Media Magazine — 2016 Awards Edition

MEDIA

T HE C A N A D I A N A SSOCIAT ION OF JOURN A LIS TS • L’A S S O CIATIO N CA N A D IEN N E D ES J O U R NAL I ST E S 2016 AWARD S ED ITIO N • V O L.18, N O . 7

A PROUD MOM AND HER SON The 2016 awards edition

2016 AWARDS EDITION • VOLUME 18, NUMBER SEVEN

MEDIA Table of contents

MEDIA A PUBLICATION OF

THE CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF JOURNALISTS L’ASSOCIATION CANADIENNE DES JOURNALISTES EDITOR

David McKie 1-613-290-7380

LEGAL ADVISOR Peter Jacobsen, Bersenas Jacobsen Chouest, Thomson Blackburn LLP

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

ART DIRECTION and DESIGN David McKie

Renata Aliesio; Kathryne Blaze Baum; Natalie Clancy; Karissa Donkin; Bruce MacKinnon; Shannon Proudfoot; Jim Rankin; Melissa Ridgen; Kate Taylor; Jon Wells; Karin Wells; Jesse Yardley

5 The First Word: Storytelling at its best 6. Canadian Association of Journalists Award: Open Media and National Newspaper Award: Project of The Year A Toronto Star multi-disciplinary team used data to bring a unique understanding to an issue on the radar of journalists and politicians alike: missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.

8. The Canadian Association of Journalists/CNW Group Student Award of Excellence Jesse Yardley and Amara McLaughlin’s multi-media project probed the difficult choices Canadians face when battling cancer.

PHOTO ABOVE Maryanne Panacheese and her niece Melissa Skunk in the clearing where Charnelle was found. They were featured in the Toronto Star’s CAJ and NNA-winning Gone: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women SUPPLIED PHOTO / TANYA TALAGA

COVER PHOTO: National Newspaper Awards – News Feature Winner Justin Tang/The Canadian Press Prime Minister-elect Justin Trudeau hugs his mother Margaret Trudeau as he makes his way on stage for his acceptance speech at Liberal party headquarters in Montreal on Monday, Oct. 19, 2015 after winning the 42nd Canadian general election.

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10. Canadian Association of Journalists Award: Open Broadcast Feature Karin Wells’ documentary featured the plight of an Alzheimer’s patient and the spoon that’s keeping her alive against her wishes.

12. Canadian Association of Journalists Award: Labour Reporting Melissa Ridgen noticed young workers on garbage trucks hoisting large bins, prompting questions about safe-lifting practices.

PHOTO AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE: CAJ – Photojournalism , John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail A sub-adult grizzly bear chases down a salmon near Klemtu, B.C. August 29, 2015. When salmon runs dwindle on the B.C. coast, the stress levels in grizzlies climb, say researchers who examined hair samples collected from more than 70 bears.

2016 AWARDS EDITION

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2016 AWARDS EDITION • VOLUME 18, NUMBER SEVEN 14. Canadian Association of Journalists Award: Community Broadcast Natalie Clancy and Paisley Woodward of CBC Vancouver uncovered a real estate investment scam that cost people their life savings.

The First Word

Storytelling at its best

16. Canadian Association of Journalists Award: Text Feature For Shannon Proudfoot, the story of Jo Aubin’s early onset of Alzheimer’s disease presented unexpected reporting challenges.

By David McKie

18. Canadian Association of Journalists Award: Photojournalism 20. National Newspaper Award: Investigations Renata D’Aliesio used old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting to uncover the number of Canadian Forces members who had recently killed themselves.

22. National Newspaper Award: News Photo Finalist 23. National Newspaper Award: News Photo Feature Winner 24. National Newspaper Award: Editorial Cartooning-Caricature Bruce MacKinnon walks the line between the poignant and the maudlin.

26. National Newspaper Award: Explanatory Work For Jon Wells, writing about medical students dissecting cadavers was an unforgettable exploration of mortality and spirituality.

28. National Newspaper Award: Local Reporting The two-year battle that Karissa Donkin and Adam Huras waged for New Brunswick daycare inspection reports paid off, big time.

