Series: Summer 2009

It was mid-October 1939 when Gladys Arnold sailed aboard the luxury liner the Washington, on her way back to France. There was a strange atmosphere on the ship. The truth hung low over the almost 300 passengers’ heads; they were sailing into the unknown. Watching land fade into open sea, Arnold wondered whether she would ever… Continue reading A Canadian in Paris

I was a summer intern at an Alberta business magazine-you can’t be an intern and not be lowly. I was making a list of rich CEOs, people with the kind of money a student of magazines shouldn’t think about if he wants to stay sanely out of business school. Then the news of The Walrus  reached across… Continue reading The Long Goodbye

It’s a cool day in October 1976, and Connie Smith is working toward making history. In a time when television news stories are recorded on film and edits are spliced together, Smith starts her first day at CHCH TV, where she will become the first female anchor of weekday news in Hamilton. On this day… Continue reading CH-CH-CH-CH Changes

In 1979, Alison Gordon went on her first road trip as a journalist covering the Blue Jays for the Toronto Star. The Jays had been good to her, the first woman to follow and report on the baseball team, but she wasn’t sure how other teams would react. At Arlington Stadium, during a game against the… Continue reading Play Ballsy

It seemed like a good idea at the time. On a mid-September day in 2007, Toronto Star reporter Kevin McGran walked into the Toronto Maple Leafs’ dressing room to file his daily story, but, along with a notebook, he carried a hand-held video camera. The paper, as part of its push into the digital marketplace, had recently… Continue reading Cold War