ONCE UPON A TIME… The staff gathered that Friday afternoon in what was called the President’s Office, a typically spacious, senior-management-type room dominated by a large fireplace. Grouped by department, people anxiously clustered around various landmarks: the bowl of Bits & Bites, the leather couch, the table featuring both a “fine selection of non-imported beer,”… Continue reading Faulty Tower
Category: Summer 2001
Here He Comes to Save the Day!
Today is sting day. The place: a restaurant parking lot on the outskirts of Vancouver. The target: a confidence man named Reverend Narvin Wray Clarence Edwardson. The reason: some of his victims want retribution, so they called the CTV national news show Goldhawk Fights Back and hooked up with Dale Goldhawk—consumer advocate attack dog. The… Continue reading Here He Comes to Save the Day!
Thinking Outside the Idiot Box
I’m sitting in John Allemang’s office on October 20, 2000, his last day as The Globe and Mail‘s television critic. It’s a spacious office containing a TV and VCR for Allemang to watch tapes of the programs he reviews. The tapes, sent by the networks for Allemang to study, are piled hip-deep in two of… Continue reading Thinking Outside the Idiot Box
Overexposed
Everywhere there are women wearing white shirts bearing personal messages: “I’m running for my mother,” “I’m running for my sister.” The women here are among the 96,000 people across the country who have come to act out their fear of a deeply distressing and potentially fatal illness that annually kills 5,500 Canadian women. It’s hard… Continue reading Overexposed
Shooting The Messenger
For nearly three years, I have been the editor of Le Journal de Montréal, a daily newspaper that since its foundation in 1964 has focused on local stories and court cases. It may seem an unexceptional form of journalism, but it still requires a good heart, a strong stomach, compassion and a sense of justice.… Continue reading Shooting The Messenger