30. National Newspaper Award: Arts and Entertainment/Culture The Globe and Mail probed the Royal Ontario Museum’s fundraising practices, proving the value of hard-news techniques in arts reporting.

32. National Newspaper Awards: Beats Kathryn Blaze Baum embraced the challenge of telling the stories behind the headlines about missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.

34. National Newspaper Award: Feature Photo Winner 35. National Newspaper Award: Sports Photo Winner

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nce again, it is time to honour some of the finest journalism to grace our pages, computer screens, mobile devices and airwaves. In 2016, the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ), the National Newspaper Awards (NNA), and the Michener Award recognized outstanding work for the previous year.

The stories were compelling, dominated by a topic long ignored by too many Canadian newsrooms -- the plight of Indigenous peoples. The issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls features prominently in stories that won the CAJ and National Newspaper Awards.

The Michener went to Société RadioCanada’s Enquête for “its investigation into the ongoing physical and sexual abuse of Indigenous women in Val d’Or, Quebec”, by local Sûreté du Québec officers.

Though no charges were laid, public outrage forced Quebec’s Liberal government to heed calls for an inquiry into the allegations. This story was yet another shining example of Enquête’s excellent work, an investigative television program that has done much to expose the corruption in the province’s construction industry.

The Toronto Star’s multi-disciplinary team won the CAJ’s Open Media and the NNA’s Project of the Year awards for its stories on murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls. The Globe and Mail dug deeply to reveal poignant stories behind the headlines.

The Aboriginal People’s Television Network won the CWA Canada-CAJ Labour Reporting Award for its tale about garbage collectors in Winnipeg forced to work under hazardous conditions made even worse by lax safety rules.

Stories covered many other issues, too.

The Globe and Mail put the Royal Ontario Museum’s fundraising practices under a microscope, proving that applying a hard-news treatment to arts reporting yields results beyond celebratory stories.

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Maclean’s magazine brought us the poignant story of Jo Aubin, who at the age of 38 learned that he had Alzheimer’s disease, an illness typically associated with people much older, not vibrant individuals in the prime of their lives.

Pictures and illustrations also told tales that words alone could never convey.

The Halifax Herald’s Bruce MacKinnon deserves a special shout-out for not only winning another NNA -- he was the first editorial cartoonist to win that organization’s overall award for his illustration of statues coming to the aid of a dying reservist near Parliament Hill in the wake of 2014’s deadly shooting – but because he has also been awarded the Order of Canada. It’s also worth reminding everyone that Bruce and his colleagues are still on strike, and have launched their own publication that’s worth checking out.

They deserve our support.

Photographs told the stories of Syrian refugees, iconic moments in sports, both professional and amateur, and the stunning come-from-behind election victory of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government.

Also, featured on these pages are listings of the finalists. As any journalist who has ever entered a contest will tell you, becoming a finalist is hard to do.

It may sound like a cliché, however, it does ring true: just being nominated is an honour for the finalists’ stories like the Georgia Straight’s tale of the challenge for caring for Vancouver’s severely mentally ill and addicted residents; or the Brandon Sun’s piece about runaways, children like Emma who at 14 found herself in a prisoner’s dock, “her jailhouse-grey sweatshirt” drooping over “her slight frame.”

Not only are these finalists listed for each category, but there are links to their stories, which I would also encourage you to read.

What was common in all the accounts of these award-winners – and no doubt the

finalists -- is the time it took to tell their stories, an important reminder that there are no shortcuts when getting to the bottom of things.

In the case of larger outlets such as The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and CBC/ Radio-Canada, they employed large teams, freed up beat reporters, and cleared the decks for specialists.

Not so for smaller publications such as the Hamilton Spectator and the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal. For two years, two of its dogged reporters juggled the filing freedom-of-information requests for daycare inspection reports with daily assignments.

In the end, all these stories made a difference.

