MEDIAT H E C A N A D I A N A S S O C I AT I O N O F J O U R N A L I S T S • S U M M E R 2 0 1 3 • V O L U M E 1 5 , N U M B E R F O U R

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COVER PHOTO: TROUBLE AT THE POLLS: A demonstrator holds a sign in Montreal, Sunday, March 11, 2012, protesting the ‘Robocall’ election fraud scandal. The robocolls story won awards in each category featured in this special editiion, including the 2012 Governor General’s Michener Award. Read Glen McGregor’s account on page 11 of he broke the story with Stephen Maher. PHOTO CREDIT: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

2 MEDIA

David McKie David McKie

Chris CobbCatherine Ford

Michelle MacAfeeLindsay Crysler

John GushueRob Cribb

Rob Washburn

Peter Jacobsen, BersenasJacobsen Chouest Thomson

Blackburn LL P

David McKie1-613-290-7380

Glen McGregor, Tim Bousquet, Alison Motluk, Joseph Loiero, Lynne Robson, Steve Buist, Darryl Dyck, Jim Bronskill, Jon Wells, Marc Ellison, Scott White, Tyler Anderson, Heather Scoffield, James Bagnall, Barb Sweet, Ed Kaiser, Peter Power, Catherine Porter, Mark Wanzel

MEDIAA PUBLICATION OF

THE CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF JOURNALISTS

PHOTO AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE: HOLD ON!: Traffic in the north bound lanes comes to a halt as members of the Barrie Police struggle to rescue a man hanging from the Dunlop Street Bridge. Mark’s Wanzel’s photo was the National Newspaper’s 2012 news photography winner. Find out how the rescue attempt turned out on page 69.PHOTO CREDIT: MARKWANZEL/THE BARRIE EXAMINER/QMI

MEDIASUMMER 2013 • VOLUME 15, NUMBER FOUR

http://www.caj.ca/?p=391SUMMER 2013 • VOLUME 15, NUMBER FOUR

http://www.caj.ca/?p=391

3 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 4

Table of contentsCANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF JOURNALISTS AWARDS EDITION

7 FIRST WORD - The Robocalls story was this year’s big winner.

9 COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER and DON MCGILLIVRAY AWARD – The Coast – A trust betrayed – Tim Bousquet’s story that took home the CAJ’s grand prize had all the hallmarks of a classic investigative piece: Trips to the court house, manila envelopes, early morning meetings with a reluctant source, culminating

with a confrontation with the unrepentant perpetrator – the former Halifax mayor.

11 OPEN NEWSPAPER/WIRE SERVICE AWARD – The Ottawa Citizen and Postmedia News – Robocalls and their impact on voting - Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher – Glen McGregor explains how the

two political reporters learned about, and pursued a story that still resonates on Parliament Hill.

13 MAGAZINE – Maisonneuve Magazine - Is egg donation dangerous? – That’s a question Alison Motluk tried to answer after interviewing several women.

15 OPEN TELEVISION (UNDER FIVE MINUTES), CTV News – XL Foods investigation – It was the largest beef recall in Canadian history that exposed weaknesses in Canada’s food-safety system.

17 OPEN TELEVISION (MORE THAN FIVE MINUTES) – CBC News - Investigative Unit – Fatal Deception –The asbestos industry used research from McGill University to prove the product’s safety.

Joseph Loiero and his crew dug into evidence that challenged McGill’s research.

19 REGIONAL TELEVISION – CBC North - Maamuitaau – Breaking the mold – Melissa Brousseau - Af-ter much complaining about the mold in their homes, it was the image of ten-month old Joe Ray, his face cov-ered with hard black scabs, that finally got people’s attention. Lynne Robson of the Maamuitaau team explains

how they convinced the Cree community to open up about its moldy homes that were making many people sick.

21 OPEN RADIO NEWS/CURRENT AFFAIRS – CBC Radio/The Sunday Edition – Wanted: Egg donor in good health – Alison Motluk read lots about infertile women receiving eggs, but precious little about the donors.

What she found was surprising.

23 DATA JOURNALISM – Hamilton Spectator – Condition Critical – Steve Buist – Building on success from the previous Code Red series, Steve Buist used his science background to rate Ontario’s

14 Local Health Integration Networks.

25 PHOTOJOURNALISM – The Canadian Press – portfolio – Darryl Dyck calls it storytelling photojour-nalism. This art form requires a lot of skill, including composition, character development – and luck.

29 SCOOP – The Canadian Press – Canada’s torture memos – Jim Bronskill – It had seemed that the federal government learned valuable lessons after the detainment and torture of Maher Arar. Jim Bronskill used access-

to-information requests to obtain documents that raised doubts about what, if anything, the government truly learned.

31 DAILY EXCELLENCE – Vancouver Sun – Brazen killing may be gang retaliation/Sandip Duhre was shot to death – Kim Bolan

33 PRINT FEATURE – Hamilton Spectator – “He sang with all his heart” – Jon Wells – Chris Skinner’s story was already well-known by the time Jon Wells was assigned to

write about the teenager’s death. Still, he told his readers about aspects of Skinner’s life that they had never read.

35 JHR / CAJ AWARD FOR HUMAN RIGHTS REPORTING – CBC News - The National – Seeking Safety – Nahlah Ayed, Diane Grant – The Roma face persecution in Hungary. The CBC team,

with the help of Ed Ou, documented one family’s journey from Hungary to Canada.

37 CAW CANADA / CAJ AWARD FOR LABOUR –Briarpatch – Interns, unite! (you have nothing to lose -- literally)– Greig de Peuter, Nicole Cohen and Enda Brophy – The three academics write about efforts to combat

unpaid internships.

39 CAJ / CNW GROUP STUDENT AWARD OF EXCELLENCE - Toronto Star - Carleton University - The Girls of War - Marc Ellison - It was a simple question that forced Marc Ellison to think differently about

former child soldiers in Northern Uganda. The answer became his story’s focus.

NATIONAL NEWSPAPER AWARDS

41 MULTIMEDIA FEATURE – The Canadian Press – for a census project that looked at Canada’s changing society – Scott White got the idea to use census data to tell

stories after a conversation that got him thinking.

43 NEWS FEATURE PHOTOGRAPHY – National Post – for a photo of a worker snoozing in the back during a mayor Rob Ford speech at a Toronto Real Estate Board gathering – Tyler Anderson – With

controversy surrounding the Toronto mayor, the award-winning photo represented the calm before the storm for Tyler Anderson.

45 BEAT REPORTING – The Canadian Press – for stories on Aboriginal affairs – Heather Scoffield – It’s a juxtaposition of worlds. A vast mining development in the James Bay region of Northern Ontario poised to deliver billions in profits, and the nine

First Nations communities struggling with addiction and poverty. It was a story that Heather Scoffield thought she’d never be able to tell.

47 EXPLANATORY WORK – The Ottawa Citizen – for the story behind the coverage of the Nortel criminal trial – James Bagnall –

The deeper James Bagnall probed allegations that three former Nortel executives cooked the company’s books, the more

he realized that his assumptions were wrong.

11 POLITICS – The Ottawa Citizen and Postmedia News – for a look at robocalls and their impact on voting – Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher – Glen McGregor

explains how the two political reporters learned about, and pursued a story that still resonates on Parliament Hill.

49 SHORT FEATURES – Winnipeg Free Press – for a piece on a Scanterbury resident who built a giant red chair to honour the community’s ditch wavers – Lindor Reynolds

51 LOCAL REPORTING – St. John’s Telegram – for the enduring fallout of the sexual abuse tragedy at the Mount Cashel orphanage – Barb Sweet –

She interviewed the survivors – and the cop who claimed cover up.

53 PRESENTATION – Toronto Star – The paper experimented with a graphic novel of reporter Katie Daubs’ two-week stay indoors, and in

Toronto’s underground PATH system – Spencer Wynn, Nuri Ducassi, Raffi Anderian, Katie Daubs

55 SPORTS PHOTOGRAPHY – Edmonton Journal – for a photo of joyous soccer star Christine Sinclair at the Olympics – Ed Kaiser –

His photograph captured the pain and joy of winning the bronze medal in the face and gesture of a central figure.

57 BUSINESS – The Globe and Mail – for stories of the power struggle at Canadian Pacific Railway – Jacquie McNish, Brent Jang, Sean Silcoff

59 COLUMNS – The Globe and Mail – for an editorial that exposed France’s contradictory attitudes on the economy – Doug Saunders

60 EDITORIAL CARTOONING – La Press (Montreal) – for an editorial that tied the fortunes of Toronto mayor Rob Ford to his disgraced counterparts in

Montreal, Laval and Mascouche – Serge Chapleau

61 INVESTIGATIONS – Toronto Star – for an investigation into why Toronto police knowingly lie – David Bruser and Jesse McLean

63 ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT – The Globe and Mail – for a story of a Canadian adult entertainment star’s success in Bollywood – Stephanie Nolen

65 FEATURE PHOTOGRAPHY – The Globe and Mail – for a photo of a woman at a palliative-care hospice embracing a social worker during the final

hours of the woman’s mother – Peter Power –The Globe photographer explains the challenges of dealing with death.

67 LONG FEATURES – The Toronto Star – for a story on the life and death of an ordinary woman who led a magical life – Toronto Star team – Family and friends shared their memories of Shelagh Gordon

with The Star journalists. Catherine Porter tells us how the newspaper’s project unfolded.

69 NEWS PHOTOGRAPHY – Barrie Examiner – for a dramatic shot of a police officer trying desperately to hold on to a man attempting to jump from an overpass

on to a busy highway – Mark Wanzel – The Examiner photographer unexpectedly captured the life-and-death struggle on camera.

70 EDITORIALS – Waterloo Region Record – for an editorial on former Ontario premier, Dalton Mc-Guinty’s perilous route to a failed majority government – John Roe

71 SPORTS – Toronto Star – for a series on high-tech hockey sticks – Dave Feschuk

73 INTERNATIONAL REPORTING – La Press (Montreal) – for a story of the toll the Syrian war is taking on its citizens – Michèle Ouimet

75 BREAKING NEWS – La Press (Montreal) – for stories of Luka Magnotta, the man accused of killing and dismembering a Montreal student –

Gabrielle Duchaine, Vincent Larouche, Daphné Cameron, Isabelle Audet, Jean-Thomas Léveilleé

77 PROJECT OF THE YEAR – La Press (Montreal) – for a project on alternative healers – La Press team

11 THE GOVERNOR GENERAL’S MICHENER AWARD – The Ottawa Citizen and Postmedia News – for a look at robocalls and their impact on voting – Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher

5 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 6

PHOTO AT THE TOP OF THIS PAGE – PROUD TO BE CANADIAN: Adrian Pernalete, left, and his wife Virginia Pernalete, right, embrace their children; 10-year-old Andrea, bottom centre, and 13-year-old Adrian as they leave the stage after being sworn in as Canadian citizens during a special Canada Day citizenship ceremony for 60 people in Vancouver, B.C., on Sunday July 1, 2012. The family is origi-nally from Venezuela. See this photo and Darryl Dyck’s other award-winners on page 25. PHOTO CREDIT: Darryl Dyck

FIRST WORD

SUMMER 2013 87 MEDIA

By David McKie

It was no doubt the story of 2012. Now Robocalls has the awards to prove it:

the National Newspaper Award politics category winner; the Canadian Association of Journalists open newspaper/wire ser-vice winner; and, of course, the Governor General’s Michener Award.

The series of initial story and the many, many follow-ups featured robocalls, those automated messages political parties of all stripes use to connect with voters; that is, of course, if using a recorded voice to pass along instructions in an age of low-voter turnout can truly be considered a form of citizen engagement.

Up until the point when the Ottawa Citizen’s Glen McGregor and Postmedia News’ Stephen Maher began investigating the tips they were receiving, the Conserva-tives seemed to have dodged a few bullets after stories had already emerged about questionable campaign shenanigans from previous electoral battles.

The so-called in-and-out scandal that Glen had reported on extensively never seemed to catch fire with the Parliamen-tary press gallery. Perhaps the story was too complicated. Maybe stories about election campaigns already waged held little intrigue. Or it could have been that too much time had passed between the story’s emergence and the party’s eventual mea cupla of sorts. Whatever the reason, the story seemed to die the kind of natural death that is all too typical on the Hill.

But, as Glen explains in his write-up for Media’s special awards edition, there was something different about the robocalls

affair. Guelph was the key riding where residents identified as non-conservative voters were told to go to the wrong polling station by someone pretending to be from Elections Canada. Such is not only un-democratic and deceitful, it’s illegal under the Elections Canada Act.

And, of course, every great story needs a central protagonist: in this case, the pseudonymous and mythical Pierre Poutine. As Glen and Stephen reported the initial story based on court documents, journalists from other outlets were forced to match them.

There would be no ignoring election shenanigans this time. I recall many a morning having to go on CBC Television’s News Network to report on the latest development contained in a McMaher story. McMaher was shorthand moniker our newsroom used to identify this duo. Impressive as the robocalls stories were, this duo had teamed up before.

They mapped out the Conservatives’ stimulus spending – literally -- and con-cluded that the federal cash disproportion-ally benefited Tory ridings. I’m proud to say that my computer-assisted reporting students at Algonquin College helped with much of the data work. As an added bo-nus, they got to share the 2009 Canadian Association of Journalists CAR award (as it was then called, but more on that later) with Glen and Stephen.

So by the time Robocalls came along, they had working together down to an art, even taking turns writing elements within the same story in a document on Google

Docs, as Glen explained to me one day over coffee.

What is most impressive about the reporting and MUST serve as a reminder to all of us, is the pursuit, follow-up, and the willingness to stay on top of develop-ments, large and small. All too often, we abandon our own stories, or those from other outlets, a tendency that more than one journalist in this awards edition re-minds us is one we should break.

So, a key lesson from the robocall story: do the follow-ups. Granted, this may be more difficult for broadcasters than print reporters, but with the advent of online platforms, there is no excuse for neglect-ing to follow our stories.

Broadcasters, for instance, can use their websites to do updates, and use copy in their broadcasts to push people to the fresh online content. Journalists can also use their blogs to delve into developments and provide context, something that some of our award winners do regularly. The more we follow up, the more difficult it be-comes for politicians and decision-makers to evade accountability.

There are many fine stories in addition to robocalls featured in this edition, which for the second year is a combination of award-winners for the National Newspa-per Association, the Canadian Association of Journalists and the Michener. In short, with this special edition, you have some of Canada’s finest journalists explaining how they got the stories that captivated us, forced change, made us think, or simply entertained.

From Canadian striker Christine Sin-clair’s anguished celebration after winning the bronze medal at last year’s summer Olympics, to a former Halifax mayor being caught trying to rob a trust fund of which he was in charge, to the Canadian porn porn star who unexpectedly found mainstream acceptance in India, this edi-tion has it all.

The journalists take us behind the scenes, explaining how they got their sto-ries, the obstacles they faced, and perhaps most important, valuable lessons that others wanting to pursue similar stories may learn.

These awards editions have become must-reads for working journalists, jour-nalism students and the men and women who teach them at our universities and colleges.

We also have a first in this awards year: the data-journalism category, renamed from computer-assisted reporting. As Fred Vallance-Jones, a pioneer who created the CAR award, explained in last year’s awards edition, data journalism reflects the broader variety of techniques and skills journalists now use to spin narratives online: everything from the use of applica-tion programming interfaces (APIs), to the interactive multi-media projects such as the one The Canadian Press used to tell stories behind the numbers in the 2011 census.

When I asked CAJ president, Hugo Rodrigues to explain why the change was made, he echoed Fred’s conclusion that “data journalism was a more inclu-sive term, one used more often now than CAR.”

As the first data-journalism award re-cipient, Steve Buist of the Hamilton Spec-tator embodies an excellent example of this inclusivity, combining social science, graphics, solid reporting and storytelling to rank Ontario’s 14 Local Health Inte-gration Networks, a methodology more journalists should consider tackling.

After reading Steve’s write-up, one real-ity becomes clear: data-journalism, like its computer-assisted reporting predecessor, is still cutting-edge and poised to push the storytelling boundaries to yet-to-be determined limits.

But at the end of the day, the story is king. And this edition is full of great stories told by men and women at the top of their game.

So enjoy, learn and be inspired. I know I did putting this edition together.

Robocalls take the top award

9 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 10

Publication of “A Trust Betrayed” in February 2012 changed Halifax

history. The Coast article detailed popular three-term Mayor Peter Kelly’s problemat-ic role as executor of an estate of a family friend, a woman named Mary Thibeault, who died in 2004.

The 5,000-word piece explained how Kelly had secretly removed more than $160,000 from the estate, at one point writing himself a cheque for $100,000 from the dead woman’s personal bank ac-count, and another $15,000 cheque made out to his son, Craig.

Then Kelly filed documents with the probate court that failed to account for the money he had transferred to himself. As a result of Kelly’s shenanigans, the estate was still not resolved in 2012, and five charities named in Thibeault’s will had not received hundreds of thousands of dollars to which they were entitled.

I first discovered Kelly’s role as execu-tor of the Thibeault estate in March, 2011. Thibeault’s will was attached to a deed that named Kelly as having an ownership interest in a small piece of land in the woods behind Kearney Lake, an area that was potentially included in a multi-billion dollar development proposal.

The will was a public document, easily found by anyone simply dropping Kelly’s name into a computer database at the property office. At the probate court, the court file for the Thibeault estate (another public document) included letters from heirs complaining to the court about Kelly. “Let alone Peter Kelly’s blatant disregard for fulfilling the duties of an Executor, his arrogance towards all of us beneficiaries really angers me,” read one letter, which

went on to list a series of questionable actions by Kelly. The file also showed that even after being reminded by a court of-ficer, it took a court order to prod Kelly to take care of simple preliminary paperwork for the estate.

That month, I wrote an article headlined “Peter Kelly’s failure of will,” about Kel-ly’s failure to settle the estate, even though at that time more than six years had passed since Thibeault’s death. I didn’t know why Kelly had so much trouble resolving what was a fairly simple estate that should’ve been settled in just a few months, but I was able to document his failure. Kelly refused to comment, saying the estate was “a personal matter.” In the article, I speculated that the delay may have been connected to the development potential of the Kearney Lake property.

To my surprise, “failure of will” went nowhere. No other media outlet picked up on the story.

Still, the unanswered questions nagged at me. I couldn’t let the story go. I at-tempted to contact each of the heirs. I talked with various people who knew Thibeault when she was alive. I scoured public records both here in Canada and in two U.S. states, where Thibeault wintered. I interviewed probate lawyers, and learned more about probate law than any sane person should ever have to. I shook every tree I could find, hoping that something would fall out.

Finally, one source connected me to a second source. We had one of those classic investigative reporter encounters, meeting in the dark corner of an obscure North End Halifax restaurant. The source was ner-vous, wanting assurances that I wouldn’t

reveal any identities. After 45 minutes, the source handed me a manila envelope beneath the table.

That envelope contained documents out-lining the gist of the story, showing how Kelly had taken money from the estate. What it did not contain was proof.

Thus began two months of conversa-tion with the source. I had to build trust. We communicated, sometimes on the phone but mostly through email, with long back-and-forths, often beginning at 4 am. Finally, the source called me. We had a second face-to-face encounter, this time in a janitor’s office in the basement of an apartment complex. There was a second manila envelope.

The second envelope was the proof I needed: Mary Thibeault’s bank records, including copies of the cheques Kelly had written to himself, electronic transfers and ledgers to both Thibeault’s personal ac-count and the estate account. Bingo.

But even then it took nearly another two months to write “A trust betrayed.” It is a complicated story, with lots of detail about probate, an arcane area of law. Just figur-ing out how to tell the story in a readable fashion was a monumental chore.

My editor, Kyle Shaw, was immensely helpful. Then there was the legal over-sight; I went through eight re-writes with David Coles, the lawyer who vetted the piece.

On Tuesday, February 14, 2012, Valen-tine’s Day, Kyle and I met with David for a review of my final draft. David had been in court all day, and was wearing his court dress when we met at the Hart and Thistle pub, overlooking the Halifax Harbour. He was accompanied by a student articling

with him. David asked for one or two very

minor changes. The student found one last typo. But then “A trust betrayed” was okayed for publication. I needed only one more thing: to give Kelly the opportunity to respond. David bought a round. We toasted.

That night there was a council meet-ing. The city was then in the midst of a transit strike, and after the meeting a dozen or so reporters from competing news outlets scrummed Kelly to ask for updates on the strike.

I couldn’t figure out how to corner him alone, and at one point I just about gave up, thinking I would have to go sit on the mayor’s car and wait to confront him when he went to drive home. But then the city’s communica-tions director appeared, and I told her I needed to speak to Kelly privately. She relayed the message, and Kelly left the scrum to talk to me in a city hall hallway. Remarkably, none of the other reporters followed.

“We’re going to print serious allegations about your involvement in the Thibeault estate,” I started to explain. But Kelly made it easy. He interrupted me, telling me it was a personal matter and he refused to comment. He referred all further ques-tions to his lawyer.

I called the lawyer Wednesday morn-ing, and he likewise declined to comment. Well, I had given them both the oppor-tunity. I inserted a couple of paragraphs explaining as much, and got those ap-proved by David as well. We went to print Wednesday night, with the paper hitting the streets Thursday morning.

Twitter was abuzz by mid-morning. Kelly immediately went into hiding. He cancelled all public appearances, refused to talk to the media and failed to show up at the following Tuesday’s regularly scheduled city council meeting. Finally,

six days later, Kelly’s office issued a statement saying he would not run for re-election in the October contest.

Two weeks after “A trust betrayed” was published, Kelly repaid $145,000 to the Thibeault estate bank account. In the months since, several of Thibeault’s heirs successfully petitioned the court to have Kelly removed as executor.

One of the petitioners eventually re-placed him. In December, the new execu-tor made more demands of Kelly, arguing that he should pay back taxes, interest and other costs the estate incurred because of Kelly’s inaction.

Those issues were settled out of court. Finally, after more than eight years, the es-tate has been resolved. The charities have been paid in full.

Incredibly, the police never investigated Kelly’s involvement in the Thibeault estate.

I’ve been asked if I have any tips for other reporters. The mechanics of probate are fairly straight forward. Wills are filed

with the provincial probate court after someone dies. All the docu-mentation related to the estate—the appointment of the executor, notification of heirs, an inventory of the deceased’s property, any court orders—will be found in the same probate court file.

That’s also where you’ll find any communication related to settling the estate—between heirs and the executor, between the court and the executor, etc. Additionally, if the deceased owned any real estate, and that real estate is part of the estate, the will also becomes part of the property record, documenting the chain of ownership.

As for sources, all I can say is like all people, they are unique and complex. I try to respect them as full people, and not just a vehicle for my own purposes.

Especially with reluctant sources, the point is to establish a full relation-ship, not one of friendship, necessarily, but certainly of mutual understanding. Only then can you press a bit, to get more information.

My primary source contacted and con-gratulated me after winning the Canadian Association of Journalists’ Don McGil-livray award. Truth be told, this means more to me than the award itself. Human connections always trump hardware.

Looking back, I consider myself extremely fortunate to have stumbled upon this story in the first place; as with most investigative work, I discovered or invented the reporting techniques needed to crack the story as I went along.

That, I suppose, is my ultimate advice: first, trust your judgment. If something doesn’t pass the smell test, pursue it. And shake those trees. With enough hard work, never letting go, you’ll find the way into the story.

CAJ Award Winner: Community Newspaper & Don McGillivray Award

The Coast – Halifax, NS – A trust betrayed – Tim Bousquet

It was a story Tim Bousquet couldn’t let go. The deeper he probed, the more he discovered about the shenanigans of a mayor who should have known better.

The second envelope was the proof I needed: Mary Thibeault’s bank records, including copies of the cheques Kelly had written to himself, electronic transfers and ledgers to both Thibeault’s personal account

and the estate account. Bingo.

11 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 12

In the days leading up to the election on May 2, 2011, the intense coverage

of the election campaign was interrupted by sporadic media reports of people re-ceiving unusual telephone calls.

These stories, from ridings across the country, described how some voters reported calls that claimed to come from Liberal or New Democrat campaigns at odd hours with rude phone operators. Some reports detailed complaints of automated calls with misleading messages about poll locations. Others described how a few Jewish constituents spoke of taking annoying calls from the local Liberal can-didate on the Sabbath.

After election day, these stories of tele-phone trickery faded as journalists turned their attention to what Stephen Harper’s first Conservative majority government would mean for the country.

My colleague Stephen Maher and I talked about revisiting the strange stories of misleading calls. However, it wasn’t un-til December, eight months after the vote, that we began pursuing the story seriously.

We began by re-interviewing people who had been quoted in local media months earlier. We built a database of ridings and began entering information passed on by dozens of campaign workers,

volunteers, voters and candidates. A fuzzy pattern began to emerge that

seemed to show a concerted campaign of telephone calls -- some from live callers, others recorded -- to discourage, annoy, harass and in some cases even trick voters who were likely to be unfriendly to Con-servative candidates.

The more we researched, the clearer it became that the riding of Guelph, Ont., had been the target of the most audacious effort to suppress non-Conservative voters.

One of the voters we spoke to there was

Sue Campbell, the wife of the local Green Party candidate. On the morning of elec-tion day, she had just returned home after voting when she heard the phone ring. The recorded message, in a woman’s voice, claimed to come from Elections Canada and told her that her polling location had moved.

Campbell knew it was a trick and called Elections Canada to complain. A few days later, Campbell told us, she had sat down for an interview with a mustachioed former RCMP officer named Al Mathews,

who was heading up an investigation. Campbell, we learned, was one of more than 7,000 people who received the same call in a ten-minute period.

For weeks, we couldn’t find out much more about who was behind the calls. Fi-nally, Steve connected with a source who he learned had some useful information about the Elections Canada investigation

in Guelph.The agency, the source told us, had

tracked the Guelph calls to a voice-broadcasting company in Edmonton called RackNine. Elections Canada records showed that the company had done a bit of legitimate work during the election, making promotional “robocalls” on behalf of several campaigns -- Harper’s among them -- but there was nothing linking them to the Conservative campaign in Guelph.

A few months earlier, Steve and I had made photocopies of telephone bills sub-mitted by all the Conservative campaigns in ridings where there had been reports of strange calls.

At the time, few reporters knew that anyone could make an appointment with Elections Canada to view the actual re-ceipts each campaign turned in with their financial reports. Most of these were dog-eared printouts of bills for gas, campaign signs or pizza to feed campaign workers. But many campaigns also included their phones bills with, sometimes, itemized lists of calls billed to the campaign.

We had poured over the Rogers bills submitted by the campaign of Guelph Conservative Marty Burke several times, tracing back each call to see who the cam-paign was speaking with. Oddly, we had missed the two calls on election day made to Edmonton, one to RackNine, the other to the company’s owner.

Those two strings digits on the phone bill were our breakthrough -- a clear link from the Conservative campaign in Guelph to the company that, our source told us, was the origin of the election-day calls.

With this information, we interviewed RackNine owner Matt Meier. He admitted

Elections Canada had visited his offices, but denied he had known at the time that his service had been used for the mislead-ing calls. The Conservative campaign in Guelph, meanwhile, told us their contact with RackNine was only to send out a call warning supporters to disregard the fake Elections Canada calls.

In the weeks and months that followed, we began learn even more about what happened in Guelph. As Al Mathews con-tinued his investigation, he left a trail of court records that described what he knew and what he needed to find out. By swear-ing out these statements, called Informa-tion to Obtain (ITOs), Mathews was able get court orders compelling phone and Internet companies to hand over records he used to trace the Guelph calls.

