifting Snow, set in the County, and in which Smits played the lead role, underlines the importance of connection in a place where solitude can turn into isolation.

Smits is preparing to join the cast and crew of a new TV 
series, which starts 
production this summer.
She likes, she says, to review parts of the script
and then stroll alone on an empty stretch of County shoreline.
“I love the shapes and the changing colours of the water.
I walk along mulling things over, looking up at the sky.”

With age and life experience comes confidence, a kind of power in its own right.

 “Nothing to lose, nothing to prove. I work if the right thing comes along, if it’s something I want to be part of.”