The Telegraph-Journal forced daycare operations to fire dubious employees, and become more diligent in their criminal background checks. The Aboriginal Peoples Television Network’s work prompted Winnipeg’s mayor to begin asking tough questions about working conditions. And, as we learned at the beginning of this column, Radio-Canada’s Enquête, forced Quebec’s Liberal government to hold an inquiry into the treatment of Indigenous women in Val d’Or. As an added bonus the journalists who wrote accounts of what it took to get their stories also shared tips for those of us who want to do similar work.

So please read their accounts. Read, watch and listen to their stories. Be inspired. Make a difference. These folks did.

David McKie edits Media magazine.

He’s an award-winning Ottawa-based producer in CBC News’ Parliamentary bureau, co-author of five books including The Data Journalist and Digging Deeper 3rd edition. He also teaches journalism part-time at Carleton University and the University of King’s College in Halifax.

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Canadian Association of Journalists Award: Open Media National Newspaper Award: Project of The Year Gone: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Team, Toronto Star Series URL: http://on.thestar. com/1NfZdks Front row:Joanna Smith, Randy Risling, Jennifer Wells, Andy Bailey.

Back row: David Bruser, Astrid Lange, Jim Rankin, Rick Sznajder, Taylor Shute, JP Fozo KEITH BEATY/Toronto Star

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he story is one of a nation’s shame: the ceaseless tragedy of Canada’s missing and murdered indigenous women.

The question for a group of Toronto Star reporters and researchers was this: How to bring a unique and urgent understanding to a subject that was on the radar of multiple media organizations?

We would not be the first to report on this issue. We knew we would not be the last.

We understood we had to find a “pointy edge” for the series that would spur legislators, law enforcement bodies and readers to take notice.

We started with a database. That sounds simple enough, but it belies the painstaking scrutiny our team brought to the examination of thousands of media and police reports, some of which may have revealed nothing more than an occurrence, a date, a location. Over the course of a year, five reporters along with librarians Astrid Lange and Rick Sznajder pieced together each account before sending the data to analyst Andy Bailey and reporter-photographer Jim Rankin. From this grew a database of 1,129 cases.

In building the victim profiles — date, location, background, circumstance etc. — we paid particular attention to

the relationship between perpetrator and victim. The phrase “known to” had become part of the lexicon, reinforced by politicians who reinforced the perception that the vast majority of victims had been in a relationship with their killers. In this framing, the tragedy was largely domestic in nature: boyfriends, spouses and so on.

In truth “known-to” is a statistician’s phrase that covers a wide range of relationships from close friends to business dealings to casual acquaintances.

The Star’s analysis shattered the perception that the victims knew their killers well. Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde has called for the definition of “known to” to be clarified.

“It could be the corner store grocery man, or whoever brings milk to the door. It doesn’t necessarily mean the boyfriend,” he told The Star.

That was one pointy edge. Here’s another: In its 2014 report on murdered and missing women and girls the RCMP asserted that 88 per cent of all aboriginal female homicide cases had been solved; The Star’s analysis suggests a near 20 per cent differential with a solve rate of 70 per cent.

The fine print in the RCMP report says

Maryanne Panacheese and her niece Melissa Skunk in the clearing where Charnelle was found.

SUPPLIED PHOTO / TANYA TALAGA

solved cases include those in which the police recommended the prosecutor lay charges but a charge may not have been laid. In December 2015, the Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner agreed that the definition should be changed.

The resulting eight-part series, Gone: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, was built on a foundation of data. But it is the stories that lie beneath that carry the full weight of the project. In reporting from Northern Ontario, David Bruser gained the trust of the families of Kathleen McGinnis, Sarah Mason and Edith Quagon who discovered for the first time how their mothers and aunts had died. His story “Three Sisters” is about a family ripped apart by violence and then brought together by a search for answers.

Reporter Tanya Talaga investigated the overt racism plaguing the small Ontario city of Thunder Bay where the mayor has become so overwhelmed with the lack of social services — shelters, housing and addiction centres — he has called in the Guardian Angels to curb racist attacks on the increasingly youthful indigenous population.