Steve and I were hunched over the fax machine one afternoon in February as our colleague, Ryan Cormier of the Edmonton Journal, sent out the ITO that allowed Mathews to get records from RackNine. We read each line intently as it was printed out and then -- the gods of journalism smiled on us -- the fax printed off the section where Mathews described a disposable cellphone registered in the name of one Pierre Poutine, of Separatist Street in Joliette, Que.

We continued to work our sources and learn more about the electronic chase for documents, thanks largely to the ITOs that Mathews continued to swear out as the followed the thread from Virgin Mobile to Paypal, Gmail, RackNine and finally to an Internet address at the Burke campaign headquarters. The narrative that emerged was one of “burner” phones, throw-away credit cards and proxy servers to mask Internet addresses that read more like

detective fiction than election law.As our stories rolled out, Elections

Canada was deluged by calls and emails from people who claimed that they, too, had received misleading calls. Within a few months, the agency had begun inves-tigating more than 1,300 complaints from 200 ridings across the country.

With the “robocalls scandal” dominating political news last year, the Conservative government promised it would, within six months, introduce new legislation to keep up with the Voice-over-IP and other technologies that could be used for elec-tion trickery.

As parliament broke for the 2013 sum-mer break, that legislation still hadn’t been tabled.

A public-interest group, the Council of Canadians, tried to have the results of the election tossed out in six closely-contested ridings. The judge declined, but found there was evidence of fraud and that the Conservative Party’s vaunted CIMS data-base of voters was likely used.

To date, Elections Canada has laid one, single charge over the Guelph calls against Michael Sona, a young campaign worker who insists he wasn’t involved and blames the Conservative Party for scapegoating him. No trial date has been set.

The investigation into calls in other rid-ings continues.

For their coverage of the robocalls story, Glen McGregor of the Ottawa Citizen and Stephen Maher of Postmedia News won the 2012 Canadian Association of Journalism Award (Open Newspaper), the National Newspaper Award (Politics), the Canadian Hillman Prize, the Cana-dian World Press Freedom Award and the Governor General’s Michener Award.

Michener Award - CAJ Open Newspaper Award - NNA Politics Award

Postmedia News and the Ottawa Citizen – Robocalls and their impact on voting – Glen McGregor and Stephen

Maher

It was arguably the juiciest political story to hit Parliament Hill since the sponsorship scandal brought down Paul Martin’s Liberal government in 2006. Robocalls became part of the regular lexicon. Stephen Harper’s Conserva-tives endured unprecedented scrutiny. Opposition politicians, pundits, advocacy groups, citizens and editorialists questioned the propriety of automated calls par-ties – of all stripes -- use to engage, or disengage voters.

And, of course, who could forget the pseudonymous Pierre Poutine, the yet-to-be identified central character in the robocalls affair. Glen McGregor, also a Media magazine columnist, explains how he teamed up with Postmedia’s Ste-phen Maher (pictured in the photo to the right of Glen) to uncover details about Poutine and the Elections Canada investigator whose dogged pursuit left a trail of invaluable court documents.

CALLS FOR ACTION: Protesters take part in a robocall protest on Parliament Hills in Ottawa on Monday, March 5, 2012.

PHOTO CREDIT: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

TIME TO SPEAK UP: Demonstrators gather in Montreal, Sunday, March 11, 2012, protesting the ‘Robocall’, election fraud scandal.PHOTO CREDIT: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

In the fall of 2011, I was an invited speaker at the annual meeting of the

Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society, an advisory body to the country’s fertility specialists. I was asked to speak about the trade in human eggs, which had been the subject of a feature I had written for The Walrus a year earlier.

I raised concerns about the safety of egg donation in the country, as did another panelist, Jennifer Lahl, who had made the film Eggsploitation. The third panelist was a renowned fertility doctor, Robert Stillman, whose topic was supposed to be cross-border reproductive care. Instead, he spent his allotted time trying to demolish the talks and reputations of his two fellow speakers.

Even more than his attack, which was mostly just unprofessional, it was the response of the audience, made up mostly of people in the fertility industry, which deeply disturbed me: the applause thun-dered on for several long minutes.

That experience spurred me on to write the piece which was published in Maison-neuve magazine.

Doctors like Stillman dismiss individual donors’ stories as “anecdote.” That is a word often used in medicine and science to denigrate certain case studies, to sug-gest they are unsubstantiated or so rare as to be misleading. But case studies also sometimes give hints about what may be a wider phenomenon. I wanted the people in that industry to know that the stories I was highlighting were not just those of donors trying to settle scores.

With only 18 women and their collec-tive 52 donations, I could not hope to provide statistics on how often women were harmed in the process. But what I did try to bring out is how, even in this small group of mostly pro-donation women, ad-verse events were surprisingly common. It wasn’t that women were seeking me out to complain about negative past experiences, but rather, that I kept watching as they went through successive donations and after they retired from donating altogether. And it turns out that as I kept watching, I kept finding.

I started interviewing “Anna,” for in-stance, as she entered her fourth donation. She was upbeat, but ended up with severe ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, and in hospital for four days. What made it worse was that, although the donation was in Toronto, she had to fly home, ill, to a small city in British Columbia, where ER staff had to manage her care.

In the months after this donation, Anna’s menstrual cycles did not resume. Another woman has also ceased to have normal menstrual cycles. Three other women suffered many months of uncontrollable bleeding. To put an end to it, one of those women had a hysterectomy and another has been advised to get one; yet another opted for a uterine ablation. It is not clear if this bleeding is related to having donated, but these women were all young -- in their twenties or early thirties -- and had either donated multiple times or had suffered severe ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome.

And these are just the events that un-folded after I began interviewing them.

Many women shared with me their correspondence with doctors, lawyers and brokers, their journal entries and blogs. Many also shared their medical records. I combed through them page by page and they proved to be a rich source of informa-tion. As I say in the Maisonneuve article, there are cases where all the evidence points to a problem caused by egg dona-tion, but a doctor minimizes it or passes it off in hospital notes as something else: in one instance, blaming eating “a bunch of chocolates.”

Reporters writing investigative medical stories will find medical records to be a very rich source of information. Not only do they officially confirm details -- dates, weights, numbers of blood transfusions -- they also provide clues as to what was going on.

I discovered that medical records from private fertility clinics (unlike hospitals) were very often incomplete, and had to be requested multiple times. Few doctors in-cluded details about how many eggs were retrieved or, remarkably, about the surgical procedure in which that happened.

Even after making very specific re-quests, pieces of the files were sometimes missing. This is an egregious breach of a physician’s obligation. One fertility doctor emailed to tell me he had forwarded the article to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.

Only the patient can request these rec-ords, of course, and journalists must use

extreme care in copying, storing, trans-porting and quoting from them. I did help with the paperwork and the fees, both of which can be onerous.

I also told them they could change their minds after seeing the records and decide not to share them with me. No one did that in the end. If I had a tip about medical records, I would say: read them over and over. Then read them again.

These individual stories may be isolated events. But even if these cases represent all the adverse events ever related to egg donation in this country (and I know for a fact that they do not), I would still argue that they are unacceptable.

These women’s experiences, and the limited scientific literature available, sug-

gest that numbers of eggs must be kept low and donor women should be monitored closely after retrieval. Many of the problems I chronicle in my work could have been prevented if only the

doctors had treated donors as real patients in their own right, rather than just the means to help their paying clients.

The research for this story was paid for by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research journalism grant. As a freelancer, I’m always thinking about how my mate-rial can be used in different stories.

I keep a running list of possible topics and outlets. My radio piece on egg donor health had aired February 19, 2012, before I even pitched the magazine piece, and it covered some of the same territory.

But radio has different strengths: it al-lows people to hear the personalities of the women, to hear the emotion behind their words, to get a sense that they were real

people with homes and dogs and children of their own.

I felt there was a great deal of nuance and detail that I had yet to report and it just wasn’t possible outside of print. I approached Maisonneuve after noticing that the magazine produced a surprising number of high-calibre, long-form investi-gative pieces.

I knew the pay would be low, but I could never have imagined how low. Even though my egg donor work had been subsidized, and even though at the time I began writing for Maisonneuve, I already had all my research in hand, I definitely lost money doing it.

I’m glad I did it, but I can’t afford to do this very often. Investigative journalism is time-consuming and expensive. I worry about a society that’s not willing to pay for it.

Alison Motluk has been freelancing for 14 years. She writes for The Walrus, The Economist, New Scientist, CBC Radio, and others. She is based in Toronto. You can reach Alison at alison@motluk.com

CAJ Award Winner Magazine

Maisonneuve Magazine – Is egg donation dangerous?– Alison Motluk

Doctors don’t seem to take them seriously. The women Alison Motluk interviewed suffered in silence from ovaries that became so swollen and painful that, in some cases, they had to be removed. Ironically, these women got sick after donating their eggs to infertile women.

A few, like Anna, suffer from a condition known as ovarian hyper-stimulation syndrome, or OHSS— an unfortunate side effect of stimu-

lating the ovaries to produce extra eggs.

BAD ADVICE: In summary – with the medications used today, the chance of an egg donor developing OHSS is very unlikely. -- Source: The Victoria Fertility Clinic

13 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 14

15 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 16

CAJ Award Winner Open Television (under five minutes runtime)

XL Foods ran the massive meat packing plant in Brooks, Alberta,

that has been linked to at least 18 cases of E. coli infection in four provinces and is the source of the largest beef recall in Canadian history.

The Nilsson brothers who own XL Foods remained largely silent throughout this case. They refused to answer phone calls from media. They never held a news conference.

And as XL’s E. coli recall spread from ground beef to whole meat products and led to the plant shutdown, the Agriculture Minister and the Canadian Food Inspec-tion Agency weren’t forthcoming either. They refused to answer basic questions about why it was that the U.S. authorities had closed the border to products from Brooks, days before Canadian consum-ers were advised and a product recall was launched in Canada.

They refused to even explain what was wrong in the plant to cause the E. coli outbreak, until after CTV News reported what the Minister didn’t want Canadians to hear: the plant at the center of this recall had poor sanitation, a deficient E.Coli tracking system, broken rinse nozzles in the carcass wash area; and most troubling – it had failed to destroy suspect carcasses

on both sides of E.Coli infected animals.So were the problems recent, or was

there a pattern to the problems at XL Foods?

The CTV News investigation was revealed though documents obtained from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (Ca-nadian authorities refused to answer those questions or provide documents).

American authorities had repeatedly warned the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and XL Foods about safety prob-lems at the Alberta meat packer. For more than a decade, U.S. authorities detailed deficiencies they had found at XL Foods plants, including sloppy record-keeping, equipment held together by duct tape and, in one case, a gruesome scene of animal blood dripping into edible meat products. XL Foods plants have also been shut out of the U.S. market numerous times since 2001.

The union representing plant workers says it didn’t know about the scale of the deficiencies until our story aired.

CTV News also learned that federal beef inspectors were ordered to turn a blind eye to contamination on carcasses being processed for sale to Canadians, a direc-tive that was imposed by the inspectors’ supervisors lasting four years. The 2008

memo written by a Canadian Food Inspec-tion Agency meat hygiene supervisor in-structed inspectors stationed at one of the plant’s final inspection stops to give extra scrutiny to carcasses shipped to Japan, but to ignore visible fecal and intestinal contamination on meat for Canadians.

The backlash over beef was fast and sharp after CTV’s exclusive report, with critics saying Canada had a two-tier food-safety system where products shipped outside Canada were held to a much higher standard. Opposition parties said there needs to be a public inquiry into the E. coli outbreak and called on the auditor-general do an audit. Union officials even went as far as asking RCMP to be called in to investigate CFIA’s actions as possible criminal negligence.

CTV stories brought to light issues fac-ing the Canadian food inspection process and the safety at XL Foods that were otherwise unknown, despite the fact that this one plant processes fully one-third of Canada’s beef – because what it comes down to is public safety and every single consumer has to know whether the food they’re eating is safe.

Direct URL:http://www.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=858838

CTV News – XL Foods investigation – Robert Fife, Philip Ling

It was the largest beef recall in Canadian history, and a mere three years after the worst recall in Canadian history killed at least 23 Canadians, many of them frail seniors. The XL Foods beef recall forced the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the minister in charge of it, to once again answer tough ques-tions about the country’s food safety system and the affects budget cuts would have. The CTV investigation was a crucial part of a conversation that played out on the floor of the House of Commons. The following is an edited version of the submis-sion Bob Fife (left) and Philip Ling made to the CAJ judges.

17 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 18

CAJ Award Winner Open Television (over five minutes runtime)

Our research came at a time when the Quebec and Federal govern-

ments were about to reopen the asbestos mine in Quebec, thus reviving an indus-try that had gone dormant. Many public health experts expressed outrage at this move. According to the United Nations, more than 100,000 people die annually of asbestos exposure worldwide.

One World Health Organization expert predicted a ‘tsunami’ of asbestos-related deaths would sweep Asia in the coming decades. The Canadian asbestos exported to Asia would likely have contributed to deaths there.

In Canada, asbestos has historically been one of the biggest industrial killers. We told the stories of victims who lost their family members due to asbestos-related

diseases, including the Von Paelleskes whose mother, father and daughter were touched by the disease.

Our investigation asked why the McGill-funded research appeared to be quite different from much of the other academic work on the topic. Other studies raised many more serious concerns about the toxic effects of asbestos.

We discovered that over the years a number of epidemiologists and academ-ics questioned the work that came out of McGill, suggesting that the university-based research pointed to other “culprits” for the disease amongst asbestos miners and millers, other than chrysotile itself. Specifically, critics questioned a particular watershed study published in a scientific

journal by the McGill researchers in 1997. That study has been used for years to promote the asbestos industry’s “safe-use” policy of continued exports to the Third World.

How we got the ideaAfter writing an article in The Walrus on

a different group of McGill academics, Gil Shochat was contacted by David Egilman, an American professor and public health expert. He made what at the time seemed like controversial claims about a group of McGill asbestos researchers: Egilman believed their science was deeply flawed. He spent years trying to debunk it and published his results in a peer-reviewed scientific journal in 2003.

Obstacles we encounteredFatal Deception took eight months to

research and produce. The main challenge was combing through scientific studies and journals and documents dating as far back as the 1920s. The subject mat-ter was highly technical and difficult. We also tried to understand the history of the industry’s involvement in the research, looking into the health effects of asbestos. This meant spending hundreds of hours interviewing scientists and experts and

reading scholarly papers. We compared what the McGill scien-

tists claimed with what other scientists in the field found. This required a rigorous analysis of decades’ worth of literature – comparing different studies and re-searching the reasons for the variance in the study’s results. We read the scien-tific literature closely, produced detailed chronologies of the various studies and interviewed dozens of experts around the world about the apparent inconsistencies between the various asbestos studies.

Fatal Deception also shone a light on the decades-old connections between the industry itself and the asbestos-disease science. We showed the financial links between the asbestos industry and McGill. This involved tracking down disparate documents dating back to the 1920s that had come out in the US, the UK and Europe.

Effect the story hadOur documentaries had a major impact,

setting off a firestorm of debate across Canada. A few days after our documentary ran, it was widely cited in Parliament, and in the months after our report aired, efforts

to raise capital from Canadian private funders to re-open the Jeffrey Mine fell through.

As well, a group of international scien-tists sent McGill an open letter shortly af-ter the documentary aired questioning the asbestos industry funded McGill science.

“These studies denied harm caused by chrysotile asbestos and were used to promote the marketing and sales of asbestos…In light of this questionable background, we believe that McGill has a particular obligation to show intellectual and ethical integrity and to sever all ties with the asbestos industry,” the letter read in part.

Approximately six weeks after the piece aired, the newly elected PQ government announced that it would not support the reopening of the asbestos mine in Quebec.

What’s more, the Harper government backed off, saying it would no longer op-pose putting warnings on asbestos when it was exported under the auspices of the United Nation’s Rotterdam Convention. (Prior to our story, the Canadian govern-ment had repeatedly blocked international efforts to place restrictions or warnings on the export of this deadly mineral.) As well, the Chrysotile Institute, the lobby arm for the asbestos industry, closed its doors in the aftermath of our broadcast in February 2012.

Tips For journalists investigating the asbes-tos industry, or any industry with a long history and dense material with scientific grounding, time and diligence are of the utmost importance.

Do not rush the research. Learn the history. Mine the content. Understand the science.

In regards to studies, read them numer-ous times if necessary in order to under-stand their conclusions, relevance to your research and the impact they have had on the field you are examining. Compare the results from different studies against each other and try to understand the contra-dictory conclusions and why there are differences. Seek outside opinions on the material and get experts to explain content that is difficult to understand.

We consulted experts ranging from lawyers, doctors, scientists, epidemiolo-gists and public health officials to best understand the scientific material we were researching. This proved paramount in un-derstanding the material and its relevance to our story. Our research enabled us to report the scientific and medical informa-tion confidently and accurately.

Also, finding experts who know the industry you are investigating is helpful. They can prove to be a wealth of informa-tion and a key source of documents due to their prior work in the field. Establish who has done significant work on the topic and contact them as part of your research. They are likely going to be willing to help due to their passion for the subject matter.

Joseph Loiero was the associate pro-ducer on the asbestos piece. http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2012/02/01/asbestos-study-mcgill.html He’s a member of the CBCs Special Investigations Unit.

CBC News – Investigative Unit, Fatal Deception – Gil Shochat, Alex Shprintsen, Joseph Loeiro

Fatal Deception examined decades of scientific literature funded by the Quebec asbestos industry, much of it generated by a small group of scholars from one of Canada’s top schools, McGill University. For years, the asbestos industry used McGill’s work to downplay the health risks associated with asbestos. Joseph Loeiro explains how McGill’s questionable research came to light.

SOUNDING THE WARNING: Dr. David Egilman is a professor at Brown University, health activist and longtime industry critic. Here, he is pictured visiting Thetford Mines, Que., on Oct. 22, 2011. Dr. Egilman was also the original person who raised concerns about asbes-tos research at McGill. PHOTO CREDIT: Alex Shprintsen/CBC

FLAWED SCIENCE: Dr. John Corbett MacDonald was a McGill University scientist and an asbestos industry re-searcher whose science was said to be flawed. The McGill School of Oc-cupational Health received almost $1,000,000 from 1966 to 1972.

PHOTO CREDIT: McGill University Archives

WAITING TO DIE: Doreen von Paelleske washed her husband’s asbestos-tainted clothes in a bathtub for years. Wolfgang died of mesothelioma at the age of 79. Doreen suffered the same fate and died shortly after this picture was taken in July 2011. PHOTO CREDIT: CBC NEWS

19 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 20

CAJ Award Winner Regional Television

The idea for the documentary Break-ing the Mold originated with a

phone call from someone in Waswanipi. She felt that she had exhausted all means to get action for her family’s home and turned to Maamuitaau, CBC North’s weekly Cree-language magazine of news and current affairs unit, for help. We visited the community which has a long-standing reputation as having a housing problem. But, it wasn’t until we visited a few particular band-owned houses that we realized how dire the situation was for some. We asked the Band Council why the situation was as so serious. We met the same lack of information and help. At that point, we decided to do a short docu-mentary about some of the families and consequences of mold in homes.

Annette Saganash and Henry Gull keep a pristine home. Yet the first thing our TV crew noticed when they first visited a year ago was the smell: a damp, musky odour. Annette and Henry rarely invited people into their home.

“It’s not that we don’t like having people visit; it’s just that we don’t… want them to think that’s how it really is here. We try to keep our house nice and clean and still, it smells.”

Their home was infested with mold. Annette pointed out the clusters of tiny black dots - mold, growing at the corner of windows, along the baseboards, in the cupboards. Everywhere.

She wiped the black dots away every few days. They always came back.

In this community of 360 homes, the state of the Gull’s house is typical. Resi-dents in the community estimate mold

grows in 20% of their homes. You can identify mold-infected homes by the wads of laundry-freshener sheets tucked into corners, a popular local method to mask the smell.

Our TV documentary team wanted to know why the Gulls and many families like them are obliged to live in condi-tions that most Canadians would consider unacceptable. There are many poor First Nations reserves in Canada; communities without the money or political clout to fight for better homes.

But that is not the situation in Waswani-pi. It is a Cree settlement, one of the nine Cree communities along the James Bay. These are the Cree who, back in the mid 1970’s, signed ground-breaking deals with the Quebec government. The Cree got bil-lions of dollars, in exchange for access to their land for hydro development.

The mighty rivers were dammed. The Grand Council of the Cree grew rich. They built schools, medical clinics -- and homes. Unfortunately, many of those homes are as leaky as an old hydro dam. Water projects have made the Cree rich. Mold is making then them sick.

The primary challenge in shooting a story like this is that Cree people don’t like to talk about their difficult and un-happy situations. They’re very private outside of their family circle. They’re also afraid that if they talk, they will be punished by the local band council and put at the bottom of the list of houses needing repair. While the families were willing to show us their homes, we had to work hard to develop the trust to let us in and interview them.

On the day our crew visited Waswanipi, Henry Gull was moving the family furniture into a storage pod on the front lawn. He showed us how few posses-sions would be stored. When mold seeps into everything you own, you think twice before putting it in storage. Only the hard surface furniture will be kept. Everything else might be left behind or burned. The Gulls are taking drastic steps to improve their health.

Everyone’s getting sickIn the last few years, Annette watched as

her family fell ill, one after the other. “The first was our grandchild. He was at the hospital every few weeks with problems in his lungs. We were asked if the house was damp. They said it was making my grandson sick.”

Next, it was her son who slept in the basement. He developed a chronic cough. Then, Henry developed asthma. He was a vigorous man just a few years ago, but with every box he moved to the storage bin, Henry stopped to catch his breath.

The Gulls decided to abandon their moldy house. Some of the grandkids moved in with relatives with mold-free homes. The rest of the Gulls moved to the family camp where they slept in tents. Lack of running water and electricity was better than a “modern” home contami-nated with mold.

Eventually, the Gulls and everyone else with mold-related illnesses winds up at the local clinic. Nurse Catherine Carmona says the mold makes even ordinary ail-ments colds harder and more expensive to treat. “A simple cold requires a steroid

puffer. It’s as if everything turns into asthma”, she says.

And if it’s not puffers, it’s skin reaction to the mold.

Joe RayAs testament to how successful we

were in developing that relationship with the families The one young mother even decided to let us photograph her badly in-fected child. The fact that she chose to put her sick child that presented a chronic skin infection on camera goes against the grain of Cree culture. That’s when we knew we had a story that would have an impact.

This is what lead our TV crew to ten-month old Joe Ray Happyjack. His mother, Tiffany, admires Joe Ray’s bright eyes and dark hair. Everyone else looks at Joe Ray with alarm. Half his face was covered in hard, dark scabs, so were his scalp and arms and legs. It’s the worst case of eczema most of us had ever seen, and it is caused by mold, according to the local nurse.

“He was five months old when it started to show on his skin”, explains Tiffany. “The only thing they give me is cream, cream, and cream after cream. But it doesn’t go away”. When we met them, Joe Ray had just been released from hospital, where he was treated for many infections. He spent days on oxygen. But once declared healthy enough, he was sent back home, surrounded by the mold that made him so sick.This is where the Maamuitaau crew re-ally showed its audience something new. The Quebec Cree are a proud people who like to laugh and don’t like to share their problems with others. It is part of the Cree culture to avoid public discussion of

personal problems. Other reporters will be shown the success of the Cree nation: the large new offices; the lovely new museum. The Maamuitaau crew showed a more complete portrait of the Cree reality, in-cluding high levels of addictions, suicides and substandard services.

So, for a reporter to get Cree people to talk about their moldy homes and display the effects mold has had on them, is show-ing Canadians a view of the Cree they are not likely to get otherwise.

Our crew wanted to know why the wealth of the Grand Council hasn’t trick-led down to help people with sick homes and sick children?

The Band Council in Waswanipi knows about the mold. It bought air exchang-ers and dehumidifiers for many homes. But humidity in the homes is so high the equipment has to run non-stop which it isn’t designed to do. The equipment breaks down, and isn’t replaced.

The situation is exacerbated by the Cree population “explosion”. It is the fastest-growing segment of the Quebec popula-tion. The housing authority in Waswanipi and other communities can’t keep up with demand. “There are at least 100 families who need homes,” says Band Council Deputy Chief Marcel Happyjack.

The results? Over-crowding. Mold. Put 20 people in a home designed for six or eight, and you get extra humidity; more people showering, more dishwashing. More mold.

“We would like to accommodate people who are in need of a house,” says the Deputy Chief. “We would like to repair all the homes that need mold removed. But that would cost over a million dollars”.

Happyjack says he has less than half that amount, and not enough staff trained to do the work.

The Maamuitaau documentary trig-gered reaction. Some of the people most affected by mold infestation, including Tiffany Happyjack and her son, saw their home improved immediately after our item aired.

Same thing for Annette and Henry Gull. They are back in their home. All major repairs have been done. Annette no longer stuffs laundry sheets into corners because there is no moldy smell to cover up. But best of all she says, her family that was forced apart to avoid the mold, is together again. Parents, children and grandchildren sleep in a healthy home.

The last year brought two important changes to Maamuitaau. After 30 years on air, the show now runs on CBC’s main channel outside of Quebec; and is produced in English as well as Cree. The new accessibility means our stories about the culture and challenges of the people of the James Bay region reach a much wider audience. We are thrilled to be recognized for our work.

Ours is a small, hard-working team: Melissa Brousseau is the show’s producer. Flora Weitshe is our interviewer/reporter. Diane Icebound is technical producer and Robert Choma, the editor. Pakesso Mukash did the on-camera intro. Writing the item was a collaboration lead by unit manager, Lynne Robson.

Maamuitaau produces 26 episodes per year and airs on Sundays at differ-ent times across the North and in Que-bec. http://www.cbc.ca/player/Shows/Shows/More+Shows/Maamuitaau/

CBC North – Maamuitaau, Breaking the mold – Melissa Brousseau

The housing conditions were appalling, but it was ten-month old Joe Ray Happyjack, his face covered with hard black scabs caused by exposure to mold, that finally got people’s attention. Lynne Robson, the unit manager of the team that produced Breaking the Mold, takes us to the First Nation’s community where Joe Ray lives. TEAM WORK: The Maamuitaau crew (LtoR)

Diane Icebound, Robert Choma, Flora Weistche, Melissa Brousseau

THE EFFECTS OF MOLD: Joe Ray’s mother, Tiffany, admires his bright eyes and dark hair. Hard, dark scabs covered half his face, scalp, arms and legs. It was the worst case of eczema we’d ever seen. PHOTO CREDIT: Isabelle Barzeele/ CBC North

21 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 22

The 30-minute radio documetary, Wanted: Egg Donor in Good

Health, tells the stories of young women who have helped infertile Canadians to have children.

My goal in this piece was to let the reality of egg donation speak in its own words. From the top, I used real pleas posted online by real Canadian would-be parents. (Stand-ins read the words) The American testimonial and the promo video on how to become an egg donor are both real, too, and can be seen on YouTube. The instructions from brokers on how to break

Canadian laws were authentic instructions, which had been included in a pamphlet given to a woman who donated here. The reassuring words from doctors that appear in clips at the end, saying, for instance, that there was almost no chance that a do-nor would get sick, were also taken from authentic handouts and websites provided by actual Canadian doctors to donors (but read by stand-ins). The clip of one doc-tor (read by a stand in) claiming that no woman has ever had a bad experience at his clinic was deliberately juxtaposed with that of a real donor who was hospitalized after donating at his clinic. The doctors identified by name spoke for themselves.

The donor women too, spoke of their own experiences in their own voices.

