Series: Spring 1996

Rick James walks through the century-old, red-brick building that houses his weekly newspaper, The Canadian Statesman, and describes what it looked like in days past and what it ‘ll become in the days ahead. In one room, pages for the following day’s edition of the weekly paper lie on the light green veneer of drafting-style… Continue reading Chain Reaction

Last spring, eight people were kneeling on the chancel steps at the front of Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Toronto. Heads bent, eyes closed, they listened as the minister delivered the service of ordination, admitting them to the congregation’s elders. One of the eight was writer and journalist Stevie Cameron. Shaking slightly from kneeling-years of… Continue reading The Cook, the Spy, the Prof and the Scribbler

Charles Campbell, managing editor of The Georgia Straight, is checking the final on-screen version of the Vancouver weekly’s Christmas issue. Outside the huge picture window of the second-floor office, located above a Regency Lexus dealership, two men are scrubbing and vacuuming luxury cars in the December rain. They test-drive the cars, says Campbell, and tell… Continue reading What a Long Straight Trip It’s Been

Heading south from Montreal, the slick and stylish downtown core gives way to a swirl of highway and then to the Mercier Bridge. It’s a long, concrete, well-trafficked link from the island of Montreal to the south shore of the St. Lawrence. The bridge passes over the river, a strip of land, then the deep… Continue reading Voice of a Nation

John Miller’s phone rang on the morning of November 1995. The chair of the journalism school at Ryerson Polytechnic University picked up the receiver and found himself speaking with Toronto journalist Judy Steed. There wasn’t any small talk. Steed had something on her mind. “Is it true that Gerald Hannon teaches journalism there?” she asked.… Continue reading Tricks of the Trade