The quest for closure was beautifully told by Jennifer Wells who spent time on

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CAJ Finalists

Nahlah Ayed, Tracy Seeley, Richard Devey Refugee crisis: Walking across a continent CBCNews.ca Harvey Cashore, Frederic Zalac, Dave Seglins, Alexandra Byers/KPMG – The Isle of Sham CBC News Dylan Robertson The Radical Reality: Canada and Homegrown Terrorism/Calgary Herald Kathryn Blaze Baum, Renata D’Aliesio, Matthew McClearn, Kristy Hoffman, Laura Blenkinsop, Christopher Manza A Country’s Crisis: An Investigation into Canada’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women/The Globe and Mail

NNA Finalists

Olivia Carville, Melissa Renwick and Kelsey Wilson/Toronto Star/The Game Kathryn Blaze Baum, Matthew McClearn/The Globe and Mail/The Taken 2016 AWARDS EDITION

the small boat that relentlessly plies the Red River in Winnipeg in search of clues to the fate of their loved ones who have never been found.

Finally, as Joanna Smith reports, the impact of a mother’s murder on the surviving family members often ends in yet more tragedy, more victims. Her story echoes a traditional Cherokee saying: “If you want to defeat a nation, destroy the women first.”

The series was presented on three platforms — print, web and The Star’s tablet app. Unquestionably, multimedia played a large role in maximizing the impact of Gone. Associate editor Lynn McAuley and digital projects editor JP Fozo were central to the project’s execution.

Lessons and tips When building a database from scratch, or from a compilation of existing lists, be mindful at the outset about which data points you want to record. Ask yourself, what details do you want to later analyze?

Best to know early. For example, we knew we wanted to look at manner of death and relationship to the killer. Those fields were top of mind and were clearly delineated on our spreadsheets.

Think about your organizing principles when collecting that data. Segregating data

sets by, say, geographic location will make life easier as you inevitably re-research the same names, the same occurrences for something you may have missed.

When working in a group, create a research check sheet — Factiva, archives, etc. — so that each team member is following the same research protocol.

Be patient — and be relentless. Jim Rankin was dogged in his ATIP (Access to Information and Privacy) filings with the RCMP. The responses often gave new meaning to the word “stonewalling.”

Be judicious in choosing the life stories that will underpin your data, trying to ensure their storytelling and multimedia potential in advance.

Here’s something for the wish list: uniformity in creative — photos, video, etc. — goes a long way in taking a project from good to exceptional. Beg for this.

Good luck.

Andrew Bailey (data specialist), David Bruser (reporter), Astrid Lange (librarian), Jim Rankin (reporter-photographer), Randy Risling (photographer), Joanna Smith (reporter), Rick Sznajder (librarian), Tanya Talaga (reporter), and Jennifer Wells (reporter), JP Fozo (digital projects editor), Taylor Shute (Assistant Art Director for Star Touch) 7

Finalists

The Canadian Association of Journalists/CNW Group Student

Cameron Perrier A Generation Taken: Stories of the Sixties Scoop in Alberta and aboriginal child welfare today Calgary Journal / Mount Royal University

Award of Excellence Risky decisions for Canadian cancer patients Calgary Journal / Mount Royal University

Jacqueline Gallant, Alex Vautour, Paige LeClair, Nicole Munro, Kevin Lemieux, MacKenzie Riley, Mary Fahey, Pat McCullough, Michael Bourgeois, Scott Hems, Dylan Hackett, Jan Wong, Pat Richard The Fog of Rape: Normalizing a Campus Crime The New Brunswick Beacon / St. Thomas University, Fredericton

Jesse Yardley & Amara McLaughlin

Malone Mullin Is this the radical road to prosperity?

The Varsity Magazine / University of Toronto Stephanie and Tim Dobbie brave cold October weather in Calgary to participate in the 2015 Run for the Cure.

Photo credit: Jesse Yardley

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he “Choosing Treatment” project is a microsite featuring a collection of stories focused on the difficult decisions Canadians struggle with after receiving a cancer diagnosis. Craig Hruska, one of the project’s primary sources, encapsulated this issue perfectly. Hruska was diagnosed with prostate cancer in September 2015, just two weeks before he was interviewed.

He was at the crux between diagnosis and treatment, a time when hard decisions must be made. The project, which was delivered online in multimedia format, was an investigation into the various treatment options available to patients like Hruska, with particular attention to what factors influence a patient’s decision to opt for one course of treatment over another.