Karin Wells, my producer at The Sunday Edition, was masterful at finding ways to weave these quite disparate elements together. It was wonderful to work with someone who cared as much as I did about this story and getting it just right.

As far as possible, I tried to use the language used by the industry: I used the word “donor” even though many women are paid, and the term “egg retrieval” even though a woman’s eggs aren’t really in need of rescuing from her own body. (The

one exception is that I used the word “bro-ker” rather than euphemisms like “con-sultant” which are regularly employed to deflect from the potentially illegal nature of this match-maker work.) I tried as far as possible to use their language because I wanted to show that, no matter how gently you label these experiences, there can be serious adverse consequences. A hospital-ization is a hospitalization. A hysterectomy is a hysterectomy.

I chose the title because so often I saw ads from parents seeking donors “in good health.” Prospective parents are very interested in whether donors will provide them with healthy eggs, and are concerned

about drug use, family disease history and mental health. Yet from several years of following women who had donated eggs, I knew that while donor women may enter the process healthy, they didn’t always leave that way. No one seemed to care much about that, and I was struck by the incongruity.

This work was largely funded through a Canadian Institutes of Health Research journalism grant. The funding allowed me to advertise that I wanted to interview women over many months by visiting and recording them in their own homes. The

grant also covered the substantial costs of getting copies of their medical records. Reporters writing investigative medical stories will find medical records to be very rich sources of information. Not only do they officially confirm details -- dates, weights, numbers of blood transfusions -- they also provide clues as to what was going on.

Only the patient can request these records, of course, and journalists must use extreme care in copying, storing, transporting and quoting from them. I did help with the paperwork and the fees, both of which can be onerous. I also told them they could change their minds after seeing

the records and decide not to share them with me. No one did that in the end.

If I had a tip about medical records, I would say: read them over and over. Then read them again.

I had written and broadcast about the science and social fallout from reproduc-tive medicine for several years before deciding to look intensely at egg donor health. I had spoken to dozens of U.S. egg donors while preparing a more wide-rang-ing documentary for IDEAS, so I had a hunch that there may be more to the story than fertility doctors were telling us. I was curious to know whether the problems were similar or different in Canada, where, rather than an open market, we have al-most a black market for human eggs.

I learned that, as in the U.S., there is almost no follow-up for young women who donate eggs, despite the fact that they are healthy young women going through potentially dangerous medical procedures for the benefit of other people. Because there is no follow-up, there is very little knowledge about what the real health

concerns might be. Because there’s little knowledge, these women cannot be truly informed about the risks, and so cannot really give informed consent. It alarms me that medical professionals are not deeply troubled by this.

Another tip I would offer to others is to gather and use primary sources whenever possible. It’s one thing for a journalist to say, for instance, that agencies coach women to lie to border officials, but it’s another thing altogether to quote directly from the advice a real woman was actually given.

“Included in this packet is a letter from the doctor stating why you are travel-ing to Canada. Inform the immigration officer that you are coming to Canada for medical treatment -- NOT THAT YOU ARE AN EGG DONOR (this would lead to more questions and delays at Immigra-tion) -- and show the supplied letter and itinerary. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCE INFORM ANYONE INCLUDING THE CLINIC’S STAFF THAT YOU ARE BE-ING FINANCIALLY COMPENSATED

FOR BEING AN EGG DONOR. If asked, you only receive reimbursement for your expenses.” (no emphasis added.)

I have no reason to think that any-thing I’ve written or broadcast about egg donation has made any difference to the practice here in Canada. Purely by coin-cidence, just a week after this show first aired, the RCMP raided the offices of Leia Picard, who runs a Canadian egg donation and surrogacy brokerage in Ontario, and a year later. The police laid charges a year later. It was the first time anyone has been charged under the 2004 Assisted Human Reproduction Act. Ironically, Picard’s voice is among those in my show’s intro-duction and conclusion, describing her own hospitalization and health conse-quences.

Alison Motluk lives in Toronto and has been a freelance journalist for 14 years. She writes for The Walrus, The Econo-mist, New Scientist, CBC Radio, and others. Alison can be reached at alison@motluk.com. To read some of her work, please visit: http://motluk.com

CAJ Award Winner Open Radio News or Current Affairs

CBC Radio – The Sunday Edition, Wanted: Egg donor in good health - Alison Motluk

While there have been many stories about the health of women receiving do-nated eggs, precious little was written about the donors. Alison Motluk set out to change that in her exploration of their plight. What she found was disturbing.

I had written and broadcast about the

science and social fallout from

reproductive medicine for

several years before

deciding to look intensely at

egg donor health… I was curious

to know whether the problems

were similar or different in Canada,

where… we have almost a

black market for human eggs.

If I had a tip about medical records, I would say: read them over and over. Then read them again.

23 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 24

Sometimes the best stories are sitting right under our noses, just waiting

for anyone to take interest.To a certain extent, that’s precisely the

case with Condition Critical, a week-long series that examined the performances of Ontario’s 14 Local Health Integration Networks, or LHINs.

The idea was simple enough: How is the Hamilton-area LHIN performing and how does it measure up against the other 13 LHINs in the province?

It would be easy to come to a subjec-tive conclusion, based on anecdotes and interviews.

But I wanted this to be an objective analysis, and that requires data. Lots of it.

Luckily, I discovered that mountains of data on the performance of Ontario’s LHINs already existed in a variety of forms.

What I also discovered is that even though this data was publicly available and open to all, no one had ever attempted to gather it all together in one place.

That’s just the kind of challenge I enjoy. My academic background is in science

- I have a B.Sc. in human biology - so I enjoy approaching health issues with a scientific mindset.

I began gathering all of the variables I could find that measured health outcomes at the LHIN level in Ontario.

I created a master Excel spreadsheet and input all of the variables and results by hand, one by one.

It was a long, painstaking process just to assemble all of the data.

For each variable, in addition to the actual results for each LHIN, I also ranked

the LHINs from 1 to 14. In total, I found and input a total of 266

different variables measuring the LHINs across a variety of health areas.

The variables were gathered from the 2011 Ontario Health Quality Report; the POWER Study published by the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Octo-ber 2011; performance indicators included in each LHIN’s 2009/10 annual report; and data from Ontario’s 2011 Cancer System Quality Index.

Here are a couple of examples of the types of variables included in the analysis:

* Age-standardized percentage of adults aged 20 and older with diabetes who saw a

specialist at least once over a two-year pe-riod, by sex and Local Health Integration Network (LHIN), in Ontario, 2005/06-2006/07;

* Age-standardized rates of hospitaliza-tion for congestive heart failure (CHF) per 100,000 adults aged 25 and older, by sex, neighbourhood income and Local Health Integration Network (LHIN), in Ontario, 2006/07.

In addition to the rates and rankings, I applied a statistical test to each variable to determine the significance of the rates.

The test determined which results for each variable were above and below one standard deviation from the mean for the

entire province. This was a way to high-light those performances that were either well above or well below the provincial average.

It was also a way to go through the 266 different variables and quantify how many times an LHIN was either much better or much worse than the provincial average.

Once the 266 variables were gathered, input and tabulated, I divided them into seven broad categories, which included:

* Wait times (32 variables); * Long-term care/home care (37 vari-

ables);* Chronic diseases (51 variables);* Cancer (32 variables);* Cardiovascular (35 variables);* Emergency departments/access to

primary care/resources (32 variables);* Healthy behaviour/reproductive

health/harm prevention (47 variables).The cumulative rankings for all 266

variables were then calculated for the 14 LHINs to provide an overall ranking.

Once the categories were established, I found the human faces to tell the story. Dry statistics can only take you so far.

So, for instance, one of the faces was Dr. Robert Lafontaine, the only ortho-pedic surgeon in Timmins. He covers an area roughly the size of all of southern Ontario. When he talks about being the only orthopedic surgeon in a remote part of northern Ontario, it’s easy to see why the average wait time for a knee or hip replacement in Timmins is more than a year.

Or the story of Linda Chaplin, CEO of a long-term care home in Ottawa, which has tremendously long waiting lists for a bed in a long-term care facility. She

bluntly stated that some of the people on the waiting list will get a spot in a cem-etery before they get a chance at a bed in her facility.

We broke the series into five parts - the first four days reported on the broad categories. The final day looked ahead at possible solutions.

I reported on the issues at a provincial level but to keep the series relevant to readers, I always reported on where our LHIN ranked in relation to the rest of the province.

Veteran Hamilton Spectator reporter Steve Buist has won multiple national awards for investigative reporting.

CAJ Award Winner Data Journalism

Hamilton Spectator – Condition Critical – Steve Buist

In an effort to get beyond the anecdotal, he-said-she-said formula that underlies many stories, Steve Buist used his science background to develop a method of rating Ontario’s 14 Local Health Integration Networks in an awards category where the term computer-assisted reporting has been replaced by the name data journalism.

25 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 26

CAJ Award Winner Photojournalism

The Canadian Press – Portfolio – Darryl Dyck

In the 15 years I have been working since graduating from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, this is the second time I have been honoured with the Canadian Association of

Journalists photojournalism award.I am also honoured to have been named The Canadian Press Photographer of the Year twice

and I’m also proud of my two National Newspaper Award nominations. I don’t like to settle for the ordinary. Most of the time just observing what is happening will

lead me to be in a place where I can make an image that tells a story. I like to spend time observing what is going on and then thinking where the best possible image might be. This doesn’t always work out in my favour, but it is an approach that most times will yield a photograph I am happy with. Then there are times where it can just come down to one simple thing – luck.

I take a tremendous amount of pride in my sports photography – I want to be able to make photos that have impact and are creative at every opportunity. With everyone having cameras that shoot action at eight or 10 or 12 frames per second, I try to also see and capture the moments away from the regular action or provide photographs that have visual elements that are not the usual sports ac-tion photos. I try to tell the story of the game or event in single or multiple photographs if possible. That means making sure to have captured the important plays or reactions along the way.

With all the restrictions, barriers and not to mention “Average Joes” (yes, and reporters) getting in the way with their iPhones, pho-tojournalists have the ability to keep a cool head and assess a situation. Seeing and delivering the best creative and storytelling image as quickly as possible will always set us aside from the citizen photojournalists of the world. Our ethics and storytelling ability is what is valued, and I strive to continue to do the best possible job every single day.

Darryl Dyck tells the stories behind the award-winning photographs he has selected to display on these pages, what motivates him to take pictures, and why the iPhone can be his profession’s worst enemy.

OOPS: Vancouver Whitecaps’ goalkeeper Brad Knighton is pushed into the back of the net by Real Salt Lake’s Jonny Steele as he retrieves the ball after Salt Lake’s Nat Borchers, not pictured, scored a goal during the second half of an MLS soccer game in Vancouver, B.C., on Saturday August 11, 2012.

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: I had setup a remote camera behind the soccer goal in the hopes of making an interesting image from a dif-ferent angle. The camera is fired remotely by a trigger in my left hand while the camera in my hands is triggered normally with my right index finger. Netcams are commonplace in the hopes of providing another angle. On this day, I set the camera straight on at the back centre of the net, and then left the lens set much wider than I normally do because it is hard to see anything beyond what is close to the camera lens. It was one of those extremely lucky moments when the goalkeeper fell right into the back of the net after being pushed and actually made contact through the net with the camera – there is a frame where the camera, which sits on a support plate, and ball head actually tipped back and moved due to the contact. I didn’t have a good angle on it as it happened from my primary camera in my hands, but triggered the remote camera with my left hand in the hopes that it would work out. I had to wait until the end of the game to retrieve the camera from the field and find out that it had actually worked out.

TEARS FOR HIS BROTHER: RCMP Cnst. Ben Oliver wipes away a tear dur-ing a regimental funeral for his twin brother Cnst. Adrian Oliver in Langley, B.C., on Monday November 20, 2012. Cnst. Adrian Oliver died November 13 after his unmarked police cruiser collided with a transport truck in Surrey, B.C.

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: Cnst. Adrian Oliver wiping away a tear with his gloved thumb was a touching moment from a funeral for his brother, also an RCMP officer who passed away while on the job a week earlier. The job runs in the family -- their father is a high-ranking RCMP officer. This was an especially difficult event to cover as photographers were not allowed to take pictures of the memorial service in the arena. The opportunity to gather images was limited to outside, dramatically reducing the possibility of coming away with a storytelling photograph. In the end, the rain drops dotting his Stetson and the touching moment of wiping away his tears with the gloved hand combined to provide a moment that accurately reflected the grief of this family that is so engrained in the police force. Access to these events like this humanizes tragedy. Months later their father contacted me. He was touched by the coverage and requested photos to remember the day.

REST IN PEACE: People gather around a beached humpback whale that died during low tide in White Rock, B.C., on Tuesday, June 12, 2012. A young hump-back whale found entangled in fishing net has died after grounding itself on White Rock beach, south of Vancouver. Department of Fisheries and Oceans marine mammal co-ordinator Paul Cottrell said the severely emaciated young whale was first spotted as water receded from the sandy, tidal flats early Tuesday morn-ing.

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: I wanted to make a photograph of this dead beached whale that showed the environment and told the story of the people who gathered to watch, pay their respects and take photographs. I set the timer on the camera to fire after 10 sec-onds and quickly raised it up into the air on a monopod to capture an image. I took a rough guess on the angle and height and after a dozen or so attempts I was able to make this image. Seeing how far out the tide is, the large crowd gathering around, and the flow-ers left on the whale all come together to sum up the story nicely in a single image.

27 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 28

REMEMBERING THOSE WHO SERVED: Annie Johnson burns sweetgrass and sage during a National Aborigi-nal Veterans Day ceremony at the Victory Square Cenotaph in Vancouver, B.C., on Thursday November 8, 2012. The ceremony is held to remember Aborigi-nal, Metis and Inuit men and women who served in the Canadian Forces.

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: I looked for an angle that would highlight the smoke that was blowing into Annie Johnson’s face. Luckily the sun was coming from behind and a building that was in the shade provided a dark background to highlight the smoke, making an im-age that I am pleased with.

PROUD TO BE CANADIAN: Adrian Pernalete, left, and his wife Virginia Pernalete, right, embrace their children; 10-year-old Andrea, bottom centre, and 13-year-old Adrian as they leave the stage after being sworn in as Canadian citizens during a special Canada Day citizenship ceremony for 60 people in Vancouver, B.C., on Sunday July 1, 2012. The family is originally from Venezuela.

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: I’m extremely proud that I was able to capture this moment and convey the absolute beaming joy these fam-ily members were experiencing when they received their Canadian citizenship during a Canada Day ceremony. I had stepped away from the ceremony to an area away from the stage in the hopes of making a photograph away from the handshakes and flag waving that was taking place. I waited in this area for quite a while and suddenly heard this utter joy over my shoulder as the family all ran towards each other after officially receiving their documents. One-by-one they all met in this area away from the stage before returning to their seats. I was overjoyed to see everything come together almost perfectly – you can see the mom’s documents and the expressions on the faces of every family member, dad kissing his daughter and all four embracing to celebrate what they accom-

Darryl Dyck graduated from Journalism program at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology with a Photojournalism speciality in 1998. He freelanced for a number of years and filled in for injury and maternity leaves before taking a staff job with The Edmonton Sun in 2005 where he was employed until 2008. Dyck then decided to leave, move to Vancouver and freelance once again – this time for The Canadian Press and The Globe and Mail. You can see he work at www.darryldyck.ca and http://blog.darryldyck.ca . And you can contact him on Twitter at @DarrylDyck

For more exclusive content, stories, inter-views about

journalism turn to Media by visiting http://www.caj.ca/?cat=4

You can also find issues that go back to the spring of 1998

29 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 30

CAJ Award Winner Scoop

The Canadian Press – Canada’s torture memos – Jim Bronskill

One of the benefits of covering a beat for a number of years is

the relative ease with which one can spot noteworthy shifts in government policy and place those changes in context.

That was really the key to uncovering and writing about Canada’s torture memos — the story that captured the Scoop category at the CAJ Awards.

The Canadian government’s stand on torture was shaped in the middle of the last decade by the sobering Maher Arar affair.

Arar, as many know, was brutalized in a Damascus prison after being shipped to Syria by the Americans -- very likely because of shoddy information from the RCMP.

My story — actually a series of pieces published throughout 2012 — has deep roots in the Arar tragedy and the cases of three other Arab-Canadians — Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad El Maati and Muayyed Nureddin — also tortured in Syria.

Those who oppose torture say it is not only a barbaric violation of fundamental human rights but also a highly unreliable method of intelligence-gathering because people being abused will often say anything to make the pain stop.

As a result of the Arar bungling,

government agencies including the RCMP enacted numerous changes to how they collected and shared information in cases where torture may have been a factor.

In fact, the government claimed to have implemented all 23 recommendations from Justice Dennis O’Connor, who led a federal inquiry into the Arar file — including his call for policies to include specific direc-tions “aimed at eliminating any pos-sible Canadian complicity in torture, avoiding the risk of other human rights abuses and ensuring accountability.”

There were indications in briefing notes released under the access law in 2010 that CSIS had quietly em-braced an approach to information use that clashed with the O’Connor recom-mendations.

Maclean’s columnist Aaron Wherry pointed out in a September 2011 column that a report on Afghan detain-ees by the Canadian Security Intel-ligence Service watchdog noted the existence of a new federal directive on information sharing, issued the previ-ous December.

From what he could glean without seeing the full text of the directive, Wherry concluded it signalled an openness to using information tainted by torture.

I sent off an Access-to-Information

request for the document — and after a short wait the directive was released without redactions.

My Feb. 7, 2012, story revealed details of the letter from Public Safety Minister Vic Toews to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, directing the spy agency to use information pos-sibly derived through torture in cases where public safety is at stake.

The order represented a reversal of policy for the Conservative government, which once insisted that CSIS would discard information if there was any inkling it might be tainted.

Toews had quietly told CSIS the government now expected the spy service to “make the protection of life and property its overriding priority.”

The story reverberated, touching off a national debate about Canada’s re-spect for human rights and compliance with international law.

I produced several follow-up stories — also using information requested under the access law by myself or others — that laid bare the contents of a fuller follow-up directive to CSIS, looked at the workings of an internal spy agency committee on interpret-ing the directive, and showed that the Mounties and the federal border agency were given similar instructions.

These later directives outlined

the process for deciding whether to share information when there is a “substantial risk” that doing so might result in someone in custody being abused.

The ministerial instructions sparked staunch Conservative defenses, drew fiery denunciations from Opposition MPs in the House of Commons, stirred outrage among human-rights groups and prompted concern on the part of the United Nations Committee Against Torture.

An April seminar at the University of Ottawa was devoted to discussion of the memos.

In a Feb. 8, 2012, editorial, “Torture is always wrong”, the Ottawa Citizen said, “At a time when a torturous regime is massacring its own people in Syria, Canada’s acceptance of a grey

zone on torture is deeply wrong.” Lorne Waldman, a lawyer who

represented Arar, said the information-sharing directives showed the govern-ment hadn’t learned anything about shunning brutality.

“It’s extremely disappointing that after all of these years, and after all of the effort, we’re not any further ahead than we were.”

Arar was also dismayed.In a blog posting on the initial federal

directive, he said that instead of clarifying Canada’s position on the use of information obtained under torture, the document “adds confusion to an already ambiguous and polarized debate.

“One thing is also sure: this directive is sending the wrong message to dictatorial regimes; you

torture and we will return the favour by accepting and using your information.”

Pursuing these stories reinforced my belief that making the time to file Access-to-Information requests and keeping an eye out for releases to other applicants can pay solid divi-dends. After all, the majority of those who seek records under the informa-tion laws are not journalists and have no intention of writing about what is released.

The process also reminded me that sometimes the biggest clues can be found in the tiniest footnotes, and that we should follow the stories of others, as well as our own.

Jim Bronskill is an award-winning reporter at The Canadian Press, specializ-ing in security and intelligence, the RCMP and justice-related issues.

Jim Bronskill explains how he uncovered the torture memos which forced the government to answer questions about how much it had really learned from the Arar affair.

REDEMPTION: Maher Arar bows his head at a news conference discussing the federal government’s apology and compensation package, in Ottawa Friday Jan. 26, 2007. Arar was wrongfully deported to, detained, and tortured in Syria.

PHOTO CREDIT: Canadian Press/Tom Hanson

RECOMMENDING WAYS TO AVOID FUTURE INJUSTICES: Justice Dennis O’Connor holds up a copy of his final report relating to the Maher Arar inquiry, at a news conference in Ottawa Tuesday Dec 12, 2006.

PHOTO CREDIT: Canadian Press /Tom Hanson

31 MEDIA SPRING 2013 32

On my crime beat, I specialize in gangs and organized crime

and have great insight into the many factions battling it out for control of B.C.’s lucrative drug trade.

The violence has gotten so ex-treme in recent years that as soon as someone is killed, I can draw on my knowledge of what’s been going on to provide exclusive details to readers about the conflict and those involved in it.

I did that in early January 2012 when Duhre, who I had known for years, was shot to death in the lobby of a five-star hotel in front of shocked patrons.

And in subsequent follows that week, I was able to provide the public

with context, some thoughts from Duhre himself, about the dead-end life, and a link to a shooting just a few days later.

This is the second year in a row Kim has won this category. In 2011, she won for her story about gangster Jonathan Bacon.

He was shot outside a Kelowna hotel in that same year. An award-winning crime reporter whose career spans nearly 30 years, Kim also wrote a book about the Air India bombing in 2005 called Loss of Faith: How the Air-India Bombers Got Away with Murder. Her blog, The Real Scoop peels back the veil of her crime beat.

CAJ Award Winner Daily Excellence

Vancouver Sun – Brazen killing may be gang retaliation/Sandip was shot to death – Kim Bolan

Kim Bolan is one of the bravest journalists in the country. She covers crime in Vancouver, work-

ing contacts and living with the reality that the people about whom she wirtes settle scores with

guns. She has also written extensively about the Air India bombing and the death of Canadian

journalist, Tara Singh Hayer, the still-unsolved murder we’ve covered in Media magazine. Bolan

endures threats to her personal safety and that of her family, yet continues to dig, write and then

write some more. The following is what this award-winning journalist and author submitted to

the Canadian Association of Journalist judges in describing her stories.

To download this form, please visit the CAJ website .

CAJ Award Winner Print Feature

An editor approached and said she wanted me to write a profile about

Chris Skinner, a teenager who had died two years ago after a night of binge drink-ing.

I write long features for The Hamilton Spectator. One might think I would relish tackling an assignment like this; painting a portrait of a youth who had died tragically, essentially by his own hand.

To me big profile pieces fall into two categories – either the subject is well-known to most readers or is unknown. The latter category is typically an easier story to craft – the subject may be excited about receiving attention from a reporter, his or her family and friends might be willing to participate. You have a blank canvass to work with; you are introducing the public to a character.

But the Skinner piece was in the former category. The teenager’s story received plenty of coverage in the media, both when he died, and during a public inquest into his death that had just begun when I was assigned the piece.

In one sense the story was there on a platter: previously reported details of his death, more details coming out of the inquest, some quotes here and there from friends and teachers about who Chris had been.

But I felt anxiety about the piece. My goal was to write a story that had not been told, to take it deeper and broader. I was given about a week to research and write. Were readers tired of the Skinner story? Could I find new sources? I was not optimistic.

As I have so often discovered, the key is going somewhere, being in a place that is

pertinent to the story, feeling the vibe, and perhaps using it as a scene. I was hoping that place would be Chris’s high school. My high school days many years ago at

A.B. Lucas in London, Ont. were the best of times, playing football, girls, hanging with the boys. It was all so fresh to me still.

After contacting a couple of Chris’s teachers I found the one who I was told knew him best. I met Nathan Tidridge at

the school. He was a tremendous inter-view, breaking down his sense of Chris. Now I could see and hear the teenager.

As I was leaving the school, I watched bustle in the hallways, stu-dents leaving for the day. Then I saw a boy sitting on the steps in the atrium strumming a guitar, with a girl sitting beside him. The atrium was where Chris used to hang. And Chris played guitar in a band. I stood watching the scene for a few moments then returned to my car and scribbled in my note-pad what would essen-tially become the lede for my story. I felt the shiver go through me that I feel on those occasions where a lede or turn of phrase rings true with me.

The other afternoon, a Friday, teenagers flowed in all directions, a jumble of hoodies and cellphones and backpacks and water bottles, headed for the weekend and the rest of their lives. Most students had gone when a boy with short hair and fair skin

sat down near the top of the pale blue coloured steps in the atrium of Waterdown District High School. Another student used to sit at that spot all the time; a lanky boy in a black leather jacket, nursing a coffee, splaying out his legs like a basketball player on the bench waiting to enter the

game. This boy used to sit on the steps in the natural light and just watch, taking in his world. His name was Chris Skinner.

Then I drove to the cemetery where Chris is buried. It was a cold February day,

windy and raining. I took notes at the plot where teens had left mementos. Contrast the scene of life and light inside the high school where Chris once loomed large, with the cold and dark at the cemetery

where the youth incongruously lay. Down the street, into the old village,

beside the creek and train tracks, the wind howled through the cemetery and a hard rain fell. This is where Christopher Brian Skinner’s story ended, after the mu-sic and laughter and possibility had dis-solved into a blur of tears and questions, fear and anger, memorials and tattoos.

The rest of the piece was rolling back the narrative to Chris’s childhood and his road to death. I exchanged detailed emails with his mother. She had, as I predicted, not wanted to speak to a reporter. I convinced her to do the email thing. I asked questions, she answered, I followed up with more, and still more. I felt her loosening up, trusting me, she quoted from Chris’s journal (“I will fulfill my potential,” he had written.) I attended a few days of the inquest, not so much for the content of the proceedings, but to see Chris’s mom, dad, and sister in person, to just watch.

I heard that Chris’s old band was play-ing at a tiny bar in Hamilton. I debated going. I had enough detail already, didn’t I? It was a freezing Saturday night. I didn’t want to go, but I did. I interviewed his bandmates, heard and felt their music. Later, I emailed one of the guys and asked about songs they played and lyrics they sang. I was hoping Chris had written or inspired the last song. And it was true.

Chris wrote the words: “I’ll wake up craving the new day, inhaling the fresh air, pumping through my veins. I won’t stop, I can’t stop now / Cause we are all raised in the fall / We learn our lessons in the spring / Waiting on the summer to change everything.”

When I read the words I felt the shiver again. It is a theme I have returned to in my work. What are the permanent things in a life? A boy with everything before him had died and gone. But some things last forever.

The surviving band did not write the lyrics to that last song. To conclude the feature, I wrote: The words belong to Chris Skinner, and always will.

End of story.

Jon Wells writes features for The Hamilton Spectator. You can read his story at: http://www.thespec.com/news-story/2235155--he-sang-with-all-his-heart-/

The Hamilton Spectator – “He sang with all his heart”– Jon Wells

How do you tell people something new about a teenager whose death had been al-ready making headlines? This dilemma is one that faces many journalists assigned to cover events such as coroners’ inquests that investigate how the person died and what lessons can be learned. Finding something new was Jon Wells’ challenge, one that frankly he dreaded. But his account teaches us valuables lessons about effective sto-rytelling: argue for time away from the daily grind; get out of the office; talk to people who can tell stories about the subject of your profile.

33 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 34

35 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 36

JHR/CAJ Award Winner Human Rights Reporting

“Seeking Safety” began with a simple

question – why are so many Roma of Hungar-ian origins ending up as refugees in Canada?

