Series: Spring 2004

The search for the real Matthew Fraser began last September with a phone call to the editor-in-chief’s office at the National Post. Fraser had left a shallow footprint in media circles up to his surprise appointment, at age 44, to the Post’s top newsroom job four months earlier. Nobody knew much about this guy who… Continue reading Which Way Did He Go?

Do you have time to tear it up and start from scratch? Because we’re thinking about becoming a medical magazine.” Fabrice Taylor was advising me on how to update my feature. It felt like -50 C in the Frank magazine office. Taylor suggested his attire would set a good scene: scarf, black toque and gloves… Continue reading Let’s be Frank

Mark Cripps, senior editor of The Stoney Creek News, strides into the Animal Control Centre with a mission. He’s here to take pictures for a regular animal adoption spot in his paper, called Pet Pause, which he started at a local girl’s suggestion. “Hi Mark. I didn’t get my paper last week,” a woman at… Continue reading Big Push, Big Worry

Saving Tesfaye Kumsa’s life may have destroyed his reason for living. In 1992, Kumsa, a documentary and features program producer for Ethiopian Television in Addis Ababa, was imprisoned in a concentration camp after refusing to abide by government imposed censorship laws. When released 11 months later, he was undeterred and organized a handful of colleagues… Continue reading A Puzzling Question

Tony Burman can’t sit still. He shifts and fidgets, changes position, taps his foot, leans back in his chair, never losing balance. He gestures wildly as he talks, touching his hair, then his face, snapping his fingers to emphasize epiphanies. He doesn’t seem bored or distracted. Instead the movements seem like a physical manifestation of… Continue reading Master and Commander