Like many Canadians, both Amara and I were personally affected by cancer.

Amara’s grandfather was diagnosed with lung and rectal cancer in 2014 and pursued traditional treatments. In contrast, my father, who was diagnosed in 2015 with prostate cancer, opted for a combination of herbal remedies, like apricot pits and dandelion roots. We wanted to know why people make the decisions they do about which course of treatment they are going to pursue. What compels someone to deviate from the conventional cancer treatment

path?

Since so many Canadians are affected by cancer, the potential audience for the “Choosing Treatment” project was significant. Our primary goal was to provide valuable information to patients and the families of patients through personal stories and expert opinion. Since selecting an appropriate treatment is critical for survival, the information presented on the microsite had the potential to influence life-and-death decisions. It was a fact we took seriously, and ultimately, the raison d’être for the project.

How the story was producted The initial idea for “Choosing Treatment” centered on the decision-making process. We were interested in exploring the difficult emotions following a cancer diagnosis and the questions patients, family members and care providers take on while fighting the disease. A multimedia approach allowed us to share information in a variety of mediums including video, photography, graphics and animation.

Since there was much ground to cover, Amara and I sought out sources for the project independently. We also divided tasks, such as interviewing, transcribing, photography, videography, graphic design and website design to optimize our pro-

duction. To produce the website, we opted to use Wordpress because of our familiarity with the platform and the ability to edit or add to it after its initial publication.

Obstacles and challenges The biggest challenge was accessing sources willing to discuss their use of complementary therapies, such as meditation, cannabis oil, vitamins and unique supplements. As we discovered, many people use alternative and complementary methods when battling cancer for many reasons, including the desire for personal control. Our investigation revealed that alternative treatments sometimes leave patients vulnerable to misinformation and fraud; however, when used as part of complementary treatment – in co-operation with a qualified physician – these methods can provide psychological and physiological benefits.

Another major challenge was how to interview patients who were not feeling well. Stephanie Dobbie, one the project’s main sources, was fighting her third battle with cancer at the time the story was produced. Dobbie agreed to talk to us, despite her recent throat cancer diagnosis.

Her chemo treatments were taking quite a toll on her body, and a number of interviews were cancelled because of her

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poor condition. We told her we understood her situation and that it would be perfectly okay if she wanted to back out. She assured us she wanted to do the interview, but that it would have to wait until she was having a good day.

We were very sensitive to the ethical implications of interviewing someone right in the midst of chemotherapy. By providing her with the choice of opting out, and by working to find the optimal conditions and timing for an interview, we ensured our source was being treated fairly and respectfully. We’re happy to report that in the months that followed, Dobbie continued with conventional treatment and was well on the road to recovery.

Impact One of our primary concerns was producing reporting that would be of help to others facing tough treatment decisions.

Our reporting would explore why individuals make the decisions they do, but would also serve as an accurate source of information about the different treatment options — conventional, non-conventional and complementary cancer care.

Since the microsite was launched, more than 2,000 people have viewed its pages.

Winning a CAJ Award for the project also provided an opportunity to re-share the stories and, ideally, inform more Canadians about this important issue.

Ultimately, our project combined personal, emotional stories with expert analysis in a unique package.

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Tips Producing a multimedia story involves assembling a variety of elements to create a cohesive package. It certainly involves more work, but including a variety of mediums allows for a richer, more engaging product. The following are three useful suggestions for journalists seeking to develop a multimedia story.

Be strategic about your medium. When telling a story, or communicating some salient bit of information to your audience, ask yourself, “what medium makes the most sense for this particular element of the story?” For example, numbers and values might best be delivered as an infographic; a touching, emotional story may work best as video; and a series of events may work best as a graphical timeline.

Develop a Q-line. Know what critical questions you want to ask each particular source in advance. But be careful that your line of questioning is flexible enough to allow the source to explore areas you hadn’t foreseen. Try to ask open-ended questions and be prepared to ask followup questions, especially if you didn’t understand the answer. If a source answers your question with technical jargon, ask him or her to explain it in layman’s terms.