In 2011, more than 4000 Hungarian Roma arrived, seeking asylum. The Canadian govern-ment expressed con-cern, and Immigration minister, Jason Kenney described many of the claimants as “bogus”. Despite numerous refu-gee claims asserting that Roma were the targets of racial violence, the government and many members of the Immigration and Refugee Board consid-ered Hungary to be a “safe” and democratic country. The government introduced a new immigration bill that would formalize that status by putting Hungary on a list of safe countries, which would effectively make it near impossible for its citizens to seek asy-lum here. Is Hungary a safe country for its significant Roma population? We decided to visit Hungary and see for ourselves.

We determined that the best way to tell our story was to spend time with a Roma family about to leave Hungary to seek asylum in Canada, to learn of their motiva-tions, and to find Roma who were about

to be deported back to Hungary. Both scenarios proved difficult. Distrustful of authorities, no Roma wanted to expose themselves in this way. They were afraid to show their intentions before leaving Hungary and those about to be deported didn’t want the authorities in Hungary to know that they had failed. It was being reported that Hungarian local authori-ties were targeting failed refugees and threatening to withhold social services when they returned. Most wanted to do so quietly.

Producer Diane Grant spent weeks at the Roma Community Centre (RCC) in To-ronto to no avail. In the meantime, we had decided to pursue known Roma activists in Hungary, the main one being ex-European

Parliamentary MP Viktoria Mo-hacsi, an outspoken Roma politician

and activist who had suddenly disappeared from the limelight and hadn‟t given media interviews for more than a year. Fortu-itously, Diane unexpectedly bumped into her at the RCC. When we met her, she had been in Canada for several months with her three young children. She was volunteering at the community centre, translating for the hundreds of Roma seek-ing help with their refugee applications – a daunting task, since most refugees from Hungary speak no English.

Ironically, she too was seeking asylum from Hungary.

Mohacsi had received numerous death threats back in Hungary and had politi-cal and personal reasons for remaining

CBC News: The National – Seeking Safety - Nahlah Ayed; Diane Grant

Then-federal immigration minister, Jason Kenney, had made examples of them. Supposedly, the Roma symbolized

all that was wrong with the immigration system: it was too easy for people with bogus safety claims to“game the

system”, in the words of the influencial cabinet minister. Reporters dutifully covered his news conferences. Some

media outlets even dug deeper to profile this community, its struggles in Hungary, and why certain members

wanted out. But the story cried out for a different treatment, one that would follow a person`s or a family’s journey

from Hungary to Canada. This is what Nahlah Ayed and Diane Grant accomplished. The following is an edited

version of their submission to the judges. silent, but she listened to our plans to go back to Hungary and decided to help. She responded to emails asking for help and advice. She also visited Roma community neighbourhoods in Toronto to find out if there were any families willing to go public. One day she connected us with a family members in Hungary who had booked their tickets for Canada and were willing to have us record their preparations to leave, and then follow them on their voyage to Canada.

In Budapest, we met the family and spent some time with them discussing their plans, and interviewing them. Then photojournalist, Ed Ou, jumped at the opportunity to spend a few days with them recording one of the most important decisions they had ever made – to leave the country of their birth and venture into unknown territory – Canada.

All along, Diane had attempted to per-suade Mohacsi to talk to us. On one of our final shoot days in Toronto, just before we headed over to Hungary, Mohacsi decided to give us an interview. She knew that she was putting herself at risk, but decided that she needed to speak out about what she felt was an intolerable situation in Hungary, a situation which might one day lead to civil war or even worse, a second Holocaust, as she describes it.

Viktoria‟s Mohacsi’s story described police cover-ups and alleged secret service involvement in a number of high-profile serial killings, in Romani communities in Hungary, culminating with the government at the time declaring the incriminating evi-dence a state secret for 80 years. Mohacsi

felt that her life was in danger because she knew too much. It was a challenge trying to corroborate her story and we had several conversations with (former and current) diplomats, politicians and activists to get to the heart of her claims. Eventually, we managed to find a Hungarian history professor in Ottawa who was eminently qualified to talk about the Hungarian gov-ernment’s penchant for state secrets and repression.

Our visit to Hungary revealed the extent of the segregation, intolerance and misery which Hungarian Roma must endure. In addition to numerous accounts of the vio-lence Roma must live with that we heard, we also saw and reported about their hor-rible living conditions on the hundreds of settlements they call home.

We met and interviewed members of the extreme right wing party that singles out Roma as the root of all of Hungary’s ills. We attended a rally for this party, at which Nazi material was being sold openly on the streets.

Our visit to the area of Miskolc, where most of the claimants to Canada come from, revealed the tension between ethnic and Roma Hungarians which the latter seek to escape.

One Jobbik party representative made it plain that returning Hungarians were not welcome. Another said that criminality was a trait Roma could not help. A family that had been sent back from Canada, had to once again endure life on a settlement, with their girl attending class in a room marked C, for “cigan”.

The response to our documentary in

Hungary was swift. Within hours of broadcast, numerous Hungarian news or-ganizations were publishing excerpts from our story. Viktoria Mohasci has since given several interviews to the Hungarian press.

The Roma Community Centre‟s execu-tive director, Gina Casngi Robar, has been presenting our documentary in Toronto el-ementary schools and recently to students at U of T. She recently wrote: “It is a great educational tool that I will use for years to come!

We believe perhaps the greatest change this documentary produced was simple awareness among Canadians, as evidenced by emails and calls we received from many people at many levels who simple said “I had no idea.”

Leading up to the passage of the bill which declared Hungary a safe country, Mr. Kenney visited, and tweeted and spoke about what he saw and discovered there about Roma people’s experiences. But Canadians were not getting the full picture. Our documentary provided that.

Credit List:Reporter: Nahlah Ayed Producer: Diane Grant Photojournalist: Ed OuAssoc. Producer: Tashauna ReidCamera: Pascal Leblond; Peter ZinEditor: Sheldon Beldick

You can see the story at: http://www.cbc.ca/thenational/indepthanalysis/roma/index.html

UNCERTAIN FUTURE: Claudia Balogh (middle) hugs a relative, as her husband Miklos (left) looks on in their home in Budapest, Hunga-ry, Oct. 22, 2012. A family of musi-cians, they are planning to flee the country to Canada after incidents where they were attacked by anti-Roma thugs, making them feel unsafe in their own country PHOTO CREDIT/REPORTAGE: Ed Ou

HAPPIER TIMES: Members of the Bologh family celebrate with beers after making it safely to Toronto as asylum seekers on Nov. 4, 2012.

PHOTO CREDIT/REPORTAGE: Ed Ou

37 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 38

CAW/CAJ Award Winner Labour Reporting

Over the past year, Canadian me-dia has paid growing attention to unpaid internships and their

effects on young workers. Media accounts raise questions about

the legitimacy and legality of internships and the mounting pressure young workers feel to accept unpaid internships as a first step to full-time employment.

What began in the Middle Ages as ap-prenticeship training to bring young work-ers up into a system of paid employment has become a way for companies to cash in on young workers’ passion for their craft or desire to secure meaningful—or any—employment.

It is no longer surprising to read of unemployed workers in their 50s forced to accept internships, or of people bidding for internships in auctions to pay for the privilege of working for free. Amid rising youth unemployment and crushing student debt, internships have become an urgent labour issue.

Our article, the cover story of Bri-arpatch magazine’s 2012 labour issue,

takes a deeper look at the internship phenomenon, but begins from the press-ing question: what should be done? What makes our article unique is its focus on youth-driven opposition to unpaid and

low-paid internships. The bulk of media coverage to date focuses on enumerating the problems with internships. Our article shifts the conversation to how young workers are fighting back.

We wanted to understand how the labour movement is responding to the rise of an army of unpaid interns that performs work that, in many cases, used to be performed by paid employees. Our article tracks the growing efforts by current and former interns, their allies, cultural work-ers and other organizations to challenge unpaid internships, in Canada and beyond.

We interviewed four organizations di-rectly involved in intern organizing, drew on interviews we had conducted with other labour organizations in the cultural indus-tries, and spent months reviewing articles, research, and commentary on the issue.

The piece emerged out of a three-year project studying responses to precarious employment by workers in the cultural, media, and creative industries.

The challenge of writing a piece like this is finding interns to interview, as many do not want to risk damaging their reputa-tion or the promise of a future reference, which is often the only payment for doing an internship.

Although difficult to include in our piece, interns’ voices of dissent are becoming louder via social media and in their daily lives. This article has played an

important role in facilitating that voice: the article has been widely shared on social media, including Facebook and Twitter, and garnered us an invitation to speak about the issue at the Canadian University Press’s NASH 75 conference in January and on Redeye, a syndicated program on Vancouver Cooperative Radio.

Our aim in writing this article was to spark an important conversation about the challenges of unpaid labour in today’s economy, and this article is proving to continue to fuel the conversation.

Nicole Cohen recently completed her PhD in the Graduate Program in Com-munication and Culture at York Univer-sity and is an assistant professor at the Institute of Communications, Culture and Information Technology at the University of Toronto Missassagua. She is the co-founder of Shameless magazine.

Greig de Peuter teaches and studies in the department of communication studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. He is col-laborating with Enda Brophy and Nicole Cohen on a Social Sciences and Humani-ties Research Council-supported research project called “Flexible Workforces Respond to the Creative Economy: The

Recomposition of Labour Politics in an Age of Precarity (2011-2014).”

Enda Brophy teaches in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser Univer-sity. He received his PhD in 2008 from the Department of Sociology at Queen’s University, and more recently completed a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Political Science at York University. His areas of research interest include the political economy of communi-cation; communication and social change.

You`ll find their story at: http://briar-patchmagazine.com/articles/view/interns-unite-you-have-nothing-to-lose-literally

Related links: Canadian Intern Associationhttps://www.facebook.com/CanadianIn-

ternAssociation

Desperate graduates work for free: GoarWithin the last five years, unpaid intern-

ships have proliferated, lowering the floor of the job market.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/com-mentary/2013/03/11/desperate_gradu-ates_work_for_free_goar.html

Briarpatch – Interns, unite! (you have nothing to lose - literally) – Greig de Peuter, Nicole Cohen, Enda Brophy

According to Statistics Canada, 14.3 percent for youths aged 15 to 24 were unemployed in 2012. This percentage is more than twice the unemployment rate for so-called “core-age adults aged 25 to 54. These figures neglect to take into account young people who have given up looking, those who are under-employed or toiling away in precarious jobs. With dismal statistics such as these, it`s no wonder that employers, including many media outlets, have no trouble recruiting young workers to toil for free. As the title of the Briarpatch article suggests, young people literally have “nothing to lose”. The following is an edited version of the explanation that the Nicole Cohen, Enda Brophy (pictured in the middle) and Grieg de Peuter submitted to the judges.

PAY ME: This was one of the more colourlful slogans scrawled on a sign at the peak of the Occupy movement. Held up by young people who stand to lose large from financial-crisis fallout, placards like these are refreshingly frank refusals of the mantra that we must be willing to do “more for less” nowadays. Excerpt from INTERNS, UNITE! (you have nothing to lose – literally!)

PHOTO CREDIT: http://www.tumblr.com

DESPERATE FOR A JOB:``Our article, the cover story of Briarpatch magazine’s 2012 labour issue, takes a deeper look at the internship phenome-non, but begins from the pressing ques-tion: what should be done?``

PHOTO CREDIT: Vaikunthe Banerjee/The Peak: student newspaper of Simon Fraser University

SUMMER 2013 40

CAJ/CNW Award Winner Student Award of Excellence

“Why should I talk to you? asked Jen-nifer, a former child soldier with the

Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). I had to answer this question numerous times by the 40 ex-combatants I interviewed during the summer of 2011. Frankly, Jennifer’s question was difficult to answer.

A great deal has been written about the 30,000 children abducted by the LRA in a conflict that ravaged Northern Uganda for more than two decades. These children were forced to kill friends and family members, to loot and to terrorize.

Since their escape from the LRA, these former child soldiers have been inter-rogated by journalists who parachuted in seeking juicy, sensational, murder- and rape-centric, headline-grabbing stories, never to be seen again by the participants.

So given this context and researcher fatigue, why should women like Jennifer have spoken to me?

The answers I gave Jennifer were to un-derpin the message of “The Girls Of War” article that I was to write for The Toronto Star in the spring of 2012.

In my first year of Carleton University’s Masters of Journalism program, I wrote an assignment about former child soldiers immigrating to Canada, and the issues they faced upon their integration here. Fol-lowing an interview with the Child Soldier Initiative’s deputy director, Tanya Zayed confided in me.

“If you really want to tell a story no-one

else is telling, look into the challenges facing female child soldiers struggling to reintegrate into their post-conflict com-munities.”

This was to become the topic for my Masters thesis and, bolstered by The International Development Research Centre journalism award, I conducted field research in Uganda for three months in 2011. My thesis became an online mul-timedia project.

Even before I left for Northern Uganda, I learned that even though the guns have been silent there for years, life for these former child soldiers is still incredibly difficult: they continue to face stigmati-zation from their communities and their own families; they have missed out on an education; they suffer from severe post-traumatic stress disorder; and they need more counseling and vocational skills training programs.

But these challenges are am-plified for female ex-combatants in what is a highly patriarchal society. Fewer job options are open to them, and unlike the former male soldiers, they have to come back to more responsibility, including chil-dren to support.

So I told Jennifer that I wanted to ad-dress the West’s misconceptions about child soldiers.

We’ve absorbed the media image of a child soldier as a teenage boy gripping a Kalashnikov, a necklace of bullets draped around his narrow shoulders, sky-high on a cocktail of drugs and booze. And yet, more than a quarter – or approximately 8,000 - of the children abducted by the LRA were girls.

And contrary to another common misconception, female child soldiers were more than just bush wives and sex slaves. Women’s roles in the LRA are fluid,

overlapping and multiple: provider, porter, mother, fighter, “wife.”

I also wanted to show that life after the LRA often is not necessarily an improve-ment. Many of the women I interviewed said life was better with the LRA, while others consider suicide every day.

Lastly, I told her I wanted to give her the ability to help tell her own story. This “anthropographic” approach led to Jen-nifer and four other participants receiving digital cameras to document the daily challenges they are negotiating.

But in addition to research fatigue, there were other obstacles to investigating this topic.

Working closely with these women for months and witnessing the difficulties they face as civilians challenged my journalist’s notion of objectivity. I quickly realized that writing these types of stories force you to adopt a viewpoint, disregarding Olympian objectivity.

However, I still had to try and retain to certain journalistic principles, namely fact-checking, triangulating and corroborating the women’s stories. Some of them embel-lished their stories, or simply told me what they thought I wanted to hear. This was not only an obstacle attached to my craft,

but one that was all the more difficult to address considering my empathy.

Another obstacle I faced in covering this story was challenging the over-simplistic notion of the child soldier as victim. Women like Alice from The Star piece, unabashedly took great pride in having been a soldier because it gave them an elevated social status they now miss.

“In the bush, you can get what you want from people because you have a gun — but here I do not have a gun. In the bush, we were free to do anything we want without much control. You could ambush vehicles, you could loot,” she said.

It was difficult to come to terms with this complex victim-perpetrator relation-ship, but doing so ultimately led to a more nuanced understanding of child soldiers.

But how has a 3,000-word feature transformed the lives of these female ex-combatants? The publicity from the piece helped in auctioning off my photographs and the women women’s photographs. The money helped them pay their children’s school fees and start small businesses, al-lowing them a degree of financial security.

For (student) journalists wanting to do similar work: I’ve found that some of the best journalism comes from embedding

oneself in a community for extensive periods of time, and as part of this seek-ing out the insights of community-based organizations and civilians whose perspec-tives are often overwhelmed or silenced by the agendas of international media and non-governmental organizations.

To this end, don’t be afraid to chal-lenge popular stereotypes and to embrace a journalism of attachment if the story is reflective of the everyday experiences of the people with whom you’re working.

Marc Ellison is an award-winning data- and photojournalist who has worked in Canada, Uganda and South Sudan. He has an MSc in Computer Science and has just completed his MA in Journalism at Carleton Univer-sity. Ellison has produced work for 60 Minutes, The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, CBC, iPolitics, The Vancou-ver Sun, OpenFile, Canadian Geo-graphic, Radio Miraya (South Sudan), and Mega FM (Uganda). You can reach him at marc.e.ellison@gmail.com , his twitter handle is @marceel-lison, and you can see his work at http://www.marcellison.com/.

Toronto Star/Carleton University – The Girls of War – Marc Ellison

Marc Ellison’s story about the struggles former female child soldiers in North-ern Uganda still face, began with a simple, but vexing question. The answer provided the focus for the story that he was seeking.

WHY SHOULD I TALK TO YOU?: Jennifer Apio did eventually talk. Here, she takes a break from the inter-view to feed her newborn son”

PHOTO CREDIT: MARC ELLISON

TELLING THEIR OWN STORIES: Mary Achege, a former child soldier, tries out a digital camera that helped her docu-ment the reintegration challenges she faces.

PHOTO CREDIT: MARC ELLISON

39 MEDIA

41 MEDIA

NNA Award Winner Multimedia Feature

In the winter of 2001, I was sitting on a bus in Florida reading a copy of

the Orlando Sentinel. The paper had an entire special section – rich in detail, with comprehensive stories and vivid graph-ics – devoted to the release of data from the 2000 U.S. Census. It broke down the demographic data right down to the neigh-bourhood level. I thought, ‘Why we don’t do this in Canada?’

When I got home, I checked the CP database to see what kind of coverage we had given the census in past years. I found one superficial story from the 1996 census that focused only on the country’s popu-lation. Other media had given it similar treatment. I knew Canadians were about to fill out their census forms in May of 2001 and thought we could do better.

Before I could reach out to Statistics Canada, however, a totally serendipitous thing happened. I got a call out of the blue from Mike Sheridan, Statcan’s assistant chief statistician. In what would prove to be the first of many pleasant, surprisingly un-bureaucratic discussions with Statcan bureaucrats, Sheridan was blunt: it upset him that the census received so little me-dia coverage.

The government spent millions collect-ing all this information about Canadians and yet the public hardly heard about it, he said. Sheridan admitted his reasons were selfish: Statcan was seeing more and more people refusing to fill out census data, especially in rural parts of the country. He

figured if they saw and heard news stories about the census and how it related to their communities, they would see the value of filling out a census form. I told him that CP had the reach to deliver local census stories to hundreds of newspaper, radio, TV and online newsrooms across the country – if, and only if, Statistics Canada was willing to provide unprecedented co-operation.

I was skeptical, but Sheridan and his team delivered. Starting with the 2001 census, and continuing in 2006 and 2011, The Canadian Press was able to obtain customized databases for thousands of communities. This allowed us to create localized stories, graphics and mapping – right down to the neighbourhood level in the major urban centres – for the many clients that CP serves.

The moment the overnight census lockups end at 8:30 a.m., CP transmits hundreds of customized stories for our subscribers. We do it by writing a single “template” story and then developing a program that allowed the customized data-base we received from Statistics Canada to essentially “fill in the blanks.”

It was the first time CP’s editorial and IT departments had worked together on such a project and it had amazing effect of bringing our two worlds together. I was so proud to see Dave Campbell, CP’s IT Development Manager, standing on the stage at the Canadian War Museum as part of the team of editors, reporters, graphic

artists and videographers who accepted the 2012 NNA for Multimedia Feature.

But getting access to a deep dive of numbers was just part of the CP census project. We also devoted tremendous journalistic resources to figuring out what the numbers really meant. What did the statistics tell us about a society that was changing before our eyes? What was the impact of the changes? Was government policy adapting to reflect the needs of a new Canada?

The CP census project examined some fundamental issues facing the country.

“New census data shows Canada now has a higher proportion of seniors than ever before — a development that has crept up on society with far-reaching implications for health, finance, policy and everyday family relationships,” CP social affairs reporter Heather Scoffield wrote. (Editor’s note: Scoffield has been since named as CP’s Parliamentary bureau chief)

“At the same time, the latest tranche of 2011 census information shows a surpris-ing 11-per-cent resurgence of toddlers — a burst of growth in the under-five popula-tion that is a complete reversal of trend lines a decade ago and is rejuvenating every region of the country.”

Other stories on the census release on age examined the growing problem of age-ism – and the push back from baby boom-ers who once famously warned: “Never trust anyone over 30.”

We showed how the country’s chang-ing demographics had shifted the political fulcrum to Western Canada; how immigra-tion was the core reason for population growth but that it was almost exclusively an urban phenomenon; and how “Brady Bunch” families were becoming part of the norm of society, even though Statcan didn’t start measuring stepfamilies until 2011.

We asked respected demographer David Foot, author of the “Boom Bust & Echo” series of books, to write an essay on why Canadian governments and corporations should rethink the very concept of retire-ment to allow older Canadians to be both employed and retired at the same time.

“Changing demographics occur very slowly, and we’ve moved increasingly towards short-term incentives in the politi-cal system and in the economic system,” wrote Foot.

“Our politicians are elected for three or four-year terms, so they only have a couple of years in the middle to make a difference. Well, demographics don’t change much in a couple of years. In the private sector, we give our senior execu-tives annual bonuses, so they’re basically thinking one year at a time.

So senior decision makers are not think-ing long-term — and demographic change is long-term.”

And we had some fun. For the census release on families, we worked with Tynan Studio in Toronto to turn actors into a “typical” 1961 family – complete with

vintage clothes and Mad Men-style hair and makeup – to do a video and photo shoot that showed how the family unit had evolved over 50 years.

James McCarten, CP’s Ottawa News Editor, was the journalistic ringmaster who brought the stories and concepts together from our reporters across the country for every release of census data.

Graeme Roy, director of news photogra-phy, worked with our amazing photogra-phers and video team to produce compel-ling images.

CP artists Jeremy Agius and Sean Vokey did the maps, interactives and graphics. Developers Dave Campbell, Les Daviau and Rushdeep Singh created the databases with special help from Statcan IT staff Mary-Lynne Reid, Paul Schwets and Lyle Sather.

My main task was to bring Red Bull and assorted bags of junk food to the midnight census lockups at Statistics Canada HQ in Ottawa and let this great CP team work its multimedia magic.

You can see many of the components of CP’s census project here: http://thecanadi-anpress-census.ca/

Mapping the census: How we did itOne of the key components of The

Canadian Press’ NNA-winning multime-dia presentation of the 2012 census was how data was mapped, in some cases as detailed as the neighbourhood level. CP created a map for all of Canada, allow-ing people to zoom down as close as they

wanted. The Canadian Press’ interactive graphic artist Jeremy Agius explains how he did it:

We used a few different tools for map-ping. The open source QGIS was used to prep, process and combine the boundary files provided by Statistics Canada leading up to the project.

Following that, we relied on the Map-box platform. TileMill was used to merge data with boundary files and to visualize the data for each release.

This was then exported as ‘mbtiles’ – a single file containing bitmap tiles rep-resenting the country at multiple zoom levels and some associated data. This was uploaded to Mapbox servers for hosting following each lockup.

These map layers are then linked up to the user interface – written in html/javas-cript. When users interact with the map, embedded IDs are used to query additional data from a separate database.

Because users only ever have to down-load enough tiles to cover a single screen at a time – roughly nine small images – performance is much quicker than layering complex vector boundaries over a base map.

See the interactive CP census map here and take a “tour” of some of Canada’s most demographically interesting com-munities: http://thecanadianpress-census.ca/?graphics=communities-interactive-map

Scott White is The Canadian Press’ Editor-in-Chief.

The Canadian Press – Telling Canadians about Canadians – the multimedia team

When Statistics Canada rolls out the results of its census every five years, media outlets produce a steady stream of predictable stories. But the digital universe has placed more demands on our storytelling, forcing media outlets to think creatively. That’s exactly what The Canadian Press did in its multi-media coverage which dug into the data and told the tales behind the numbers. And as Scott White explains, the idea began germinat-ing after a serendipitous conversation.

SEEING IS BELIEVING: One of the key components of The Canadian Press’ NNA-winning multimedia presentation of the 2011 census was how data was mapped, in some cases as detailed as the neighbourhood level. The Canadian Press created a map for all of Canada, allowing people to zoom in as close as they wanted.PHOTO CREDIT: CP interactive graphic artist Jeremy Agius

THE EVOLVING FAMILY: The latest 2011 census data illustrates a very different version of Canada than the one that was familiar a half-century ago. The family photo of mom, dad and their 2.1 kids is now crowded with foster kids, grandpar-ents living in the family home, same-sex couples and moms going it alone. PHOTO CREDIT: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Leigh Tynan

SUMMER 2013 42

43 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 44

NNA Award Winner News Feature Photography

National Post – for a photo of a worker snoozing in the back during a mayor Rob Ford speech – Tyler Anderson

At times working as a newspa-per photographer, can feel like

Groundhog Day. At no point is this more true than when you’re covering local politics.

The City Hall beat in Toronto means staid press conferences, council meet-ings and formal luncheons. For variety, photo-ops may feature oversized gold scissors, new shovels, red ribbons and held handshakes.

It is an exercise in making some-thing from nothing — a skill at which most Canadian newspaper photogra-phers excel.

However, covering Rob Ford, To-ronto’s 64th mayor, has been different from day one. He is a larger-than-life character with a big personality and a distinct physical presence. He is often dogged by controversy; so it seems there is always a story to tell and a cast of characters to help you tell it.

But even the most dramatic political term has its share of the dull. Behind every storied life are the ordinary, perhaps tedious moments that we take for granted.

On May 1, 2012, I was assigned to photograph Ford while he spoke to the Toronto Real Estate Board at Sheridan Hotel. As he addressed the business lunch crowd and talked about city taxes and “city gravy,” I took some

safe and standard pictures of the mayor speaking from the podium.

It is always important to have a walk around and look at things from differ-ent angles and try to find something fresh and unique so with the safe pictures out of the way, I took a look behind the backdrop. The service staff had finished serving lunch and I found a man taking a quick nap. He was sitting on a banquet chair, his hands clasped in his lap and his head slumped almost to his shoulder. He looked as if he were about to fall from his seat.

Though he never woke up, his col-league sitting next to him shot me a look that he was unimpressed with my sense of humour. In truth, it was an uninteresting speech and like me, this man was less then entertained.

It is almost impossible to imagine being able to take this picture now. No-body sleeps when Rob Ford speaks. In Toronto these days, journalists and the public wait with baited breath to hear what the mayor might say or do next. Ford’s mayoralty has become a circus, embroiled with allegations of crack-cocaine abuse and association with Somali drug dealers; it has all of the trappings of a Lindsay Lohan-type celebrity scandal, along with a public that is hungry for information and insa-

tiable. In other words, a news photog-rapher’s dream.

It’s interesting how quickly things can change. This image is even more compelling, and amusing, to me now, given recent events. It represents the calm before the storm. To me, this photograph also represents the impor-tance of having a second, or deeper look at any situation. In a culture of fast consumption, where images are snapped and shared in seconds via cellphones, tablets, etc., taking time to explore a subject or a story can be a gift and separates professional photo-journalists from the rest.

The public is bombarded with manufactured and controlled imagery — carefully curated Facebook pho-tos, photo-shopped magazine ads. As photographers, we could provide the public with another picture of the mayor standing in front of a screen, emblazoned with the city’s logo. Or we can dig around for something more meaningful.

There is a story behind every photo — and another story behind that.

Tyler Anderson is a staff pho-tographer with the National Post. You can see some of his work at: tylerandersonphoto.com and con-tact him at tyanderson@nationalpost.com.

It could have been a boring photo of a Toronto mayor giving a dull speech, the kind of assignment that news photographers dread. But then Tyler Anderson spot-ted something behind the curtain that made that boredom seem laughable, given the controversy that dogs Rob Ford.

TIME FOR A POWER NAP: A staffer dozes off behind a black curtain as Toronto mayor Rob Ford speaks during a Toronto Real Estate Board luncheon in Toronto, Ontario, Friday, June 1, 2012.

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45 MEDIA

NNA Award Winner Beat Reporting

Most of the stories I wrote over the course of last year about the First

Nations struggle to find prosperity and peace of mind very nearly didn’t happen.

My first trip up north was in the spring, a last-minute decision by The Canadian Press to accompany chiefs on a tour of isolated reserves that were being crushed by addictions to OxyContin and other prescription drugs. Had the story been told already? After all, the world knew full well there were plenty of addictions problems among remote First Nations.

But chiefs were telling me prescription drug abuse was tearing apart their com-munities in ways alcohol never did. The drugs were easily smuggled in; and their costs were so high that families were go-ing without food, selling their furniture and turning to crime just to buy enough to stave off the horrific effects of withdrawal.

So we made the call to take the trip, and uncovered a human tragedy that extended far beyond addiction. In some communi-ties, almost every adult was an addict, leading to completely dysfunctional com-munities.

My time in each community was lim-ited, however, and I was having trouble finding anyone to talk first-hand about his experience. In the streets were chil-dren. Mostly everyone else was sleeping it off. But it turned out that the children were The Story, and the sole hope for the addicted adults, the well-wishers, the government social workers and the natural resource companies looking for a local workforce.

In Cat Lake, just as I was heading out

to the airport, one of the social workers passed me a photo copy of a letter some of the Grade 6 children had written to their parents. In black and white, they listed the pain and anguish addictions had piled upon their families and their daily life. The story basically wrote itself.

We decided to visit the same region again last winter, this time to write about Stephen Harper’s “responsible resource development” agenda at work. The story was supposed to be about the lengths governments and companies were going to, to foster support among First Nations for massive mining development across Northern Ontario.

I wanted to go to a couple of communi-ties when mining companies were coming to town so that I could document how they reached out and how they were received. So the company Christmas parties set up in a chain of First Nations seemed ideal. I lined up invitations from the various chiefs, contacted the companies, got plane tickets for myself and a photographer. And then things fell apart, not once but twice.

First, one chief withdrew his invita-tion. It was too busy at Christmas. There would be other times to visit. And so on. He would not budge, and I knew I would not get anywhere without his go-ahead. So I re-routed my trip to include a different reserve.

But then, the day before we left, a second chief pulled out. There had been yet another death, and most of the youth in the community were on suicide watch. The Medevac was taking teenagers into Thunder Bay almost every day.

It was tempting to cancel the whole thing, since there were snowstorms in the offing. But there was no refund on the plane tickets either. So I made a final effort, calling everyone I knew to open doors for me and salvage my trip. I was told repeatedly that no media goes there alone, on their own timing. I needed a guide. At last, the chief of Marten Falls said we could come. There was no hotel, and we should bring our own food. So we packed our sleeping bags, some snacks and our equipment, and left.

Our luck turned. We skirted the snow storms, found a place to stay, and were welcomed in every community. The story however, was a difficult one to tell. The intricacies of global commodities markets, environmental assessments and domestic politics were playing themselves out on reserves that were reeling from decades of poor education, overcrowding, mental health challenges and rampant addiction.

I met one woman working as a social worker in the band office. She didn’t have much to say to me at first. She told me she had no formal training for her job, but did her best under the circumstances. The circumstances turned out to be working all day and most of each night, breaking up fights and dealing with family meltdowns. I asked, hoping to draw her out, whether many people on the reserve were addicted to prescription drugs. The question turned the quiet woman into a furious, loud woman who yelled right at me. Yes, she hollered, almost everyone.

And in the midst of that, mining compa-nies and governments try to speak gently

about natural resource development.Bringing those elements together in a

narrative form that would capture read-ers’ attention took the fortuitous help of Idle-No-More. As I was compiling my stories and sorting out how best to bring to life the layers and layers of complexity, aboriginal protesters were taking to the streets in cities across the country.

And Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence launched into her no-solids hunger strike in downtown Ottawa.

The Canadian public wanted to know what was going on, and I was well-placed to tell that story – not from a protesters’

point of view but from the First Nations communities themselves.

The result was widespread pickup, full pages across the country over the Christ-mas holidays, when readers had time to digest their daily newspapers.

The story of prescription drug addic-tions and the story of natural resource development in remote areas are deeply entwined, and those stories are by no means over.

The federal government has stepped up with more targeted, culturally-sensitive addictions treatment options. And the companies are talking intently with First

Nations leaders about how they will turn a disenfranchised population into a produc-tive work force. But the happy ending of this saga is nowhere in sight.

Heather Scoffield is the Ottawa bureau chief for The Canadian Press. She has devoted her career to covering policy of one sort another, touching on trade, indus-try, monetary policy, fiscal policy, health, labour, environment, aboriginal peoples and wealth distribution over her 16 years watching Ottawa. She has won or been nominated for several National Newspaper Awards as well as an Amnesty Internation-al award for human rights reporting. After earning an international relations degree at York University and an MA in journal-ism at the University of Western Ontario, Heather worked for The Canadian Press and Reuters before going to The Globe and Mail for 12 years. She returned to CP four years ago. She lives in Chelsea, QC., with her husband, two children and a dog.

Original storyhttp://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-

bay/story/2012/04/15/thunder-bay-cat-lake-children-letter.html

Additional submissionsOxy addict on reserve still craves drug

after losing childrenFirst Nation’s water imperils economy,

health and maybe even pregnanciesRing of Fire mining prospects empower

disenfranchised nativesHarper’s need for speed in resource

development meets First Nations reality

The Canadian Press – for stories on aboriginal affairs – Heather Scoffield

There has been a lot of talk about economic development and the ability of First Nations to share in the wealth. Nowhere is that discussion more important than in a 500-square kilometer area in Northern Ontario’s James Bay region called the Ring of Fire. Nine communities are poised to benefit from the multi-billion dollar economic development. Or are they? And if so, how much? Heather Scoffield explains why she visited some of those communities -- and how the whole trip almost never happened.

POVERTY AND DESPEAR: In Fort Hope, also known as the Eabametoong First Na-tion, Phillip Wapoose lives in a crumbling house with his ill wife Lizzie, his13-year-old son Leroy and his 31-year-old daughter Liza (in the picture).Around them, the signs of poverty are everywhere. Wapoose wants his children to find a way out of the toughconditions and into the world of paid em-ployment. He sees a potential answer in the Ring of Fire (map to the bottom left).PHOTO CREDIT: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

SUMMER 2013 46

47 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 48

NNA Award Winner Explanatory Work

This feature, above all, reminded me to be wary of conventional wisdom.

The epiphany for me came a few days before Christmas in 2011. I had begun to research what I then believed would be a very straight-forward story. The Citizen planned to publish a feature early in the New Year explaining the likely progres-sion of the upcoming fraud trial involving Nortel’s top three financial executives.

This was potentially a very boring as-signment and there was every risk readers would think so too. The accounting was complicated and a guilty verdict seemed pre-ordained. After all, Frank Dunn, Douglas Beatty and Michael Gollogly had years earlier been fired by their employer for cause. Nortel had also published a summary of their alleged transgressions in a report by Wilmer Cutler, the Washington law firm hired to provide an independent assessment of Nortel’s numbers.

In a criminal case such as this, pre-trial interviews with the accused or the wit-nesses were out of the question. The in-dependent investigators from Washington also declined comment. However, I found a great deal of information buried in a pair of civil proceedings that had also alleged accounting fraud at Nortel.

The most fruitful of these was the action brought in 2007 by the U.S. Securi-ties and Exchange Commission. While this and a similar proceed-

ing at the Ontario Securities Commission had been halted pending a verdict in the criminal case, I was able to comb through more than 100 pre-trial filings involving Nortel’s executives and the SEC. These were available online (for 10 cents a page) through www.pacer.gov – an indispensable tool for business journalists.

Unlike Canada’s online legal database – www.canlii.ca – the pacer website makes available the complete docket in civil and criminal cases, not just the courts’ final rulings. Dunn and Beatty had filed dozens of documents -- including some that would prove central to their defense in the 2012 criminal trial. One of these contained a detailed response by the OSC to questions posed by Dunn – something I couldn’t find through the Commission’s own website.

Dunn’s lawyers had asked what, exactly, was wrong with how Nortel had accounted for more than 30 allegedly fraudulent transactions. As I examined the OSC’s answers, I realized its investigators didn’t have an answer. They referred often to the report by Wilmer Cutler or, even more telling, noted that these were matters to be determined at trial. Also through the SEC, I located the synopsis of the criminal case prepared by the RCMP. This, too, was unclear about the alleged accounting mis-deeds. While the Crown obviously hadn’t had a chance yet to prove the allegations in court, its case seemed surprisingly thin.

I returned to the 2005 Wilmer Cutler report. Its conclusions – that the three ex-ecutives had deliberately shifted liabilities

on Nortel’s balance to trigger executive bonuses – were couched in generalities. This report had been the starting point for investigations by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, OSC and the RCMP – and it offered no specific examples of accounting transgressions.

I considered more seriously the pos-sibility that no crime had been committed. Once I did, the evidence began to acquire a different look. So did the story I was working on.

I examined the nature of accounting and its many gray areas. In a fast-moving industry such as telecommunications equipment, the permutations were many. Nortel’s balance sheet contained hundreds of thousands of estimates – each offer-ing the possibility of fraud but also the greater likelihood of error, especially in a corporation that sacked two of every three employees from 2001 to 2003.

I consulted the relevant accounting rules, including the crucial one that laid out tests for determining how to account for future exposures to items such as the potential cost of breaking multi-year leases and canceling contracts with sup-pliers – accounting transactions that lay at the heart of the Nortel case. While I have some training in university-level account-ing, it was useful only at a conceptual level. What gave me comfort, as it always does in situations like this, was speaking on background with auditors and ac-countants familiar with Nortel’s industry, people not directly tied to the litigation.

Some were extraordinarily cynical about the inevitable conflicts of interest in the financial services industry, which arise because the client – Nortel in this case -- pays the fees. The key to understanding the upcoming trial, I realized, would lie in the unique and detailed accounting entries alleged to be fraudulent.

For perspective on these, I got in touch with former members of Nortel’s finance group, dating from earlier stories I had done for The Citi-zen – impressing upon me once again the importance of cultivating and maintain-ing sources. The former insiders provided valuable off-the-record perspective on the entries cited by the OSC in its reply to Dunn’s lawyers. They offered explanations other than fraud – business reasons -- to account for Nortel’s shift from losses to profit early in 2003.

All of this helped to shape my thinking during the writing of the pre-trial feature – and throughout the yearlong criminal proceeding. As a mountain of evidence ac-cumulated, it seemed clear to me the fraud charges would eventually be dismissed. My reporting reflected this belief.

But then I confronted an unexpected difficulty: the vast majority of the people who were following the trial believed the three Nortel executives were guilty, and that I was naïve to believe otherwise. This included members of the Citizen’s newsroom. Every few weeks I paused to ask myself if I had I missed something profound. And if so, why wasn’t I seeing it? But each time I re-examined the hard evidence, it seemed to point only in the direction of acquittal.

I am grateful that my editors gave me the benefit of the doubt, though their relief at the not-guilty verdict betrayed some nervousness. Also to their credit, we

discussed very early the possibility of my writing a book about the trial and the cir-cumstances that led to it. The Citizen was establishing an online store and wanted to offer readers a variety of e-books. The newspaper lined up HarperCollins as the publisher. My job was to deliver a manu-script as quickly as possible after the Jan. 14, 2013 verdict.

I was prepared to spend some time on this – I didn’t want merely to recite the key events of the trial. The idea was to explain how it was possible that so many players – the OSC, SEC, RCMP, the Crown and Nortel’s board of directors – so readily accepted the rushed conclusions of Wilmer Cutler, leaving the three accused to twist in the wind for nearly a decade.

I caught a break when the Crown in mid-February decided not to appeal the original verdict. This made a few sources feel more comfortable about sharing their experiences. Even so, the threat of continuing litigation in civil court (at the SEC and OSC) meant everyone still had to be careful about what they said. Most conversations remained off the record.

A Citizen colleague, Christine Brous-seau, volunteered to edit the book, which was forwarded to HarperCollins under the title “100 Days: the rush to judgment that killed Nortel”. The publisher, in turn, translated our Word document – all 33,000 words -- into electronic books suitable for reading on Kindles, iPADs, KoboReaders and other electronic devices. In addition

I wanted a paperback version. Because that had not been part of the Citizen’s arrangement with HarperCollins, I produced one myself – something I had never done before.

For this, I relied on CreateSpace.com – a unit of Amazon.com that caters to self-publishers. I spent an intensive week working out the technical kinks but eventually got a paperback that looked presentable, though it would not become available for a few days following our April 26 e-book launch.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that people could order the paperback only through Amazon.com, not Amazon.ca – which proved confusing for Cana-dian buyers. Other readers had trouble locating the e-book because our publisher used ‘judgement’ in the title, not the more conventional spelling that appears on the book cover.

To rectify these issues, The Citizen made all versions of the book available at http://store.ottawacitizen.com/blogs/e-books/7768623-100-days-the-rush-to-judgment-that-killed-nortel.

Another mistake involved marketing. We had concentrated so heavily on getting the book done, we failed to think clearly about the next steps. Yes, we drafted a press release, but failed to cultivate poten-tial reviewers beforehand.

I also neglected to line up testimonials that are so important in the rankings of on-line publications. The book briefly made it to the top of the business book rankings on iTunes and Amazon.ca – then promptly drifted back down to earth.

Nevertheless, this was an editorial project worth doing – and the catalyst was the explanatory piece written a year ago January.

You can find the story at: http://www2.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/observer/story.html?id=fc09dcaf-2d75-48b0-824c-baeea60788a6

James Bagnall, the associate business editor of The Ottawa Citizen, has been reporting on business since 1978. He began his career at The Financial Post, then an independent weekly, and worked for several years at The Financial Times of Canada. He joined The Citizen as a columnist in 1993. Bagnall graduated in 1975 from the University of Toronto’s Trin-ity College.

Ottawa Citizen – The story behind its coverage of the Nortel criminal trial – Explanatory work

James Bagnall had a deep knowledge of Nortel’s accounting practices even before the yearlong trial involving former executives Frank Dunn, Douglas Beatty and Michael Gollogly. It was es-sential to be open-minded enough to go where the facts led him. The journey was surprising.

AN OPEN-AND-SHUT CASE? HARDLY: The accounting was complicated and a guilty verdict seemed pre-ordained. After all, Frank Dunn, Doug-las Beatty and Michael Gollogly (pictured to the left) had years earlier been fired by their employer for cause.PHOTO CREDIT: Darren Calabrese/National Post

VINDICATION: Frank Dunn’s lawyers had asked what, ex-actly, was wrong with how Nortel had accounted for more than 30 allegedly fraudulent transactions. As I examined the OSC’s answers, I realized its investigators didn’t have an answer.

PHOTO CREDIT: Darren Calabrese/National Post

ALL SMILES: Former Nortel chief financial officer Douglas Beatty, was a happy man the day of the verdict. PHOTO CREDIIT: Michelle Siu/The Canadian Press

SUMMER 2013 5049 MEDIA

BROKENHEAD OJIBWAY NA-TION -- The Starr brothers put

Scanterbury on the map. Now, it’s the community’s turn.

A former neighbour has memorialized the famous ditch wavers with a huge red lawn chair, placed in the spot where the men brought smiles to thousands of lake-goers.

Nelson and James Starr spent more than 20 years standing in the tall grass that separated their home from Highway 59. Four days a week, the men offered greet-ings to passing vehicles.

They wore a path through the weeds to their regular waving spots.

A generation of Winnipeggers bound for Grand Beach and surrounding communi-ties slowed their vehicles, waved back, honked their horns and stopped to offer them water and gifts.

There was a quiet dignity to the ditch wavers; an implacable, Mona Lisa-like mystery to the matched set of stout men in ball caps. They were born on Brokenhead, two of five children. Both were mentally challenged. They weren’t sent to school. No one expected they’d amount to much more than gentle souls. The brothers didn’t work, kept to themselves and couldn’t dream they’d someday become small-town celebrities.

When I met them a decade ago, it was up to James Starr to explain why they waved.

“It makes me happy,” he said shyly. “People wave. Sometimes they stop and give us things like drinks, sometimes sandwiches.”

Nelson Starr died in 2007 at 71. James is living in a seniors facility.

Beach-goers and community members missed the comforting presence of the brothers. The Starrs were so popular, the local convenience store is named Wavers.

So John Bear, a 52-year-old mainte-nance man with a bum leg, decided he’d do something to memorialize Scanter-bury’s famous citizens.

“Last March, this idea just came into my mind,” says Bear.

“I seen the spot where they waved and I thought we should have something there. It was almost like a vision.”

A memorial chair seemed like a perfect symbol. Bear has built ice shacks, but this was his first art project. He happened to have an old deck in his yard, so the mate-rial was at hand.

He set out to build a lawn chair. A really big lawn chair.

When Bear was done, he’d constructed a 2.4-metre-high, 193-centimetre-wide chair, big enough to hold two adults com-fortably. It’s so tall that when you stand on the seat and wave, people on the highway see you easily.

Bear says building the chair was a way of easing some of his own demons. He’s been unable to work since a failed 2010 knee operation.

“I was depressed a lot,” he says. “I was dealing with stress a lot. I talked to people in the community and that helped. But this chair; it reminds me that everyone has ups and downs. It changed my perspective on my disability.”

The chair got its first public showing

during Brokenhead Ojibway’s treaty days. Bear entered his chair in the public parade. He won first prize.

This was no fancy Canada Council project. The lumber was salvage. The paint (three coats of red and white) cost him $120. His labour was free. The band kicked in a little cash but this was really one man’s mission.

Chief Jim Bear, Bear’s uncle, has trav-elled extensively across Canada. When-ever he mentions Scanterbury, he says, people talk about the Starr brothers.

“These two individuals received gifts continually. They received letters from all parts of the world. People looked forward to seeing them.”

He’s pleased his nephew took the time to build the tribute chair.

“The brothers did this for years and they weren’t paid,” he said. “He did this out of the kindness of his heart to remember them.”

It’s working. People stop to pose for pictures on the chair. When Jim Bear clambered onto it one warm morning this week, people waved at him. A broad grin split his face.

Slow down the next time you pass by Scanterbury.

The chair is a tribute to two simple men who gave a gift to everyone who saw them.

Sit in that giant chair for a while, wave and you’ll feel their spirit. Life doesn’t have to be complicated to be good.

lindor.reynolds@freepress.mb.caRepublished from the Winnipeg Free

Press print edition August 17, 2012 A4

NNA Award Winner Short Features

Winnipeg Free Press – for a story about a Scanterbury resident who built a giant red chair to honour the com-

munity’s ditch wavers – Lindor Reynolds

Lindor Reynolds (sitting on the chair), a columnist with the Winnipeg Free Press, won the Short Features category for her piece on a Scanterbury resident John Bear, (standing to her left) who built a large, red chair in honour of the community’s ditch-wavers. You can read her story below.

51 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 52

NNA Award Winner Local Reporting

St. John’s Telegram – for stories about the sexual abuse at the Mount Cashel orphanage – Barb Sweet

My three-part series revealed that for men who were residents in

Mount Cashel during different eras, the physical and sexual abuse by certain mem-bers of the Christian Brothers — despite an inquiry and compensation — is too hor-rendous to shake with tragic consequences for some. And even those who have done well in their lives continue to suffer the pain.

Part three of the series also revealed some victims have never come forward before. I put one man in touch with a law-yer as the compensation deadline loomed last summer.

The stories also featured a rare interview with the police officer who first investi-gated the allegations, an investigation that was quashed.

Our editorial page editor, Russell Wangersky, was a Sunday Express re-porter who had covered the Mount Cashel scandal when it broke in the late 1980s. He didn’t think I would get the officer to speak to me, but I did.

It was a column by Russell about Mount Cashel survivor Billy Earle’s troubles with getting counseling services that sparked my interest in pursuing the stories of where the abuse survivors are with their lives.

I have lived in St. John’s for about 20 years and have written stories on the com-pensation angles over the years.

At the time the scandal broke, I was a university student in my home province of Nova Scotia studying psychology. I was obviously aware of the Mount Cashel story, but had not been immersed in the details.

So in early summer 2012, with an initial interview with Earle, some leads on the

whereabouts of some of the victims with troubling stories — some of whom do not have fixed addresses or phones — I knocked on doors and went to shelters. I did obituary and Facebook searches for relatives of deceased twin brothers -- Johnny and Jerome Williams.

I was particularly compelled by the sto-ries of the Williams brothers. I interviewed their sister, who lives in Western Canada. I am grateful to her.

I also read the volumes of the Hughes inquiry report, including the appendix exhibit material, and watched some of the hearing footage on old VHS tapes, thanks to the provincial archives.

Because I knew how his story turned out, I will never forget the feeling of watching Johnny Williams testify.

The other most enduring memory of working on this series was sitting down with a retiree who had done well for himself.

As we spoke for hours, the toll the or-phanage experience had taken on him was revealed, despite his success in building a life through the years.

He told me about a little stray dog that he’d befriended as a teen at the orphan-age and how the dog came to his side one evening when band members were being berated for mistakes made during a performance.

The brother who abused him was also the band leader and he hit the dog so hard with a hockey stick, the animal screeched.

That night, in bed, the teen felt the dog licking his hand. He carried the dog outside and told him he’d see him in the morning.

But the next day he learned that some of the other boys had been ordered by

the brother that abused him to throw the dog out a top-floor window. The faithful animal was left for dead in the woods.

That evening, when I left the man’s house after the interview, I was driving with my own dog in the back seat to our usual walking trail.

My phone rang and it was the man, who said he wasn’t doing well because of the flood of all those memories.

My heart sank for causing him pain.But he actually told me he was grateful

that I had listened to him. For me, the stories I write best are the

ones I feel the most deeply.While our jobs are to be objective, the

ability to empathize is a gift that can make a person agree to an interview and to open up.

Journalists have to be clear about their intentions and their sensitivity to the sub-ject matter: a no can turn into a yes when the reasons for wanting to tell the story are explained.

Some of the sources quoted in the story were reluctant at first. But when I explained my aim and my belief that this was not an old story that I was rehashing for the sake of sensationalism, the police officer whose interview was in doubt re-lented. Det. Robert Hillier, who headed the investigation for the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary at the time, agreed to let me come see him. His findings were covered up, including the confessions he obtained from two Christian Brothers.

“There were so many boys escaping from Mount Cashel and it was a battle,” he recalled. “We were out all night long looking for them.”

During the research, interview and writing process of this series, I was also

involved in two other more complex proj-ects — one building a database of bridge inspections from four inches of paper copies supplied by the province; the other, a feature series with two colleagues on the 20th anniversary of the cod moratorium.

Daily newsrooms are places where time and resources are less than ideal.

Fortunately, I had the support of my editors, particularly managing editor Kerry Hann, to spend some time on the Mount Cashel legacy series. I am grateful for that.

But it was not months, but weeks to spend. That’s just the reality.

My biggest piece of advice is to pick your battles and pursue them with all the heart and soul.

Other than that, it’s simply to follow the leads, keep telling those who are reluctant to speak why the story is relevant and important and why their voices need to be heard.

Embarking on any project involves the ability to be organized, set goals, keep ahead of transcribing interviews, and con-

stantly be thinking of angles for the story and ways to write it.

Such stories don’t ever leave my mind. I wake up in the morning crafting the story in my head and organizing my thoughts while walking my dog at night. Think-ing out a story and what you want the legacy of it to be is an essential part of the process.

And respect goes a long way in this business.

If readers and subjects respect your stories, no matter whether they come off negative or positive, and no matter how anguishing the telling, then you’ve accom-plished something to be proud of.

Respect from your colleagues is also essential. I am thankful for the editors who had input on my series, particularly Russell, assistant managing editor Pam Frampton and former court reporter, now web editor Glen Whiffen, as well as to all my colleagues for the passion and pursuit of good journalism we all share.

I am a senior reporter at The Telegram,

which is published by the Transcontinen-tal Atlantic Media Group. I have worked since 1993 in a variety of roles, including section editing, before I decided to go back to my most enduring love of writing. I have won a number of awards, but this was my first National Newspaper Award. Prior to 1993, I was a recipient of the 1991-93 Thomson Newspapers working fellowship to Washington, D.C., achieved through a national competition. The stories I most enjoy pursuing are the intensely personal ones and those stories that help people. I can be contacted in The Telegram newsroom at (709) 364-2323, by email atbsweet@thetelegram.com and on Twitter: bsweettweets

StoriesPicking up the pieces

Bitter legacy: How Mount Cashel survi-vors are living with the aftermath

Trying to numb the pain

Barb Sweet discovered that the pain of the years at the infamous orphanage never goes away for the former residents. But there was more to the story than painful memories resurrected. She also convinced the cop who claimed there was a cover-up to break his silence.

ATTEMPTING TO FORGET AND MOVE ON: Billy Earle, a victim of abuse at Mount Cashel orphanage in the 1970s, has been trying ever since to shake anxiety.PHOTO CREDIT: Barb Sweet/The Telegram

53 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 54

NNA Award Winner Presentation

Toronto Star – Spencer Wynn, Nuri Ducassi, Raffi Anderian, Katie Daubs

The Toronto Star experimented with a graphic novel of reporter Katie Daubs’ two-

week stay indoors and in Toronto’s underground PATH system with maps, videos and

photos. Here, Daubs answers Eric Mark Do’s questions about the bold project. Read

the interview on J-source .

55 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 56

NNA Award Winner Sports Photography

Edmonton Journal – for a photo of joyous soccer star Christine Sinclair – Ed Kaiser

For me it all started with the semi-final match, Canada

vs. USA at Old Trafford Stadium in Manchester at the 2012 London Olympics, the winner advancing to the gold-medal match.

You couldn’t have picked more hallowed ground of this iconic football stadium for something thrilling to happen.

For Canadian striker Christine Sinclair it did: she scored a hat trick which ended up breaking the record for most goals scored in the Olympics for Women’s soccer.

So, just when you thought they actually might pull off an upset, the USA scored the winning goal in extra time, with the help from a few bad calls by the referee, win-ning 4 to 3.

For a photographer this was one of the best sporting events I’ve photographed in my 25 year career. It had it all in one game.

Fast-forward three days later. Canada is in the City of Coventry

Stadium, playing in the bronze-medal match against France. After the heartbreaking and controversial loss to the USA squad, I knew I wanted to key on Sinclair near the end of the match for her reaction, win or lose.

As Canada’s Diana Matheson scored in extra time and as minutes ticked away, I swung my camera on Sinclair just as the referee blew the whistle to end the match catch-ing her first reaction: A bittersweet expression as she fell to her knees in celebration of winning 1 to 0.

Initially, I missed other players reacting as a group because Sin-clair was by herself in the middle of the field.

However, sometimes you have to take chances to make a good picture. I felt this photo spoke more than the other players celebrating winning a bronze medal. For me, I could see the pain on her face from losing to the USA, and at the same time her elation at winning a

bronze medal, something not done since 1936 when Canada won its first medal in a traditional team sport at the Summer Olympics.

Ed Kaiser has been working for the Edmonton Journal for 25 years covering a wide variety of assign-ments, everything from the day-to-day jobs to Stanley Cup Finals to Grey Cups, Royal visits, the World Figure Skating and World Track and Field Championships and the Olympic Games in London and Calgary. Raised in Toronto, he didn’t seriously consider a career in photography until the age of 24. Wanting something more challeng-ing, he quit his job as a machinist to go back to school in 1984.