Most importantly, be attentive to how your questions relate back to the central issue of your story.

Share it. A multimedia story has the advantage of being sharable in a multitude of mediums on a variety of platforms.

For example, videos can be shared on YouTube with links back to the central hub, often a website. Photos can be shared on Instagram or Facebook. Important interview quotes can be shared on Twitter.

Each sharable snippet can be linked to the project to build a wider audience and improve the overall impact of your project.

Jesse Yardley is a communications consultant with more than 15 years developing branding and marketing solutions for a variety of industries. In 2016, he earned a Bachelor of Communication from Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta.

Jesse enjoys writing, design and photography. His work has appeared in the Calgary Journal, the Common Sense Canadian, Condo Living Magazine, Alberta Views, Notice Magazine, J-Source, TradesLife, CTV and the Reflector. Follow Jesse on Twitter: @jesseyardley Amara McLaughlin is a full-time journalist with the CBC in Toronto. In 2016, she earned a Bachelor of Communication from Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta. She has written in the West Bank, Israel, the United States and across Canada. Her work has appeared in the Jerusalem Post, Powder Magazine, the Common Sense Canadian, CTV, Moment Magazine, J-Source, and the Calgary Journal.

Follow Amara on Twitter: @amaramclaughlin, and check out more of her work at: http://www.amaramclaughlin.com/ 9

Canadian Association of Journalists Award: Open Broadcast Karin Wells ‘In the presence of a spoon’ CBC Radio One – The Sunday Edition

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argot Bentley’s story had been told as it unfolded in British Columbia over the preceding year. It was surprisingly an untold story outside Bentley’s home province.

Margot Bentley is a retired nurse who had worked with Alzheimer’s patients.

She is the daughter of a British Columbia judge and very aware of the need to carefully spell out her end-of-life wishes.

In 1991, coincidentally the year that Sue Rodriquez was diagnosed with ALS, the disease that resulted in her assisted-death, Margot Bentley wrote her own advance directive.

She was specific. “If I am unable to recognize my family, then no assisted breathing, no resuscitation, no anti-biotics and no food or water.”

Margot Bentley wanted to make sure she died when she wanted to. Eight years later, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and went into a public nursing home run by the Fraser Health.

Margot Bentley deteriorated and, long after she could no longer recognize them, her daughter, Katherine Hammond, and her husband went to the nursing home and asked that Margot Bentley’s wishes be carried out. The nursing home said no and the case went to court.

The BC court ruled in favor of the nursing home shortly before The Supreme Court of Canada came down with the Carter decision that opened the door for physician-assisted death in Canada.

There was plenty to talk about with the Margot Bentley story.Katherine Hammond, Bentley’s eldest daughter, also a nurse, wanted to get her mother’s story

Left: Margot Bentley as a young nurse. Right: Margot Bentley today. She continued to open her mouth to be fed “in the presence of a spoon”. (Credit: Katherine Hammond)

out. She spoke to me at length, showed me her “Statement of wishes”, by now yellowed with age. Katherine Hammond was articulate, understood the issues and spoke with passion.

I had made three previous radio documentaries on assisted-dying over the past 20 years, and followed the moral and legal arguments in some detail. The most recent, a story out of Belgium revolved around the assisted-suicide of deaf twins and included Belgian discussion of request for assisted-dying by a woman suffering from severe depression. That request was granted, but an elderly man suffering from dementia who had requested assisteddeath was not granted. He seemed to have changed his mind.

That was the question in the case of Margot Bentley. She continued to open her mouth to be fed “in the presence of a spoon”. The court found that was a sign that she did not wish to die. The major journalistic difficulty was finding someone to present the argument of the Fraser Health authority. It was not talking.

However, a previous CEO, Bob Smith, now retired, talked with conviction of the

uncertainty of the health care authority and the biggest tripping point – the act of depriving a patient of food and water.

This was a piece where the task was not digging for the story. It was all there.

Rather, it was putting it all together, laying out Margot Bentley’s place in the 20-year history of assisted-death in this country, and giving fair play to Katherine Hammond’s passion. Margot Bentley died last November, having lived 17 years with the illness.

In the Presence of a Spoon was about telling a story whose time was right.

Karin Wells is a storyteller. Although she trained as a lawyer, it quickly became clear that she’d rather work in radio.

Over her 40 years at CBC Radio she developed a passion for producing documentaries. She travelled the world to find stories, about Chinese immigrants and the Vancouver housing crunch, a man who makes bassoons, anti-Semitism in Sweden, women making a mark in their mosque, and as they say, many, many more. Karin retired recently.

NOTE: To see the finalists, please click here.

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Visit online for details about how to apply and enter.

michenerawards.ca

2016 AWARDS EDITION

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Canadian Association of Journalists Award: Labour Reporting

Young men riding on the backs of these garbage trucks, hopped off to ‘handbomb’ the large bins into the vehicles with little attention to safe-lifting practices or safety gear. All of these workers were aboriginal.

ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: APTN

Melissa Ridgen Hurting for work APTN Investigates

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he city of Winnipeg privatized residential waste collection in 2012 to save taxpayers $4.5 million a year. Part of the city’s new contract with Emterra Environmental was that new large waste bins would be emptied by mechanical arms on trash and recycling trucks. In her own neighbourhood, reporter Melissa Ridgen noticed young men riding on the backs of these trucks, hopping off to ‘hand-bomb’ the large bins into the trucks with little attention paid to safe-lifting practices or safety gear. And she noticed all of these workers were aboriginal.

Ridgen filed a freedom-of-information request with the Workers Compensation Board to see how many workers made claims since the city privatized trash collection. The answer was a staggering 118.

And so she began what would be a fourmonth investigation.

Ridgen and camera operator Andy Mojelsky spent dozens of hours covertly filming “swampers” at work, hoisting bins meant to be lifted by trucks. Ridgen eventually uncovered that these highrisk, hard-labourers didn’t even work for Emterra. Rather, they were sub-contracted though a day labour agency frequented by indigenous men who are desperate for work after getting out of jail.

The Canadian Union of Public Employees, which represents Emterra workers, had sat idly by as this happened. The advocacy organization that should have been a natural ‘helper’ in this story ended up being a ‘hinderer.’ Another reminder to never assume anything while you’re working on a piece.

Given the WCB claims, Ridgen approached Manitoba Workplace Safety and Health to see if Emterra’s work conditions were on safety inspectors’ radar. She found there had been 58 improvement orders and 12 stop-work orders issued to Emterra by Manitoba Workplace Safety and Health. And while government departments are often stingy with details, Health and Safety was only too happy to provide information for this piece.

The department was frustrated, concerned about the poor working conditions, and fed up with having to issue repeated notices for violations.

As Ridgen hung out around the temp agency, talking to people who have worked for Emterra, she heard about a worker who had been run over by a garbage truck while working as a swamper.

She tracked him down -- in jail. Being run over had launched an investigation

by Winnipeg police who discovered their ‘victim’ had arrest warrants. So, from hospital, he was sent to jail to finish a sentence for car theft.

Ridgen also tracked down in Victoria, BC, a former Emterra truck driver who would paint an ugly picture of what life is like for those doing the city of Winnipeg’s dirty work.

Emterra owner Emily Leung initially agreed to open her home to APTN Investigates to talk about how she built a multimillion-dollar empire out of trash. A business she started by collecting recyclables herself. And she was to talk about giving work to those who need a second chance.

But two days before an investigates crew

was to land in Vancouver, she canceled the interview and refused to reschedule, or have someone else from her company be interviewed. That left several holes in a story that was to go to air in mere weeks.

In the end, Ridgen spliced bits of a speech Leung gave at a business awards banquet into the story to show who she was and what she stands for. Using clips from an old speech wasn’t ideal, but it was better than nothing.

As for the city of Winnipeg, it had no idea any of these safety infractions and temporary labor work was going on until Melissa Ridgen approached mayor Brian Bowman with her findings. He ordered an investigation into possible contractual violations for use of temporary day laborers.

Hurting for Work aired on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network on Oct. 30, 2015.