After graduating from a two-year course at Sheridan College of Ap-plied Arts, he began his career at the Calgary Herald as a summer intern. He then moved onto the St. Albert Gazette, then to the Medi-cine Hat News and finally landed at the Edmonton Journal in 1987.

Ed Kaiser explains how his photo of Canadian striker, Christine Sinclair, one world’s best women soccer players, captured the bit-tersweet moment that combined the sting of a previous defeat to the United States with the elation of finally winning an Olympic medal in women’s soccer.

BITTERSWEAT CELEBRATION: Canadian superstar striker, Christine Sinclair cel-

ebrates a 1 - 0 victory over France in the bronze medal match in City of Coventry

Stadium at the London Olympics, August 9, 2012, after losing to the United States

for the right to play in the gold-medal game.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ed Kaiser/Edmonton Journal

57 MEDIA

NNA Award Winner Business

The Globe and Mail – for stories of the power struggle at Canadian Pacific Railway – Jacquie McNish, Brent

Jang, Sean Silcoff

SUMMER 2013 58

There comes a moment in every corpo-rate battle when the first cannon is fired.

In the unfolding power struggle at Ca-nadian Pacific Railway Ltd. , that moment came at 7:22 a.m. on Jan. 4, when the send button was clicked on an e-mail, lighting a fuse from New York to Toronto.

The general holding the match was Bill Ackman, a brash 45-year-old activist in-vestor who has made a $1.4-billion bet on the railway, buying a 14.2 per cent stake in the belief that it will give him enough clout to push for a management overhaul and raise its stock price.

The target in Mr. Ackman’s crosshairs was John Cleghorn, the 70-year-old chairman of CP and a former chief execu-tive officer of Royal Bank of Canada. A sombre and courtly business veteran, Mr. Cleghorn, personifies the buttoned-down reserve of the Canadian establishment.

It is doubtful Mr. Cleghorn, a military history buff, had ever received a message like the one that was fired into his inbox that morning. Under the subject line “War and Peace,” Mr. Ackman had typed out a lengthy e-mail, obtained by The Globe and Mail, that warned his “border skirmish” with the company would turn into “a nuclear winter” if his demands for a new CEO and two seats on the board were not met.

His atom bomb, he explained, would be a proxy battle for new directors that “would not go well” for the board and CEO Fred Green because of their “very poor” track record.

“We will take the largest public hall available in Toronto and we will make a presentation to the shareholders and the public ... about management and board failures of the last ten years at CP. We will examine management and the board’s

track record and history.”Mr. Ackman, a sharp-elbowed investor

who describes himself as a “direct” com-municator, hoped his e-mail would prod into action a board that he believed was moving “too slowly” in response to his demands.

To Mr. Cleghorn and the startled CP directors with whom he shared the e-mail, however, the message was an act of hostil-ity that challenged the authority of a board stacked with leading business figures such as Suncor Energy Inc’s Rick George, for-mer deputy prime minister John Manley and grain merchant Hartley Richardson, a fifth generation descendent of one of Canada’s oldest business families.

According to people familiar with the company, the directors were outraged by the e-mail’s tone and demands. Mr. Cleg-horn and his directors believed they had bent over backwards to meet and discuss Mr. Ackman’s proposals. They saw the e-mail as an attempt by Mr. Ackman, a minority shareholder, to usurp the board’s authority to hire and fire a CEO. They quickly decided to break off discussions with their largest shareholder; peace would not be accepted on Mr. Ackman’s terms.

On Monday, five days after Mr. Ack-man’s e-mail, the board steered CP towards a head-on collision with the investor. They publicly dismissed his pro-posed hiring of former Canadian National Railway Co. boss Hunter Harrison as “detrimental” to the company’s strategy. Hours later, Mr. Ackman declared war, announcing a proxy contest to elect new directors who backed his plan to replace Mr. Green.

Mr. Ackman said in an interview that that he is “sorry” his e-mail “offended” CP’s directors, but his intention was to

alert them in clear terms that their inac-tion was moving the two sides toward a confrontation.

“I was laying out clearly and directly what was going to happen.” (Mr. Ack-man also said he was “disappointed that excerpts of a private communication with Mr. Cleghorn has been released to the press.”)

What happens next will likely be an epic tug of war over who gets to drive what has become a runaway train. The contest at CP has the potential to reshape a historic national railway, under the hard-charging leadership of Mr. Harrison, who Mr. Ack-man wants to air drop into CP. It could also further shift the balance of boardroom power away from directors who are seeing their authority increasingly challenged by powerful pension and hedge funds.

“We are walking down a path where power is slipping from boards to share-holders and we should ask ourselves, ‘What are the implications?’ ” said Ed Waitzer, a corporate lawyer with Stike-man Elliott LLP and former board adviser to BCE Inc., which saw its management overhauled after lengthy brawl with the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

But for corporate directors, the muscular tactics of investors like Mr. Ackman are making it harder to say no to shareholder demands.

Jon Grant, lead director of CCL Indus-tries Inc. and a veteran of 15 boards, said the “polite” world of Canadian boards is being rapidly altered by global influences, and as a result boards are at times “intimi-dated” by investor pressure.

“One of the things we forget as directors is that directors are responsible to the cor-poration first and to shareholders second,” he said.

For CP’s directors, Mr. Ackman’s chal-lenge to their authority is a huge preoc-cupation at a time when the company is under enormous pressure to revitalize its sluggish operations, which are the least efficient of North America’s Big Six railways. The activist can be expected to escalate his criticisms of the company’s leadership as the proxy vote approaches in the spring and a debate is emerging over how the board should respond.

Len Racioppo, president of Montreal-based Jarislowsky Fraser Ltd., which does not currently own CP shares, said the railway is being challenged because share-holders are “extremely frustrated” with a company that is underperforming.

“Everyone has to squeeze more to generate returns. Why should companies be treated any differently, and why should boards be any different? You’re seeing it everywhere,” he said.

Alan Radlo, a Boston-based portfolio manager with CI Financial, which has a small stake in CP, counters that it is a “dis-grace” that the board has extended special privileges to Mr. Ackman by meeting with him privately and discussing his proposals for management and board changes.

“There shouldn’t be favouritism with one shareholder. I definitely have a prob-lem with the company showing privilege to this activist,” Mr. Radlo said. “What about other shareholders?”

The activist investorFew would have guessed 10 weeks ago

that war would break out so quickly be-tween CP and its largest shareholder. From the beginning, CP’s board had raced to put out the welcome mat to an investor whose lucrative bets against subprime mortgage insurers in the United States had seen him lionized in the Academy-award winning film Inside Job.

The combined impact of Mr. Ackman’s big stake, influence and an exuberant market reaction that sparked a 7 per cent increase in CP’s stock since Oct. 28 put enormous pressure on the board to respond to him after his hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, announced

its stake on Oct. 28. Mr. Ackman had re-quested a meeting with CP’s directors, but typically boards don’t meet with minority shareholders, and certainly not so soon after their investment.

There is nothing typical, however, about Mr. Ackman. Since he founded Pershing Square in 2003, he has profited from most of his 23 turnaround targets by agitating, embarrassing and, on two occasions, mus-tering enough shareholder support to vote out intransigent directors and executives.

By opening the door to him, the direc-tors hoped they could forge a constructive relationship with the investor and avoid public confrontations, people familiar with the company said.

At first it looked like the peace process would work. On Nov. 2, five days after Pershing Square’s announcement, Mr. Cleghorn, Mr. Green and a handful of their advisers welcomed the activist and one of his partners, Paul Hilal, at a small airport terminal in Montreal where Mr. Ackman’s private jet had just arrived from New York.

The meeting began with Mr. Ackman presenting a book to Mr. Cleghorn that outlined his proposals for change at CP. The book was thick with data, but the only passage that really mattered was the block-buster proposal to hire rail legend Hunter Harrison as the next CEO. Mr. Harrison, the retired former chief of CP’s archrival CN, was presented as the solution to the company’s problems. He could transform CP the same way he had transformed CN into North America’s most efficient railway.

Sitting next to Mr. Cleghorn while Mr. Ackman sang Mr. Harrison’s praises was Mr. Green, who was facing for the first time the prospect of losing his job to a man he had been locked in competition with for much of the past decade. Accord-ing to people familiar with the session, Mr. Green, a CP lifer, said almost nothing.

When the meeting ended, Mr. Cleghorn promised to take Mr. Ackman’s book of ideas back to the board. In exchange, the student of military history gave Mr. Ack-

man something to read on his flight home: a history of the American Civil War.

What happened in the two months fol-lowing the Montreal meeting is a subject of debate. Sources close to CP say the company moved at lightning speed to ac-commodate Mr. Ackman. In early Decem-ber, CP’s governance committee invited Mr. Ackman to meet with them in Calgary so they could review him as a candidate for the board.

The board, Mr. Cleghorn said in an interview this week, agreed to offer Mr. Ackman a director’s seat to engage him in “a constructive dialogue” at the board level. The only proviso was he had to sign “fairly normal” legal agreements.

Fairly normal agreements, Mr. Ackman discovered, included a document known as a standstill agreement. By signing it, he would be effectively prohibited from launching a proxy battle. It was a non-starter. His other aggravation was that the board had rejected his second candidate for the board, his partner Mr. Hilal, who had flown with him to Calgary but was not included in the boardroom session.

Talks between Mr. Ackman and Mr. Cleghorn cooled after the December setbacks. According to people familiar with the discussions, telephone calls and e-mails between Mr. Ackman and Mr. Cleghorn tapered off. The lack of commu-nication was interpreted by the Pershing Square camp as a sign that the board did not want to hire Mr. Harrison.

By Jan. 4, Mr. Ackman was tired of waiting, and he fired of his War and Peace e-mail.

Deal experts said it is likely he has been so forceful with the company because he has a high degree of comfort that CP shareholders will support his bid to replace Mr. Green and a minority of the company’s directors.

To read the rest of the “The story behind the all-out war to control CP”, you can visit the Globe’s website at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/the-story-behind-the-all-out-war-to-control-cp/article1358769/?page=all

The story behind the all-out war to control CPJACQUIE McNISH, BRENT JANG, SEAN SILCOFF

TORONTO, AND OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail

Published Saturday, Jan. 14 2012

Few would have guessed 10 weeks ago that war would break out so quickly between CP and its largest shareholder.

59 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 60

NNA Award Winner Columns

The Globe and Mail – for a column about the French – Doug Saunders

I’ve spent the week in cobblestoned squares, listening to French presidential candidates argue that their country’s way of life is threatened by forces from beyond its borders. It’s a popular refrain these days: As economies falter, people fear the economic and human waves sweeping in from beyond.President Nicolas Sarkozy has led the

way, pledging to reintroduce trade protec-tionism, reinstitute passport checks and cut immigration. His challenger François Hollande has also suggested more protec-tionist policies and less immigration. As a result, four out of five French voters now believe that globalization is bad for their livelihoods, and that borders should be closed to foreign investment and immigra-tion.

As I listened to these warnings, I couldn’t help thinking about how my week had begun in London.

On Monday morning, I paid the elec-tricity and gas bills by writing a cheque to a French company. We buy our heat and light, as do 5.7 million other British families, from EDF Energy, a state-owned French company that provides a quarter of Europe’s electricity.

Then I took the garbage bags to the curb, where they were collected expertly by employees of the French company Veo-lia Environnement. Its 331,226 workers provide garbage collection, water treat-ment, street lighting and public transporta-tion in 77 countries.

I hit the road, avoiding the tide of Renault Clios and Meganes and Peugeot 207s, among the most popular cars in Europe, together accounting for almost a million vehicles sold each year in the 27 European Union countries.

At the Underground station, I boarded a

train built by Alstom, the French engineer-ing company with 85,000 employees in 70 countries. They also built the nuclear reactors that provide my electricity. The train was guided by the Underground’s signalling and control network operated from a central hub in Waterloo Station by Thales, the French company with 68,000 employees in 50 countries.

En route, I made some travel plans. I’ll need to be in Munich, Warsaw and Bar-celona in the next while, which inevitably means staying in one of the 5,000 hotels owned by the French company Accor, whose 145,000 employees in 40 countries run the Sofitel, Mercure, Ibis, Pullman, Novotel and Motel 6 chains.

French companies are impossible to avoid. They employ 4.5 million people outside of France and account for almost a fifth of all the investment in Europe. If you want to buy groceries in most parts of Poland or Greece or Portugal, you have little choice but to go to one of the 13,000 giant supermarkets of France’s Carrefour chain. France’s banks dominate finance across the continent – which is why they are so dangerously exposed to the Greek and Spanish crises. France doesn’t suffer the blows of international capitalism – it metes them out.

In fact, French investment abroad is twice the size of outside foreign invest-ment in France. And if you strip away finance flows and look only at the indus-trial economy, French companies do 14 times more business abroad than foreign companies do in France. This is hardly a country that will, in the words of Mr. Sarkozy’s campaign speech, “dilute itself into globalization.” The French are the globalizers, not the globalized.

What about the human flood? I thought

about that as I stepped off the Under-ground in the corner of Kensington known as “petit France” for its baguette shops and brasseries. London is home to 300,000 French citizens who take advantage of Europe’s open borders. There are two million French living abroad, an outflow that’s approaching the number of foreign-ers coming in.

As I had lunch with a Parisian expat scholar, I saw people heading to the local lycée to vote early in the presidential elec-tion. We now know that slightly more than half of those London French cast their ballot for a candidate, Mr. Sarkozy, who has promised to outlaw foreigners voting in local elections.

And then Thursday, a great many of those same French citizens went to another polling station to cast a ballot for the London mayor, because as European foreigners, they have full rights to vote in Britain’s local and national elections.

Mr. Sarkozy said he’d end Europe’s open borders because immigrants, notably Muslims, aren’t integrating in France. In fact, every study shows French Muslims have the highest rates of social integration, adopting the language, the family sizes and the liberal attitudes toward premarital sex and homosexuality at Europe’s highest rates, and even becoming as atheist and religiously unobservant as French Chris-tians.

The problem is that nobody gives them jobs. And the larger problem within France is not foreign capital, but the fact that people have trouble creating jobs. As with so many countries today, their leaders are searching in vain for outside enemies when the real problem is right in front of them.

Find the column online here.

The French are the globalizers - not the globalized

Doug Saunders Paris — The Globe and MailPublished Saturday, May. 05 2012, 2:00 AM EDT

NNA Award Winner Editorial Cartooning

La Presse, Montréal, for a cartoon of Toronto mayor Rob Ford – Serge Chapleau

NNA Award Winner Investigations

Toronto Star – for an investigation into why police knowlingly lie – David Bruser and Jesse McLean

Visibly nervous, papers shaking in their hands, Toronto police officers Jay Shin and Joseph Tremblay testified under oath that they stopped Delroy Mattison’s Chrysler Intrepid on the afternoon of July 18, 2011, because they saw him using a cellphone.

The officers were lying, just not very well.

In Mattison’s trunk that summer day were a stainless steel .357 Smith & Wes-son revolver and 31 bullets. Mattison, who had a previous conviction for armed rob-bery, was on his way to a drug deal. Under the law, these officers needed a reason to stop and detain Mattison. Without one, they would never have found the gun.

The problem is they never seized a cellphone or noted the existence of one in paperwork filled out at the scene. That night, a third officer snapped photos of the impounded Chrysler’s interior, none show-ing a phone.

“Officers Shin and Tremblay were untruthful about seeing Mr. Mattison using a cellphone,” Justice Nancy Backhouse ruled. She tossed the evidence, saying, “This court must dissociate itself from (this) serious and deliberate state miscon-duct.” Mattison walked free.

Backhouse was trying to send a mes-sage, one being repeated by concerned judges in courtrooms across the country: Police dishonesty makes a mockery of the courts, undermines the public’s trust in the justice system and must be condemned. There is little evidence anyone is listening.

A nationwide Toronto Star investigation shows judges are frequently finding that police officers lie under oath. The dishon-esty comes with little consequence to the officer, particularly in provinces such as Ontario where there is no law or policy requiring a prosecutor or police force to

investigate the courtroom conduct.One Toronto officer, Det. Scott Aikman,

has twice been accused of being untruthful by judges in different cases. The story of Aikman, and the two cases that crumbled, will be in Friday’s Star.

Though some may believe it is accept-able for officers to lie after taking guns and drugs off the street, the Star found the cost of the deception to community safety across the country is high.

The following suspects have walked free after officers lied in court: an accused pimp of a teenage girl, possessors of child pornography, a major ecstasy manufactur-er operating out of a Scarborough house, members of an international data-theft and fake-credit-card ring, marijuana growers, and drug dealers carrying loaded hand-guns.

Judges have discarded as evidence at least $40 million worth of cocaine, meth, ecstasy and weed in recent years.

Some suspects, freed following police lies, continue to get in trouble with the law.

The Star attempted to contact all officers named in this series of articles. Some spoke to the newspaper. Most did not.

One of the biggest prosecutions in-volved Chuck Wan Leong, accused of operating an ecstasy lab in his two-storey brick house. Police found $16-million worth of ecstasy, methamphetamines and ketamine in the basement.

In that case, Justice Nola Garton said various parts of York Region Det. Robert Worthman’s testimony were “inconsistent and inaccurate,” “exaggerated,” “almost inconceivable,” an “embellishment,” “misleading,” “nonsensical” and “patently absurd.” The judge tossed the evidence and Leong walked free.

Worthman has been charged by his force

with deceit and discreditable conduct.Judges have found officers lie in court

to cover up shoddy and illegal investiga-tion techniques, excessive force, and racial profiling.

The majority of the cases reviewed by the Star involve police officers who, out of laziness, overzealousness or poor training, violated laws that protect suspects from abuse of police power, found damning evidence and then lied to cover up their flawed investigation.

“It’s the coverup that kills,” said an Ontario judge, who requested anonymity to preserve the appearance of impartiality necessary for his job.

Police officers have a difficult job and usually know who the criminals are, the judge said, but some play hunches to bust suspects, then “make stuff up” to patch their investigations.

“Police will end up lying on the witness stand. That’s just a reality ... We (judges) know this happens. We talk about it all the time.”

While police officers can randomly stop vehicles to check vehicle safety or a driver’s paperwork, they must otherwise have reasonable grounds to believe an offence is being committed to stop a car, detain a person or search a house. Mere suspicion is not enough.

Suspicion is all RCMP Const. Brian Sprott had. In January 2009, on a rainy night in Maple Ridge, B.C., Sprott and his partner sat in their unmarked vehicle and watched a suspected drug house on Dewd-ney Trunk Rd. Then, on a hunch, they fol-lowed Chris Xiong after he pulled out of the driveway. This was a drug investiga-tion, not a vehicle or driver safety check.

The Mounties stopped Xiong and found 12 individually wrapped, $40 crack rocks, three cellphones and more than $800

in cash. Sprott testified at trial that he stopped Xiong for speeding.

The alleged speeding, as well as Sprott’s claim that crack rocks fell onto the pave-ment when the suspect exited the ve-hicle, gave the Mounties their reasonable grounds.

But Sprott had earlier testified during a preliminary hearing that he intended to stop Xiong before he allegedly sped from the house. The Mountie was asked if his answers at the preliminary hearing were true and “(he) answered rather remark-ably, ‘At the time, they were true,’” Justice Kathleen Ker noted.

She added: “Const. Sprott ... appeared evasive and uncomfortable when ques-tioned on this point.” On the witness stand, the Mountie, who never issued Xiong a speeding ticket, shrugged and awkwardly grinned.

“There is a legitimate public interest in having police officers provide their evidence to the court in an accurate and careful manner,” said Ker, who slammed the officer’s “flip-flop,” ruled there was no legitimate reason to stop Xiong’s car, tossed the evidence and let the suspect walk.

Sprott could have saved himself and his force the embarrassment with proper po-lice work, such as continued surveillance of the house or car.

These bogus traffic stops and warrant-less searches have led to wasteful pros-ecutions that tied up the taxpayer-funded courts and put alleged criminals back on the street.

Though the judges in these cases rec-ognize that such large seizures of drugs, loaded guns and “highly reliable” proof of other serious crimes “cry out for a trial on the merits,” they find the police miscon-duct the greater sin. Angered at police lies in his courtroom, Justice Peter Hambly explained his difficult decision to stay charges against two men accused of oper-ating a $16-million marijuana grow-op in Niagara Region:

“For the people involved in it to go

unpunished leaves a sense of betrayal in hard-working, law-abiding people,” Ham-bly said, but he added: “If police lying is tolerated by the courts, they will soon lose the respect of the community.”

Hambly’s decision is being appealed.• Some of the words judges used to de-

scribe police evidence and testimony were “lie,” “fabricate,” “evasive,” “absurd,” “ridiculous,” “subversive,” “disturbing” and “pure fiction.”

• Two officers — one in Victoria, the other a Toronto detective — have each misled the court in two separate cases.

• The chief of a suburban Winnipeg police force was charged with perjury and his force taken over by the RCMP after he allegedly lied to cover up details of his former partner’s role in a fatal drunk driv-ing accident.

• In several cases, officers assaulted a suspect, then began their coverup by charging their victim with assaulting and obstructing police. Some of the victims were guilty of nothing more than a bad attitude.

• Racial profiling, and the subsequent police deception meant to hide the mis-conduct from public view, cost the people of 100 Mile House, B.C., the prosecution of Zai Chong Huang and the 57 marijuana plants found in his Dodge pickup by RCMP Const. Berze.

Berze testified he stopped Huang’s truck because it swerved in its own lane. The judge noted that Berze followed Huang for many kilometres before the alleged swerve. For this reason, and because of the wording and emotion of Berze’s interview of Huang after the arrest, the judge found the swerve was a “pretext,” and that Berze likely saw Huang at a gas station earlier in the night, noticed he was Asian and assumed he was involved in organized crime.

“Const. Berze was being untruthful with the court,” said B.C. Judge Elizabeth Bayliff.

The Star found 28 cases since 2005 that involved a total of 34 Toronto officers

determined by judges to have misled the court.

Toronto Police Services Board chair Alok Mukherjee told the Star he has raised the issue with senior police officials and has been met with “a certain frustration and defensiveness. They’ll say, ‘The of-ficer was being diligent and the judge was more interested in the Charter rights of a criminal than the fact that the officer found a gun, and they let that person go.’”

Mukherjee added, “I have some degree of frustration because I believe judges should be listened to.”

In a combative letter to the Star, Toronto police spokesperson Mark Pugash equated the language used by judges in the cases reviewed by the Star to “throwaway com-ments unsupported by evidence.”

“You either don’t understand, or you don’t want your readers to understand, the fundamental distinction between a judge’s comments and a judge’s rulings,” Pugash continued. “Without an understanding of such a basic point, your story cannot be taken seriously.”

“A judge can comment on anything he or she wishes. Such comment, however, does not amount to a finding of guilt,” Pugash said.

“The criminal justice system works on evidence, on examination, cross-exami-nation and decision. It does not work on throwaway comments unsupported by evidence.”

Pugash said the onus is on defence lawyers, prosecutors and judges to report concerns over an officer’s testimony to police for investigation.

The cases in the Star study show judges painstakingly reviewed and deconstructed the facts, testimony and physical evidence presented in court, and concluded that of-ficers lied.

To read the rest of the article, please visit The Star’s website at: http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2012/04/26/police_who_lie_how_officers_thwart_jus-tice_with_false_testimony.html

Police who lie: How officers thwart justice with false testimonyIn 100 recent cases across Canada, police used illegal techniques, excessive force and racial profiling, then covered it up with false testimony.By: David Bruser and Jesse McLean Staff Reporters, Published on Thu Apr 26 2012

These bogus traffic stops and warrantless searches have led to wasteful prosecutions that tied up the taxpayer-funded courts and put

alleged criminals back on the street.

61 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 62

63 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 64

NNA Award Winner Arts and Entertainment

The Globe and Mail – for a story about a Canadian adult film star’s Bollywood success– Stephanie Nolen

When a family thrust an infant into her arms a few months ago and

asked her to pose for a picture, Sunny Leone knew that everything was changing: her life, definitely. And India, too.

Leone is used to a certain level of fame. For a decade, fans have asked her for autographs and pictures. But they never brought their children. “Whoa,” she recalled a few days later, in an interview in the swank Mumbai hotel where she is now living. “That’s just weird.”

Leone, born and raised in Sarnia, Ont., is one of the biggest stars in the North American adult-entertainment business. She’s been a Penthouse Pet of the Year, starred in high-grossing hits such as Not Charlie’s Angels XXX, has her own line of sex toys and a production company.

Her Punjabi parents left India more than 30 years ago to find a new life in Canada. Now Leone is back in the land she calls her “birthright,” seeking a new life of her own – and she’s a whole new kind of famous.

Last fall, she travelled from her home in Los Angeles to join a smash hit reality-TV program made here in Mumbai; called Bigg Boss, it follows the Big Brother, un-likely-group-of-people-trapped-in-a-house theme. Leone, the first South Asian star in the North American porn industry, seems to have been a bit of viewer bait chosen by a savvy producer. She tripped around in stilettos, smiling sweetly and speaking broken Hindi. On her first day, she was almost entirely unknown in India, but she

quickly charmed millions of viewers.Some of them didn’t know she was a

porn star. But as “Sunny Leone” shot to the top of the list of most-Googled celebri-ty names in India, and stayed there month after month, it became apparent that many Indians were in fact getting to know plenty about Leone’s other acting life.

She “came out” to her fellow residents after a few weeks, although the censors beeped out the words “Penthouse” and “adult.” Yet India, it seems, made a collec-tive decision to get over it. Before Leone was voted out of the house at New Year’s, she was hired by one of Bollywood’s lead-ing filmmakers, Mahesh Bhatt, to star in his next movie.

Combative at the press conference where he announced the plan, Bhatt seemed braced for criticism. This, after all, is a country where the production and purchase of pornography is entirely illegal; where mainstream films never show or use the word “sex,” and usually stick to air-kissing; where morality squads of police arrest (or demand bribes from) canoodling couples in public parks; where more than half of all marriages continue to be arranged for two young people who have barely laid eyes on each other.

The outspoken head of India’s Press Council, Justice Markandey Katju, also leapt to Leone’s defence. “My opinion is that Sunny Leone was earning her liveli-hood in the U.S. in a manner acceptable in that country, though it is not acceptable in India. Hence, if she conducts herself

in India in a manner which is socially acceptable in India and does not breach the social moral code in India, we should not treat her as a social outcast.” (He also helpfully pointed out that many histori-cal figures, from Buddha to Jesus, have accepted “fallen women” who went on to live lives of virtue.)

Yet Katju received a grand total of 38 complaints about Leone’s presence on a show that routinely had more than 25 million viewers. Not exactly a hue and cry – just people who couldn’t get enough details about what Leone was up to: learning to cook Indian food? practising Hindi? taking up yoga? oiling her hair? She tweeted, and the gossip magazines reported every detail.

“It’s a huge attitudinal shift,” said Varkha Chulani, a clinical psychologist who writes a sex-advice column for the popular women’s magazine Femina. “Indi-ans – those in the cosmopolitan areas – are being open-minded, less judgmental, about what can be provided in terms of sexual gratification. They don’t mind experiment-ing, don’t mind exploring their bodies.”

Media have played a key role in the shift, she said, both in pushing the bound-aries of what’s shown here, and in bring-ing in Western influences. Young people 17 to 30, who are also the most exposed to technology, are the ones who have really changed, she added. “Anything above 30 is a little more restricted and restrained and a little more orthodox.”

Leone, herself 30, says she senses the

shift in people her age. “Our parents’ gen-eration isn’t ready. But ours is.” Clearly conscious of the uncertain cultural waters she is navigating, she is being careful with her message. “It’s not something I’m changing. I’m not saying: Do what I’m doing. I say: Do what you want to do.”

In her case, that’s make money. Leone was a C student in school, she says, but always an entrepreneur: selling candy, lemonade, and organizing her brother and his friends to shovel snow for $3 an hour.

She was 19 and in nursing school, aspir-ing to model, in California (where her parents had moved when she was a teen) when a photographer pointed out that she could earn plenty more modelling without clothes on. He sent around her portfolio; her first-ever nude shoot was for Pent-house.

At first, she didn’t tell her conservative Sikh parents about her new career. But before long, she came to the attention of Bob Guccione, publisher of Penthouse. (He gave her the name she uses now; she was born Karen Malhotra, or Karenjit Kaur Vohra – her “people” won’t confirm which, for security reasons, they claim.) It was in 2003 that she won the title of Penthouse Pet of the Year, which put her on the cover of the magazine and led to appearances around the globe. She could no longer put off that awkward conversa-tion with mom and dad.

“I wanted to tell them before the rest of

the family told them. This was the least I could do,” she says.

How did that conversation go? “My mom didn’t get it. At all. She had no idea what I was talking about at first. And then – she did. Then she was upset. But I don’t know any mother who would say, ‘You’re naked and you’re in a magazine – yay!’” Her father was distressed, she says, but soon reiterated the maxim he had always told his children – Do your best.

In a way, she says now, she was liv-ing up to the immigrant ideal: She took home a $100,000 (U.S.) cheque as Pet of the Year. When she started making adult films a few years later, there were bigger cheques. And before long, she had her own production house; SunLust Pictures earns about $1-million in annual revenue, says her partner, Daniel Weber.

“It was what they taught me,” Leone says about her parents: ‘Don’t rely on anybody. You’ll have to do everything yourself. Be self-sufficient.’”

She speaks now about her parents – and the phone calls that poured in from hor-rified aunts and cousins – with a hint of regret in her voice. “It was a crappy situa-tion for them.” But the family soon agreed that they wouldn’t discuss it, and stayed close, she says, meeting for dinner every week. Both parents died in the last few years; she and her brother brought their ashes back to India.

As a child, Leone says, she watched

Hindi films with her mother, and they talked about how she might one day be in one. When she flew back to Mumbai to start filming her first Bollywood role, she was met by a crowd of several hundred photographers at the airport, and the attention has barely let up. Fresh-faced, friendly and homesick for Timbits and Coffee Crisps, she seems equal parts de-lighted and bewildered by this twist in her life. “I wasn’t going to be famous in North America,” she says. “But here I am.”

Laws against porn notwithstanding, Leone’s adult movies are in fact widely available here; pirated copies are sold in alleyways for about $4. The country has a comparatively low rate of Internet use – about 100 million people, less than a 10th of the population, access the Web at least once a month – but that’s expanding at a ferocious pace. Google says that, glob-ally, seven of the Top 10 cities for porn searches are in India.

Leone’s girl-next-door demeanour slips slightly when she talks about the piracy; the flinty entrepreneur shows through in-stead. Eighty per cent of the traffic on her website, and 60 per cent of her revenue come from India, she says. “And the sec-ond it’s legalized here … that’s gonna be a business opportunity.”http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/why-this-canadian-porn-stars-past-isnt-holding-her-back-in-bollywood/article4098382/

Why this Canadian porn star’s past isn’t holding her back in Bollywood Stephanie NolenMumbai, India — The Globe and MailPublished Saturday, Apr. 07 2012, 6:00 AM EDT Last updated Monday, Jun. 03 2013, 3:53 PM EDT

SEEKING ACCEPTANCE: She was

19 and in nursing school, aspiring to

model... when a photographer pointed

out that she could earn plenty more

modelling without clothes on. Here, she

is photographed at an event in New Delhi

on August 1, 2012, to promote her Bol-

lywood film “Jism 2”.

PHOTO CREDIT: AP

SUMMER 2013 6665 MEDIA

NNA Award Winner Feature Photography

The Globe and Mail – for a photo of a woman at a palliative-care hospice embracing a social worker during the

final hours of the women’s mother – Peter Power

There are few phrases more painful than “It is with a heavy heart.”

After the death of a loved one, these words most often mark the earliest stage in the grieving process, an intimate and emo-tional moment when family and friends are coming to grips with their loss.

For journalists, even though many have heard these words repeated several times throughout their careers, the emotional charge never seems to fade.

These emotions -- pain, sadness, confu-sion, loss -- make covering death and dying one of the most challenging assign-ments for writers and photographers.

The best way for a photojournalist to ap-proach this kind of assignment is to draw on personal experience, to put yourself as much as you can in your subjects’ shoes. This means trying to remember what it feels like to touch a loved one for the last time, to have the person look at you for the last time, and to desperately want more. There is no way to fully prepare for that final moment.

For the story about hospice care, I found myself drawing on this personal experi-ence, as well as the many stories I’ve covered in my career, where strangers have granted me the privilege of witness-ing some of life’s most intimate moments.

At Kensington Hospice in Toronto my challenge was to build on the trust earned by my colleague, reporter Lisa Priest, to gain permission to come and go as the

story required, and to establish rules so I could work in a manner that fell within their guidelines, and with constant con-sideration for all of its residents, not just those I was documenting.

Lisa had already laid much of the groundwork. The next step was meeting the families involved.

While I would always prefer not to rush into any story, time did not allow a leisurely approach to this one. While Marianne Kupina and her husband, An-drew McCarthy, weren’t quite sure what to expect from me, they readily accepted what I proposed in terms of photography. There would be no posed portraits, only real moments as they arose. Andrew, a handsome man, who, at 55 was dying of cancer and seemed all too aware that time was of the essence.

After only a short conversation he looked at me, smiled, and said, “Well. Go get your cameras.”

This rapid progression from introduc-tion to working is certainly not the norm, and yet it did repeat itself the following day. Basla Hoffman, who had travelled from California to be with her mother, An-drée Hoffman, during her final moments, did not hesitate to allow me to be present in their lives. I think she was pleased that I hoped to find beauty in some of the mo-ments that would be so sad. Where there is sadness in death, there is also love and tenderness.

Mrs. Hoffman passed away during the night, with her daughters, Basia and Tatiana at her side, only hours after I had the pleasure of first meeting them. During the evening I was able to photograph some beautiful moments. Before I left for the night I whispered a few words to her in her native French that included goodnight and thank you.

Andrew McCarthy, who had been a resident at Kensington Hospice for nearly six months, passed away on the afternoon of Feb. 20, 2012 with Marianne at his side. He was only 55 years old. On a Sunday, a week before he died, Marianne poured Andrew and I each a wee dram of Irish whisky. I was the last to have a drink with him and feel honoured to have done so.

Peter Power is an award-winning pho-tojournalist for The Globe and Mail where he began work in March 2007. Before that he was a staff photographer for nearly 17 years at the Toronto Star. He is a multiple-National Newspaper Award winner, and was part of a team at the Star that won the Governor General’s Michener Award.

Related linkEND OF LIFE: To get gently into that

good night: When quality of death can enhance quality of life, By Lisa Priest

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/where-quality-of-death-can-enhance-quality-of-life/article534641/#dashboard/follows/

For Peter Power, covering death at Toronto’s Kensington Hospice was a delicate balance between respect and boundaries.

PAINFUL GOODBYE: Basia Hoff-

man hugs Kensington Hospice Social

Worker Maxxine Rattner during a

visit to her mother, Andrée Hoffman’s

room, during her stay at Kensington

Hospice in Toronto on Feb. 8, 2012.

Andrée Hoffman passed away during

the night at 4:44 am. The Kensington

Hospice, which has 10 patient beds,

has been open for about five and a

half months.

PHOTO CREDIT: Peter Power/The

Globe and Mail

QUALITY TIME: Marianne Kupina

spends time with her husband, Andrew

McCarthy, a resident at Kensington

Hospice in Toronto on Feb. 7, 2012.

Mr. McCarthy has been a patient at

the privately run hospice for nearly six

months. Only 55, he died on Feb. 20,

2012, with Marianne at his side

PHOTO CREDIT: Peter Power/The

Globe and Mail

67 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 68

NNA Award Winner Long Features

Toronto Star team – for a story on the life and death of an ordinary woman who led a magical life

In February 2012, Toronto Star editor Alison Uncles sent 15 reporters, three

photographers and a staff designer to cover a funeral.

Shelagh Gordon had died.Shelagh who?That was exactly the point. Uncles,

the Star’s brilliant associate editor of weekends and features, had brewed up the idea over the previous Christmas: Could we forensically mine the life of an ordi-nary person by interviewing everyone at the funeral? Then, with all those anecdotes and thoughts, could we paint the person’s life like an impressionistic portrait?

Could we take a photo of mourners at the funeral, and then design an online graphic so the reader could scroll over their faces and read their thoughts about Shelagh?

It sounded like a cool idea and interest-ing challenge. I’m a columnist at the Star. But my bosses usually unclip my leash for big projects like this.

I put my hand up.Then, three of us — Uncles, myself and

features team editor Patricia Hluchy — started to comb the obituaries looking for the right person.

On Valentine’s Day, we found Shelagh.We had never discussed what the ‘right’

person would be. We figured something would jump out at us. So much of this work, in the end, hinges on intuition and chance.

Shelagh’s obituary did just that. It stated she was the “loving aunt and mother” to a list of names, without differentiating among them. It didn’t mention a mate. Instead, it said she was a “special friend” to two people — one a man, the other a woman. The secrets here intrigued us.

I called the funeral home and our obitu-ary department. The Star’s researcher, Nicole Wynter, started dialing all the Gordons in the phone book.

Just as I was leaving the office that eve-ning, around 6.30, my phone rang. It was Heather Cullimore, Shelagh’s older sister. I rambled from condolence to concept. I knew it was a tough sell: Let an army of reporters enter your family’s grief and

your sister’s funeral. Many people would be horrified.

Cullimore said yes right away. “Boy, did you pick the right person,”

she said over the phone. “Shelagh would have thought this was stupid perfect.”

I took a cab directly to her home, which was packed with Shelagh’s mother, three sisters, six nieces and nephews, brother-in-laws, and friends.

The next day, Uncles and I went to the funeral home to figure out the logistics of interviewing the more than 200 mourners who were expected the next day.

Now, you might be thinking: “Why is this a newspaper story? What about this is newsworthy?” To answer that, let me first tell you: I received more emails about the story on Shelagh Gordon’s life than I have on any story I’ve ever written in my 15-year career.

An hour after the story went up online, I started to hear from readers, invariably in tears. The story had changed their lives, hundreds wrote.

The online story was shared more than

7,000 times on Facebook and trended on Twitter for part of the weekend.

Forbes Magazine writer Eric Jackson wrote a long piece about the story, and the New York Times cited it — an almost unheard-of tribute.

The lesson, I suppose, is one we learn over and over again in this business: What makes the news is often subjective. It depends on where you look.

Another lesson, in the era of shrinking newspapers: readers thirst for stories about people like them. They will read 4000 words about an ordinary person, if it’s moving and reflective, and then demand more. Our attention spans are not shrink-ing as much as 680News would have us assume.

Readers thought this was news, so it was news. It was a gamble that in the end, paid off.

Shelagh was the “stupid perfect” choice for this story. She led an ordinary life, but she led it in an extraordinary way. She was 55, single, childless. In another age, she’d have been considered a spinster. But her home teemed with dogs, sisters, nieces, nephews and her “life partner” — a gay man — who would pass summer nights reading books in bed beside her wearing matching reading glasses. She was deeply loved.

She was vulnerable. She hated her job in advertising. She was an extreme klutz, known for breaking wine glasses and accidentally drinking from paint cans. But, she exulted in the pleasures of her quotidian life. Every afternoon, she’d soak for an hour in the bath while eating cut-up oranges and carrots and flipping the damp pages of a novel.

The most inspiring thing about Shelagh was her breathtaking kindness. As I wrote in the story: “Shelagh was freshly-in-love thoughtful. If she noticed your boots had holes, she’d press her new ones into your arms.

When you casually admired her cof-feemaker, you’d wake up to one of your own. A bag of chocolates hanging from your doorknob would greet you each Val-entine’s Day, along with some clippings from the newspaper she thought you’d find interesting.”

The logistics of interviewing 200 or so mourners at a funeral are daunting. We didn’t want to overwhelm the celebration of Shelagh’s life. We didn’t want to appear disrespectful. Nor did we want to surprise

people in their grief. The manager at the Mount Pleasant Cemetery Visitation Cen-tre had warned me the day before: “People are often angry at funerals. They might lash out at you.”

(This was the first time she had ever received a request like this, she admit-ted. Normally, they boot journalists out of funerals.)

If we stationed people outside, how could we pinpoint where they had been sitting for the roll-over graphic? And while we interviewed one, how would we catch the others streaming out?

In the end, we decided to print up our request on Star letterhead and place one on each of the 186 chairs in the sanctuary. We had numbered each seat in the room, and had each reporter in charge of two or three rows. It was their job to pass a paper down that row, asking for people to fill out their name and number over the chair they were sitting on.

In the end, about 100 of the 240 people in the room agreed and we interviewed them during the reception that day and over the following two weeks over the phone.

Later, I used the wide-angle photo my colleague David Cooper had taken of the packed room to identify 30 remaining holes. I sent the photo to people sitting in the same row and asked if they could help identify the people sitting around them.

Cooper set up a video camera in a quiet room off the sanctuary. In the letter to mourners, we mentioned they could be filmed talking about Shelagh. Ten of them did. We put these up on the webpage, along with the eulogies from her funeral.

Once the logistics of interviewing the mourners were settled, another pesky logistics job surfaced: not only double checking names and ages, but ensuring we had identified the right people with their photo in the graphic. That joyful task fell to Hluchy, who spent days buried in print-outs of photographs. To her credit, not a single error was flagged.

After the funeral, I went back to Shelagh’s home a number of times to dig deeper into her life. She shared a duplex with her sister Heather — Shelagh on the top floor, Heather and her husband on the bottom floor, and one of her two nephews in the basement, depending on the week. Her family was incredibly open with me, both emotionally and with their time. I al-ways feel so honored to meet people when

they are deeply grieving. It feels like you are entering a sacred space. All pretence is gone. It’s like meeting someone naked.

They allowed me to poke around in her rooms by myself, searching for clues. I tell you this only because I think it helped me in the writing of this piece.

While the graphic was an incredible achievement, stitching a narrative out of all the various scraps of stories and reflec-tions presented a challenge.

Wandering around her home alone gave me the space and time to think about not just her life, but life in general. Why are we here? How do we measure our lives? What is the point? I used these questions — the universal questions we work hard most of our lives to avoid addressing, in mortal fear — as a frame to focus the story.

My colleague Jim Rankin came with me one day and took photos of many of the intimate things in Shelagh’s apartment — family photos, heart-shaped rocks, a wishbone on the window sill. These photos accompanied the story in the paper and online, which gave readers a taste of walking with us through Shelagh’s home.

Rankin recorded Heather speaking about many of these totems — why Shelagh treasured them and what they said about her. We used her voice in an extra graphic, where the reader could click on a pic-ture of Shelagh’s muddied boot and hear Heather talk about her sister’s daily walks in the ravines with her beloved dogs.

I’ve reflected for some time on why the story of Shelagh Gordon’s life struck such a chord with readers.

In the end, I think it was this: People could see themselves in Shelagh. Her life was a good mirror to examine their own legacy and impact. She reminded them that you don’t need to be famous to matter. You can change the world around you in simple ways, with love.

Catherine Porter is a social justice and activist columnist at the Toronto Star. She has won two national newspaper awards and been nominated for three others. She is currently writing a book on Lovely’s Haiti — documenting the story of 5-year-old Lovely Avelus, who spent six days trapped under the rubble of her house after the devastating 2010 earthquake. Porter was on the second team of Star reporters to land in Haiti after the earth-quake. She has been back there 15 times since, reporting.

Shelagh Gordon (pictured below with her “life partner” Andy Schultz) was not famous. She hated her job. Was single when she died at the age of 55. But Catherine Porter and the team of journalists who wrote about Shelagh disovered that her life was anything but ordinary.

A team of writers, editors and visual journalists were nominated for a National Newspaper Award for the life and death of Shelagh Gordon, an ordi-nary woman who led a magical life. Among them are, back row, left to right, David Cooper, Paul Hunter, Mary Ormsby, Scott Simmie, Paul Irish and Oakland Ross. Middle row, left to right, are Ken-yon Wallace, Catherine Porter, Joe Hall and Leslie Ferenc. Front row, from left are Valerie Hauch, Nancy White, Sharis Shahmiryan, Patricia Hluchy and Leslie Scrivener. PHOTO CREDIT: Tim Finlan/Toronto Star

NNA Award Winner News Photography

Barrie Examiner – for a dramatic shot of a police officer trying desperately to hold on to a man trying to jump

from an overpass to a busy highway – Mark Wanzel

There are images that leave a profound effect

on the viewer, and by them-selves offer an experience all their own.

What started as a domestic dispute at a local gas station quickly escalated into a series of events that unfolded on a highway overpass. A man un-der extreme distress attempted to avoid being arrested. Barrie Police struggled to rescue the man as he dangled over the 400 highway. All of this unfolded in front of hundreds of motorists who watched in disbelief as authorities tried in vain to rescue the man.

The resulting photo was a true example of a journalist working in an unplanned, unscripted situation with only seconds to react. The event literally unfolded as I was travelling in my car.

I made a quick call to the office and told them what just happened. It wasn’t until I tried explaining to my editor what I had seen, and captured, that I knew I had something truly extraordinary.

Forcing my way across two lanes of traffic to access an off-ramp, I headed back to the office and begin reviewing the images with my editor and publisher.

After seeing the image, my editor immediately realized what I was feel-ing. However, there was an ethical issue regarding the image and whether the man had survived his fall. The Barrie Examiner

has a loyal readership. In the past, they have made it known

such images are considered distasteful when a resident’s untimely death becomes front-page news.

Once it was confirmed the man was alive and recovering in hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, the decision was made to run the picture.

Despite falling after slipping through their hands, Police were later recognized for saving the man’s life. Their efforts gave motorists enough time to stop, pre-venting what might have the man’s death.

The event and subsequent image brought to light the incredible sacrifice law enforcement officers make each day in our communities and the growing issues surrounding mental health. The image by itself shows an incredible, human situa-tion, promoting a level of self-sacrifice at

its peak, with enough elements to give the viewer perceptive.

It’s rare to see moments captured like this, taken under such extremes for both the photographer and the subject.

Mark Wanzel is a freelance photojour-nalist based in Barrie Ontario who has been working at the Barrie Examiner for 12 years. You can see more of his work at http://markwanzelphotography.blogspot.ca/or follow on Twitter.

A domestic dispute culminated in a dramatic display of life-and-death on a highway overpass. And Mark Wanzel got it on camera.

NNA Award Winners Editorials

69 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 70

HOLD ON: Traffic in the north-bound lanes comes to a halt as members of the Barrie Police struggle to rescue a man hanging from the Dunlop Street Bridge Thursday. Moments later the man would fall onto the highway

PHOTO CREDIT: MARK WANZEL/THE BARRIE EXAMINER/QMI

Dalton McGuinty has mapped his route to a third Liberal majority

government — and it runs straight through Kitchener-Waterloo. The question that vot-ers in this suddenly very important riding must ask themselves is: Should they help take him where he wants to go?

The math will be painfully simple on Sept. 6 — byelection day in this riding and the riding of Vaughan. If the Liberals hold Vaughan and snatch Kitchener-Waterloo from the Progressive Conservatives, who’ve had a 22-year lock on it, the Liber-als will scratch out a bare majority.

No longer will they have to be propped up by the Conservatives or New Demo-crats when passing vital legislation. No longer will they live with the chilling realization that the combined opposition parties can pull the plug on the minority Liberal government any time they choose. Two byelection wins will add up to a bare Liberal majority in the legislature and, barring unforeseen circumstances, three more years in office for the Liberals. That means more time and a lot more power.

If these were not the stakes, if the bye-lections could change nothing substantial, then the primary issue would be which of the 10 candidates running for office in Kitchener-Waterloo would be best suited to represent this constituency. And if these were not the stakes, while commending all the candidates for stepping forward to serve the public and putting themselves on the line, we would focus primarily on three strong local candidates who have particularly impressed The Record’s editorial board. They are: Eric Davis of the Liberals; the New Democratic Party’s Catherine Fife; and Progressive Conserva-tive Tracey Weiler.

Any one of these individuals would make a strong local representative and

follow in the footsteps of Elizabeth Witmer as a dependable defender of the community. Fife’s communication skills and political experience were especially impressive at the Election Forum held by this newspaper on Monday. In his second attempt to win the seat in as many years, Davis displayed forcefulness and maturity. And while Weiler is newer to the political arena, she shows passion and commit-ment.

But there’s more at stake in these bye-lections than who would be the best repre-sentative. Some Kitchener-Waterloo voters may still want to support the individual and that’s their right. But we see a bigger picture here where voters have a rare op-portunity to determine the fate of not just a government but their province.

Last Oct. 6, Ontario voters, in their shared wisdom, sent a minority Lib-eral government to Queen’s Park. In that general election, The Record endorsed the Liberals after agreeing they offered the best hope for Ontario. But we must now conclude that based on their actions over the past year the Liberals have not earned the privilege of winning a majority.

Their decision in the closing days of the last election to cancel construction of a generating station in Mississauga and improve their chances of winning seats in that area was politics at its worst. It was reprehensible and will cost beleaguered Ontario taxpayers $190 million. Mean-while, the ongoing scandal surrounding Ornge, the province’s air ambulance ser-vice, has shredded the Liberals’ reputation as capable managers of public services and the public purse. A damning report by Auditor General Jim McCarter pointed to shady bookkeeping at Ornge as well as ridiculously high per-patient costs and declining service levels. How could the

Liberals have let this mess stew and fester for so long?

This record of cynical politicking and inept management should not be rewarded on Sept. 6.

In the Kitchener-Waterloo riding, this newspaper believes voters who want to see more fiscal discipline steeling the Liberals will be drawn to the Progressive Conser-vatives who, in recent days, have support-ed the Liberals’ attempt to rein in educa-tion costs with a new teachers’ contract. Others who desire more social spending in key areas, as well as higher taxes for wealthy Ontarians, will be attracted to the NDP which won concessions from the Liberals before helping the government pass its budget.

Both Progressive Conservatives and the NDP have proven that the current minority government can work and serve the inter-ests of Ontario. Both parties have lead-ers — Tim Hudak for the Conservatives, Andrea Horwath for the NDP — who have grown in stature, wisdom and experience since last fall’s general election. Voters across Ontario would benefit from having more time to observe them in opposition in a minority situation and to assess their fitness for the premier’s office.

After nine years in power, the Liberals look increasingly fatigued, bereft of ideas, thin on vision, clinging to power without really knowing what to do with that power and begging for a chance to clean up a fi-nancial disaster they helped create. Defeat next week might be the sharp spur that pricks them into action — and perhaps even the beginning of renewal.

It comes down to this. The Sept. 6 bye-lection is a referendum to decide whether Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals deserve a ma-jority government. In Kitchener-Waterloo the answer should be a resounding no.

Ontario’s fate in K-W’s hands

Editorial September 01, 2012

Waterloo Record

Waterloo Record – for an editorial on Ontario’s minority Liberal goverment – John Roe

NNA Award Winner SportsToronto Star – for a series on high-tech hockey sticks – Dave Feschuk

Stick shift: hockey stick technology is ‘great equalizer’

Published on Sat Dec 22, 2012

By Dave Feschuk

Wendel Clark is presiding over a hockey practice on a wintry evening at Westwood Arena. A legendary member of the Maple Leafs, Clark moonlights as the head coach of Toronto Young Nationals, a team of players who never saw him perform in his prime, skating hard down the wing and wristing a shot over a goalie’s shoulder, always with a wooden stick.

The talented 12 and unders — the Young Nationals are in the top division of their age group —look like pros, with shots harder and higher than their es-teemed coach could ever manage when he was this age.

“These kids can do a lot of things at 12 that we could never do,” Clark says as he leans on the boards. “When I was 12 we weren’t doing any one-timers. We couldn’t even bend the stick yet.”

Clark, whose massive hands and fore-arms once blessed him with one of the best shots in the NHL, takes no credit for his players’ accomplishments. He chalks it up to technology, specifically the millions of dollars spent developing the hockey sticks in the boys’ hands.

A generation ago, Clark said, an elite team of 12-year-olds might have been lucky to have two players who could give a goalie pause when they pulled the trig-ger. Maybe three. But those days, when players carried sticks hewn largely from the forests of Ontario and Quebec, are gone. Today, sticks are made in factories from Mexico to China to Vietnam. Con-structed of high-tech composite materials and bearing price tags that can reach $300, the sticks can now put dents in both goalie masks and in wallets.

“The sticks have definitely changed the game, probably more for the youngsters than for the guys in the NHL — although

it’s changed in the NHL, too,” says the 46-year-old Clark.

If anything, Clark is understating the effect.

In the past decade, hockey sticks made from high-tech materials found in aircraft and Formula One race cars have replaced Canadian-made wood models as the tool of choice for players from the NHL all the way down to tyke.

The full effect of that change is still be-ing realized and it will continue to evolve as kids march through the ranks having only ever played with a composite-style stick.

But already the consequences have been massive. Expressed at the most simple level, because the tool in the hands of the player has changed, goals are scored dif-ferently now. They are also more expen-sive now.

A booming shot can be bought. Com-posite sticks have taken a skill that once belonged only to the most feared shooters in the game and given it to the masses.

The end of woodCynics would point out that the game

was doing just fine when, in the middle part of the previous century, hall of famers like Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita were experimenting with hand-made banana curves on wooden sticks not disimilar to the ones sold in Canadian hardware stores for a few coins.

Or they might look to the 1980s, when Wayne Gretzky re-wrote NHL records largely using a wood and fibreglass Titan model that was noted for its low-tech, log-like heaviness, or even when the Maple Leafs last appeared in the NHL playoffs, circa 2004. Their leading goal scorer in that post-season was centre Joe Nieuwen-dyk, and he used a wood stick.

But in less than a generation, wood has become a novelty. St. Louis Blues head coach Ken Hitchcock says that when a wooden stick is trotted out at an NHL practice — he, for the record, often uses a stick with a composite shaft an a wooden blade—players “snicker,” as they might if a golfing buddy brought a hickory-shafted driver to the first tee.

In a decade, the wooden stick has become a relic. And this hasn’t happened without complaint.

Guy Lafleur, the hall of fame scoring star of the 1970s, is among those who has lamented the demise of the Sherwood 5030, the made-in-Quebec model that was, for years, among the most popular sticks in the game. Lafleur once called the 5030 “the best stick in the world.”

But the 5030, like all wood sticks, had a flaw — no two sticks were exactly the same. Former Edmonton Oiler great Paul Coffey recalls a representative from Sherwood explaining the reason for the inconsistency with a shrug: No two trees are alike.

This, on the contrary, is composite tech-nology’s great strength: Every composite stick is exactly alike, plus or minus toler-ances that are barely noticeable to even the most finicky pro. It wasn’t unusual for players in the wood-stick era to spend hours at work benches customizing shafts and blades the way a previous generation’s grease monkeys tuned hot rods.

“The wood — you never knew if you were going to get a bad batch of bad wood. They never sent the right pattern. So I’d shave it and rasp it and blow-torch it and curve it and step on it,” says Brett Hull, who has scored more NHL goals than anyone but Gretzky and Gordie Howe. “My fingers looked like (enforcer)

Kelly Chase. His were from fighting. Mine were from rasping my sticks, and rapping my knuckles off the bench and the vise and the blade.”

Little such post-factory labour is re-quired with composite sticks. Most players simply remove a shipment from the box and add tape.

Though proprietary processes vary, building a composite stick generally in-volves the cutting and layering of sheets of pricey carbon fibre, which are then bonded together with glue-like resin at high heat in an oven. It’s a highly technical process. Stick manufacturers employ engineers with backgrounds in the aerospace and motorsports industries, where composites — prized for their high strength-to-weight ratio — are used in abundance.

“The thing people don’t understand is how manual the process is. A lot of it is hand-laid carbon fibre, layers upon layers upon layers,” said Evan Baker, a product manager for Bauer. “It’s like making a really, really fancy cake, when you think about it.”

The change to the composite stick has been entirely driven by the urge to create a hard shot, and an easier one. A perfect shot can only be achieved through practice — the type of practice Clark puts his charges through. The goal of that practice — of any practice — is to ensure your body consistently and efficiently repeats a skill.

But if the tool in your hand can’t be relied upon to act the same way every time — well, it’s not operating as effectively as it could be.

That’s the area stick manufacturers have exploited over the past decade in the quest to give everyone a better shot. And by and large, manufacturers have been successful. One by one, traditionalists in the past de-cade have been won over by carbon fibre’s undeniable efficiency.

“I always liked the wood blade better for puck-handling,” says Zach Parise, the Minnesota Wild forward. “But then I real-ized my shot was brutal. The composite

blade makes that much of a difference. Shooting is just more effortless.”

End of the SlapperThe physics of a slap shot go something

like this. A player ideally doesn’t hit the puck first; he hits the ice behind the puck; the contact between blade and ice cause the stick to bend — or, in hockey parlance, load.

J.S. Rancourt, one of the principals of the Waterloo-based stick-testing laboratory Hockey Robotics, explains that a shooter momentarily transfers energy into the stick, which in turn is released to the puck.

The more efficiently that transfer takes place, the less effort is required to fire the puck.

“The stick stores the energy like a coiled-up spring — and then as you hit the puck and throughout the release, not only is your lower hand pushing and delivering energy, but that stored energy is trans-ferred to the puck as the stick snaps back straight,” Rancourt says.

During the transfer of energy, compos-ite sticks operate more efficiently than wooden sticks. They can also be more eas-ily customized to match the skill, or lack thereof, of the shooter.

The end result is that players of all types have found that, thanks to the efficiency of their sticks, they can produce a powerful blast with a modest backswing.

It’s a peculiar paradox: By building a better stick, the world has seen the decline in popularity of what was once the ulti-mate shot, the slap shot.

We’ve all seen the mighty wind up, the stick raised high above a player’s head, with a shot that looks more like a golf swing than anything else. Perfected by players like Al MacInnis, a mighty slap shot from the blue line was once among the most intimidating plays in hockey.

Now? It’s a waste of energy. Yes, Zdeno Chara, the Boston Bruins

defenceman, set a new NHL record during the all-star skills competition last season.

He blasted a slapper at an NHL record

of 108 miles per hour. And yes, a former Maple Leaf named Al Iafrate was clocked shooting 105 miles per hour nearly 20 years ago while using a wood stick.

So there is little evidence that the top-end velocity of elite slap shots has been drastically increased by the advent of carbon fibre sticks.

But a 2004 study commissioned by the NHL found that composite sticks did enhance the speed of wrist shots.

Wrist shots, truncated slapshots, and snapshots all are meant to be taken quickly and with minimum effort. The stick is either kept on the ice or raised only a foot or two off of it before it makes contact with the puck.

For years, being proficient at shooting quickly and hard immediately made any player stand out on the ice. But because of the quickness of the strike, those types of shots either had to be practiced inces-santly, the shooter had to have God-given ability or the shooter’s arms and core needed to be considerably stronger than his counterparts in order for a shot to stand out.

The composite stick changed that forever. New sticks haven’t made the top level shooter better. It has given everyone a chance to “unload” a powerful shot.

“I always call it the great equalizer,” says Blues coach Hitchcock. “It’s like in golf with the new equipment — every-one hits it further. In our sport, everyone shoots it better.”

Because the new-style stick transfers energy so well, players don’t need to be as perfect with their efforts in shooting the puck, Hitchcock explains.

“You don’t need a lot of stress on the stick to create the speed. I see guys shoot-ing the puck now with little or no windup. But you see the bend in the stick and you know it’s going to be coming hard.”

You can read the rest of the story at: http://www.thestar.com/news/in-sight/2012/12/22/stick_shift_hockey_stick_technology_is_great_equalizer.html

The change to the composite stick has been entirely driven by the urge to create a hard shot, and an easier one.

71 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 72

NNA Award Winner International Reporting

La Presse, Montréal – for a story of the toll that the war in Syria is taking on its citizens – Michèle Ouimet

Une auto freine brutalement devant l’hôpital Dar Al Saïfa, au centre

d’Alep. Les portières s’ouvrent, deux hommes agités sortent un corps, qu’ils tiennent l’un sous les bras, l’autre par les pieds. Ils montent les marches en courant, balançant le corps maladroitement. Il est aussitôt pris en charge par un médecin, qui le couche sur une civière au milieu du hall d’entrée.

Tout se déroule dans ce hall étroit, barbouillé de flaques de sang. Derrière, une pièce pour les cas les plus graves. Une pièce exiguë, mal équipée. Les autres étages sont fermés parce que l’hôpital a été bombardé cinq fois. L’armée de Bachar al-Assad voudrait le détruire, car c’est là que les soldats de l’Armée syrienne libre (ASL) se font soigner. Les immeubles environnants ont été bombardés 20 fois. Dans Alep, c’est l’une des zones les plus à risque. Les immeubles poussiéreux sont délabrés, les vitres fracassées.

Un médecin se penche sur l’homme, qui respire difficilement. Un tireur embusqué lui a tiré une balle en plein coeur. Son pantalon est mouillé d’urine - sa vessie s’est vidée quand il a été touché. Il n’y a presque pas de sang autour de la blessure. Les deux hommes qui ont amené le blessé crient en tournant autour de la civière. Le médecin les repousse sans ménagement. Des gardes armés les mettent à la porte.

«C’est mon frère, explique un des hommes, le regard chaviré par le chagrin. On lui a tiré dessus pendant qu’il ache-tait des légumes. Il a une femme et sept enfants.

- Pourquoi est-il resté à Alep? lui ai-je demandé. C’est tellement dangereux!

- Il n’a nulle part où aller et il doit nour-

rir ses enfants. Ce n’est pas un soldat, mais un simple père de famille.»

Un civil. Un autre. Les soldats de Bachar al-Assad les visent. Des tireurs embusqués les abattent au marché ou au milieu de la rue, ou alors une bombe s’abat sur un quartier peuplé d’hommes, de femmes et d’enfants.

Pendant que le médecin se penche sur l’homme blessé, une camionnette armée d’une mitrailleuse se gare devant l’hôpital. Un homme en sort en tenant un foulard maculé de sang sur son flanc droit. Il boite en montant les marches et s’écrase sur une des deux civières stationnées dans le hall.

Deux secondes plus tard, une autre camionnette freine en faisant crisser ses pneus. Des hommes crient en brandissant leurs fusils. Ils sont survoltés. Au milieu d’eux, leur commandant, Abo Omar, baraqué, barbe grise et foulard rouge noué autour de la tête. Dans la camionnette, quatre soldats de l’Armée syrienne libre criblés de balles. Le commandant crie des ordres. Les blessés sont soulevés par leurs camarades et amenés dans le hall qui déborde. Ils hurlent «Takbir! Allah Akbar!» (Gloire à Allah, Allah est grand!) à pleins poumons.

Le Dr Osmane reste calme au milieu de cette agitation. Il en a vu d’autres. Il a été arrêté trois fois et il a goûté aux prisons et aux tortures raffinées de Bachar al-Assad.

«Personne ne veut travailler ici parce que c’est trop dangereux, dit-il. Si le gouvernement m’attrape, il va me jeter en prison et me torturer. Pour eux, je suis un traître.

- Et pourquoi êtes-vous ici?- J’ai perdu 20 cousins et 6 amis

proches, j’ai perdu mon pays, j’ai tout

perdu, je n’ai pas le choix.»Il travaille sans arrêt depuis deux mois,

c’est-à-dire depuis que la bataille d’Alep a commencé.

Dix-neuf infirmières et six médecins travaillent sans relâche dans cet hôpital de fortune qui tient tête à la puissante armée de Bachar al-Assad. Ils sont bénévoles. Près de 80% de leurs patients sont des civils, victimes d’un régime aveugle qui veut à tout prix écraser la révolution.

Le Dr Osmane s’interrompt. Une autre camionnette vient d’arriver, suivie d’une autre et d’une autre. Pendant que les bles-sés défilent dans le hall surveillé par des gardes armés, un homme nettoie une veste militaire gorgée de sang avec un tuyau d’arrosage.

Ici, c’est le Far West, mais le Far West noyé dans une guerre civile.

Alep n’a pas d’électricité, les écoles sont fermées et les chars d’assaut qui tirent des obus tiennent la ville en alerte avec leurs boums assourdissants. Des quartiers démolis par des bombes se sont vidés de leur population. Un silence impression-nant s’est abattu sur les rues remplies de décombres. Aux fenêtres, les rideaux défraîchis et poussiéreux se balancent doucement. Pas de cris d’enfants, pas de chants d’oiseaux. Rien. Un silence de mort, un silence de guerre après le passage de l’artillerie.

À 300 m de la ligne de front, la ville vit. Quelques enfants jouent dans la rue, indifférents aux tirs de mortier, des vieux prennent leur café sur le pas de leur porte ou jouent aux cartes, des femmes cou-vertes d’un niqab font leurs courses en pressant le pas. Quelques commerces sont ouverts et de longues files s’étirent devant

les boulangeries. Les autos circulent même si elles doivent parfois zigzaguer entre les gravats. Des détritus s’amoncellent au coin des rues. Alep ne sent pas bon, ces jours-ci.

La vie et la mort, la paix et la guerre se côtoient à quelques centaines de mètres. Alep compte 3,5 millions d’habitants. Depuis le début de la guerre, environ 1 million de personnes ont quitté la ville. Il resterait donc 2,5 millions d’habitants. Personne n’a de chiffres précis.

La plupart vivent dans la peur. Peur de tomber sous les balles d’un tireur em-busqué, peur de perdre leur maison, qui pourrait être éventrée par un tir de mortier, peur que la guerre s’étire et n’en finisse plus.

Plusieurs ont décidé de se réfugier dans un sous-sol. Comme les familles Bashar et Omar, qui vivent dans la cave du magasin où travaille Aum Bashar, dans le quartier de Tarek el-Bab. Une cave grande comme la moitié d’un gymnase. Il faut descendre 23 marches dans le noir avant d’y arriver. Ici vivent 45 personnes: 5 hommes, 20 femmes et 20 enfants âgés de 1 à 10 ans.

Depuis deux mois, les deux familles survivent 24 heures sur 24 dans cet espace confiné. Seule une lumière chiche filtre à l’autre bout de la cave. Dans un coin, des couvertures pendues au plafond fournis-sent un peu d’intimité. Ils cuisinent dehors sur un poêle à bois.

Les enfants n’ont pas le droit de mettre

le nez dehors. Ils pleurent souvent. Les hommes et les femmes sortent parfois faire des courses. Ils rasent les murs de crainte de recevoir une balle en plein front d’un tireur embusqué.

Dès le début de la bataille d’Alep, leur maison a été détruite. Ils ne peuvent pas fuir, ils n’ont pas d’argent, pas de famille qui pourrait les héberger ailleurs dans le pays. Ils ne peuvent pas non plus se réfu-gier dans une école ou une mosquée, car les troupes de Bachar al-Assad pourraient les attaquer. Il n’existe d’ailleurs aucun refuge pour les sans-abri à Alep. Trop dangereux.

Il reste les sous-sols. Impossible de savoir combien de gens vivent cachés dans les entrailles des maisons. Chose certaine, il existe une vie souterraine à Alep. Le porte-parole de l’ASL, Abdullah Aly Asin, n’ose pas lancer de chiffre: un quart de million de personnes? Un demi-million, peut-être?

«Qu’est-ce qui est le plus difficile? ai-je demandé à Aum Bashar, qui tient ses enfants dans ses jupes.

- Tout, répond-elle. Le dénuement. Nous n’avons pas d›eau, pas d’électricité, pas de téléphone, pas de travail.»

Tout ce qu’ils ont, c’est du temps, trop de temps, et la peur, trop de peur.

Ces conditions extrêmes minent leur moral, mais ce qui les tue, c’est d’ignorer combien de temps encore ils devront vivre dans leur sous-sol.

«On est dépressifs, admet Aum Bashar. Quand les bombes tombent, les enfants pleurent. On vit comme des vagabonds.

À l’hôpital aussi, les médecins manquent de tout et reçoivent peu d’aide.

«On manque surtout de spécialistes, explique le Dr Osmane. Nous avons perdu cinq patients parce que nous n’avons pas de chirurgien thoracique.»

La ronde infernale des visites continue. En moyenne, l’hôpital reçoit une centaine de blessés par jour.

Certains sont déjà morts lorsqu’ils ar-rivent. Le Dr Osmane ne peut rien pour eux.

Vers la fin de la journée, trois cadavres déboulent en quelques minutes: un corps aux vêtements ensanglantés, les yeux ou-verts sur le néant, un homme avec dans la poitrine un trou large comme un pruneau et un troisième attaché avec de la grosse corde sur une planche de bois, le corps recouvert d’une couverture rose avec des dessins de chats. Il a un trou dans la tête. Un trou de la grosseur d’une balle. Deux civils, un soldat. Trois patients de moins pour le Dr Osmane. Trois victimes de la guerre. Les gens les regardent en secouant la tête et continuent leur chemin.

À lire la suite de l’articlehttp://www.lapresse.ca/international/

dossiers/crise-dans-le-monde-arabe/syrie/201209/27/01-4578347-la-presse-en-syrie-alep-a-feu-et-a-sang.php

Les enfants n’ont pas le droit de mettre le nez dehors. Ils pleurent souvent.

Ville d’Alep, en Syrie. Un groupe d’enfants tente de s’amuser dans un refuge.Photo Édouard Plante-Fréchette, La Presse

La Presse en Syrie: Alep à feu et à sang

Michèle Ouimet

La Presse

73 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 74

NNA Award Winner Breaking News

Affaire Magnotta: la victime est un étudiant chinois

Vincent Larouche et Gabrielle Duchaine

Publié le 01 juin 2012

La Presse

La Presse, Montréal– for stories of Luka Magnotta, the man accused of killing and dismembering a Montreal student – Gabrielle Duchaine, Vincent Larouche, Daphné Cameron, Isabelle Audet, Jean-Thomas Léveilleé

VICTIM OF A HORRIBLE CRIME: Photos from the family of Jun Lin, the victim of a brutal slaying last year, were given to media Tuesday, April 2, 2013 in Montreal. Preliminary hearing is underway for Luka Rocco Magnotta, the man charged in connection with the infamous body-parts case that made international headlines. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Lin Family

L’enquête sur le meurtre et le dé-membrement commis à Côte-des-

Neiges a pris une dimension internationale jeudi. Alors que la police cherchait le sus-pect Luka Rocco Magnotta en France, la victime a été identifiée comme un étudiant chinois admis récemment à l’Université Concordia.

Selon nos informations, le Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) a montré à des résidants de Côte-des-Neiges la photo de Jun Lin, ressortissant chinois de 33 ans originaire de la province de Wuhan, arrivé à Montréal en juillet dernier pour ses études.

Vendredi matin, le Service de police de

la Ville de Montréal a confirmé l’identité de la victime.

Le défunt connaissait déjà Magnotta avant le soir fatidique, apparemment. Il l’aurait suivi volontairement chez lui pour avoir des relations sexuelles.

Richard Payette, qui habite un apparte-ment voisin de la scène de crime, est certain d’avoir reconnu sur cette photo l’individu qui apparaît dans la sanglante vidéo diffusée sur l’internet. «C’est clair que c’est lui... c’est dégueulasse», a-t-il déclaré au cours d’une entrevue hier.

Il dit n’avoir jamais vu l’homme dans l’immeuble auparavant.

La police travaille maintenant en collab-oration avec le consulat

de la Chine à Montréal dans cette affaire.

«Un Chinois qui cor-respond à la description avait été porté disparu par des proches le 24 mai, soit un jour avant la découverte de la valise, vendredi dernier. Un avis de recherche a été publié en chinois sur le site du consulat le 29 mai», confirme Xin Xu, porte-parole de la mis-sion diplomatique.

Le consulat essaie d’aider le SPVM à joindre sa famille en

Chine pour l’aviser du drame, mais aussi pour savoir si elle a la moindre parcelle d’information qui aiderait l’enquête. Les démarches se sont avérées compliquées et pourraient prendre encore un certain temps. Le consulat affirme toutefois que des gens y travaillent activement sur le terrain.

Les autorités jouent de prudence pour l’instant. Le mandat d’arrêt concernant Luka Rocco Magnotta, déposé hier au greffe du palais de justice de Montréal, évoque le meurtre non prémédité d’une «personne inconnue» et un outrage à un cadavre.

France ou Europe de l’Est?Le SPVM a aussi demandé l’aide de ses

partenaires d’Interpol dans sa chasse pour trouver l’acteur porno de 29 ans, soupçon-né d’avoir filmé le meurtre et la mutila-tion de sa victime, pour ensuite diffuser la vidéo sur l’internet et envoyer des restes humains à des partis politiques fédéraux.

Interpol a diffusé un avis de recherche international avec la photo de Magnotta.

Selon nos sources, des documents trouvés dans l’appartement du suspect et certains de ses écrits laissent croire qu’il a fui vers la France après son crime. Le commandant Ian Lafrenière, porte-parole du SPVM, confirme d’ailleurs qu’il est possible que l’homme le plus recherché du Canada ait fui le pays. Les médias français se sont rapidement emparés de l’affaire et la photo du suspect a fait le tour du pays.

Mais les policiers examinent aussi d’autres hypothèses. Magnotta aurait pu laisser volontairement de fausses pistes. Son utilisation du pseudonyme Vladimir Romanov et certaines traces laissées sur l’internet laissent croire qu’il pourrait aussi avoir l’Europe de l’Est dans ligne de sa mire.

Mauvaise publicitéPar ailleurs, dans l’immeuble miteux

de Côte-des-Neiges où Magnotta habitait depuis quelques mois et où il aurait tué sa victime, avant d’abandonner son tronc dans la ruelle, on s’affairait hier à effacer les traces de l’horrible boucherie.

Le matelas ensanglanté de son lit ainsi que le fauteuil et d’autres meubles ont été sortis du minuscule appartement et jetés au bord de la rue. Un des concierges finis-

sait de nettoyer l’endroit lors du passage de La Presse.

«Je ne pense pas qu’il [Magnotta] va revenir. Ses choses n’étaient plus utilis-ables. Nous avons lavé le frigo, qui était plein de sang, comme s’il y avait gardé une partie du corps. Nous allons sûrement trouver quelqu’un rapidement pour louer l’appartement. Mais le propriétaire est tanné de toute la mauvaise publicité, car des gens parlent de déménager mainten-ant», raconte Mike Nadeau.

Pendant ce temps, en Ontario, la police de Toronto a reconnu avoir été avertie dès dimanche qu’une vidéo de démembre-ment circulait sur le web. Elle avait jugé l’information insuffisante pour ouvrir une enquête. C’est un avocat américain qui a fait l’appel, a indiqué la constable Wendy

Drummond. Une enquête pour cruauté animale avait toutefois été ouverte en 2011 lorsque des organismes de défense des animaux avaient accusé Magnotta d’avoir tué des chatons et diffusé des images de leur mort sur l’internet.

À Peterborough, où habite la famille du suspect, peu d’informations ont filtré hier.

«Il est gravement dérangé, c’est un malade mental», a confié hier un jeune homme sur le pas d’une maison modeste de la banlieue paisible au nord-est de Toronto.

À lire la suite de l’article:http://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/jus-

tice-et-affaires-criminelles/201205/31/01-4530595-affaire-magnotta-la-victime-est-un-etudiant-chinois.php

WANTED SUSPECT: This file photo provided by the Montreal Police Service shows Luka Rocco Magnotta.

PHOTO CREDIT: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Montreal Police Service

75 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 76

NNA Award Winner Project of the Year

La Presse, Montréal – for a project on alternative healers

(De gauche à droite) Vérónica Pérez-Tejeda (graphiste), David Lambert (graphiste), Isabelle Dubé (journaliste vidéo), Serge Chapleau (caricaturiste), Isabelle Audet (chef de division vidéo), Francis Vailles (chroniqueur), Jean-Thomas Léveillé (journaliste vidéo), Gabrielle Duchaine, Daphné Cameron (journaliste), Vincent La-rouche (journaliste), Michèle Ouimet (chroniqueuse), Marie-Claude Malboeuf (journaliste).

Nicole Ouellet a commencé sa car-rière comme infirmière. Aux soins

intensifs et en néonatalogie. Difficile à croire lorsqu’au téléphone, elle nous déclare traiter les tout petits bébés en se fiant aux «vibrations» de leurs couches pleines d’urine. «Avant de nous la poster, les parents la font sécher», prend soin de préciser la résidante de Sherbrooke.

Interrogée en avril au sujet d’une fillette de 3 ans aux intestins infestés de polypes, la sexagénaire est catégorique: quoi qu’en disent les médecins - et malgré les risques de cancer -, la chirurgie est inutile. Avec quelques traitements de «médecine vibra-toire», dit-elle, toutes les excroissances vont sûrement disparaître. La petite n’a qu’à gribouiller sur une feuille de papier. Encore une fois, l’ex-infirmière se fiera aux «vibrations» qui en émanent pour la guérir... en pondant une liste de mots.

Nicole Ouellet énumère ses clients passés: une petite de deux ans et demi cou-verte d’eczéma et de psoriasis, une enfant brûlée au troisième degré... Son site web affiche même les photos douteuses avant/après d’une fillette de 11 ans, qui lui serait arrivée très fiévreuse, peinant à respirer et vomissant.

Depuis 1994, Nicole Ouellet a été

condamnée à quatre reprises pour exercice illégal de la médecine. Mais le Collège des médecins du Québec ne savait pas qu’elle avait aussitôt repris du service. Encore moins qu’elle s’en prenait aussi aux enfants.

Vérification faite auprès de l’organisme, aucun guérisseur autoproclamé n’a encore été poursuivi pour avoir traité un jeune. Un seul a reçu un avertissement à cet égard, après avoir forcé les jambes d’un bébé, qui s’est retrouvé à l’hôpital.

Pourtant, Nicole Ouellet a une immense concurrence. Au fil d’une enquête de trois mois sur l’industrie des pseudo-guéris-seurs, nous avons constaté que la plupart d’entre eux jouent les pédiatres. Énergie, vibrations, aimants, fréquences: chacun prétend avoir trouvé LA méthode miracle pour tout guérir, des otites à l’autisme.

Leurs actions sont très souvent illé-gales, mais payantes. Les consulter coûte souvent au moins 100$ par visite. «Mais le plus inquiétant, c’est qu’on risque de priver l’enfant de soins reconnus», dit le Dr François Gauthier, directeur des enquêtes au Collège.

Difficile de les épingler, car les parents viennent rarement se vanter d’avoir ex-posé leur enfant à des pratiques occultes.

Guérir au téléphoneLorsque nous avons libéré la table d’une

magnétiseuse du quartier Côte-des-Neiges, une écolière s’y est aussitôt allongée pour subir à son tour un traitement. Sur son site web, un autre pseudo-guérisseur, Sylvain Champagne, cible carrément les jeunes, qu’il dit «beaucoup plus réceptifs que nous, les adultes». L’ex-ingénieur élec-trique prétend régler leurs problèmes par téléphone. Endormez votre fille et appelez-moi, nous dit-il. «On va l’observer 30 minutes. Ses yeux et ses doigts vont avoir des sursauts, son ventre va peut-être faire du bruit. C’est le signe que les fréquences travaillent.»

Le naturothérapeute reçoit aussi les jeunes à Boisbriand, dans le sous-sol rouge de son bungalow encombré de matériel promotionnel. Devant le garçon-net de 4 ans qui nous accompagnait en mars dernier, il agitait distraitement les mains en parlant sans cesse. L’homme ne voulait surtout pas savoir de quoi souf-frait l’enfant, «pour ne pas contraindre l’univers», justifie-t-il. Parce qu’on ne choisit pas sa guérison, même lorsqu’elle coûte 111$.

Champagne n’offre aucune garantie, mais raconte qu’à son contact, un enfant

Gourous inc.: les pédiatres imaginaires

Publié le 27 septembre 2012 à 05h00

Marie-Claude Malboeuf

La Presse

autiste «est sorti de sa bulle». Un jour, une cliente de 8 ans, hyperactive, «a même vu trois anges pendant le traitement», ajoute-t-il. Une amie lui aurait enfin demandé de guérir son fils par téléphone, tandis que le petit - atteint du cancer du cerveau - était à l’hôpital pour recevoir une greffe de moelle. «Ça pourrait avoir inspiré le mé-decin», assure le pseudo-guérisseur.

Rien n’a toutefois changé pour l’enfant de 4 ans que nous avons amené chez lui. De retour dans son duplex de Rose-mont, le petit s’est mis à agiter les mains autour de son chat en expliquant imiter «le magicien» pour que l’animal cesse de griffer. Le chat griffe toujours...

Méthodes extrêmesPour certains parents, tout semble pré-

férable aux médicaments et à la résigna-tion.

«Des gens leur disent que leur enfant

autiste ou hyperactif est plus avancé que son prof, que c’est un être supérieur, venu faire avancer la société, rapporte la psychoéducatrice Natacha Condo-Dinucci. Le filtre affectif laisse passer ça. C’est plus facile à avaler qu’un diagnostic doulou-reux.»

Les tenants de cette théorie parlent d’enfants «nouveaux», «indigo», «arc-en-ciel» ou «de cristal». Et prétendent, bien sûr, pouvoir guider leurs familles. Certains vont jusqu’à affirmer que, sans leur aide, l’enfant risque un jour le suicide.

Désespérées et avides de solutions, bien des familles lisent tout ce qu’elles trouvent sur l’internet, où il est facile de les embrigader, constate avec inquiétude l’orthopédagogue Karine Martel, spéciali-ste des troubles envahissants du dével-oppement. «Les gens en moyens sont prêts à toutes les dépenses», observe-t-elle.

D’après nos recherches, sur un premier forum, les parents d’un enfant autiste écrivent par exemple qu’un praticien du reiki (forme d’imposition des mains très en vogue) visite leur domicile chaque week-end.

Sur un deuxième, d’autres racontent avoir soumis leur enfant à des prises de sang «vivant» pour chercher des cham-pignons et des parasites supposément responsables de l’hyperactivité. Ces tests sont pourtant «insensés» et les diagnostics qui en découlent sont «inventés», indique le site internet américain Science-Based Medecine.

À lire la suite de l’article:http://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/

sante/201209/26/01-4577945-gourous-inc-les-pediatres-imaginaires.php

Nicole Ouellet a été condamnée à quatre reprises pour exercice illégal de la médecine.Archives La Tribune

77 MEDIA SUMMER 2013 78

To read the stories of the award-winners and finalists, you’ll find the NNA’s PDF HERE!