Because Maclean’s magazine had declared Winnipeg to be “Canada’s Most Racist City”, it was important to tell this story whose main characters – the swampers -- are indigenous men. The question remains: do cost savings for Winnipeggers justify the working conditions endured by these men?

The city’s investigation resulted in little more than warnings to the garbage contractor. But provincial safety inspectors continue to keep a close eye on the company and stop-work and improvement orders continue to be issued regularly.

The waste removal contract was up for renewal this year. It remains to be seen what impact this investigative piece will have on the company’s bid to retain the

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contract.

Story URL: http://aptn.ca/ news/2015/10/30/hurting-for-work/ Melissa has been a journalist for 20 years, covering everything from crime and courts to politics, Aboriginal affairs and business. Melissa joined APTN in 2009 after more than a decade writing for newspapers including the Kenora Daily Miner and News, Calgary Sun, and Brandon Sun. She won the Edward Dunlop Award for Investigative Journalism in 1998 and in 2014 was named a finalist for investigative reporting by the World Indigenous Television Broadcasters Network. She is a proud Red River Métis.

Finalists

Nick Purdon, Leonardo Palleja Up close: Prison guards CBC News – The National Yutaka Dirks What’s at stake in the fight for $15?

Freelance / Briarpatch Krysia Collyer, Robert Cribb, Hannah James Code White Global 16X9 / Toronto Star Lee-Ann Goodman Badly backlogged Social Security Tribunal The Canadian Press

For exclusive content, stories, interviews about journalism turn to Media.

Visit http://caj.starchapter.com/media Issues date back to the spring of 1998

2016 AWARDS EDITION

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Canadian Association of Journalists Award: Community Broadcast Real estate seminars exposed CBC News – Vancouver

By Natalie Clancy

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BC Vancouver went undercover to expose one of the many “Trump U”-style sales seminars, where investors are lured into expensive investment training programs with false promises and misleading marketing. The promotional material promises to teach how to get rich buying U.S. real estate. These companies heavily market “free seminars”, offering insider secrets. They often use a celebrity name in marketing, like U.S. President DonaldTrump, but that person rarely shows up.

Marco Kozlowski is the front man in this case, and he has left a trail of furious investors across Canada. We discovered several of the people who filmed testimonials about how much money he helped them make and later revoked their endorsements. The videos were made during a $3500-weekend training course, before their deals closed. Most fell through due to lack of financing.

A closer look at his newspaper advertisements revealed factual errors, and photos of people he claimed were “success stories” when they in fact were not successful investors. We contacted one woman whose photo was used in an ad claiming she made $130 thousand in profit. She told us she took Kozlowski’s weekend course but decided not to proceed with any investments. Another former student told us they paid as much as $150 thousand dollars for premium mentorships, believ-

Paisley Woodward ing it included access to financing, and in the end got no access to funds.

The reason for telling the story This is a “buyer beware” story that many readers have thanked us for doing because we kept them from parting with large amounts of money. There are so many versions of this sales pitch operating in cities across Canada that we thought it was worth showing potential investors how it works. The front salesman is always a master at building excitement and convincing people they will get rich quickly. It is very easy to get caught up in the excitement and that is what they count on. However, we found several people who claim they lost their life savings, and were not able to invest in any real estate.

The free real estate seminar is to sell you on the $3500-dollar course, which is designed to sell “mentorships” for thousands of dollars.

How you put it together For more than a year we attended and recorded several “free” introductory seminars and the promises made at each one. With the help of a former real estate lawyer who tracks these schemes, we uncovered how it works. We fact-checked many of the claims made at the seminars.

For example, they showed a photo of Marco Kozlowski with Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Inc., and made various claims that Kozlowski “worked closely” with the well-known billion-

aire. In fact, Branson told us he does not remember meeting Kozlowski and has no association with him.

We contacted people who appeared in YouTube videos to fact-check whether they did make money, as stated in the videos. We learned Kozlowski tapes those videos after getting an accepted offer to purchase during a weekend training session, but before the deals closed. In most cases the former students told us the deals fell through. One man repeatedly requested his testimonial not be used, but to no avail. We confronted one salesman in Vancouver who said he had no idea he was playing misleading video testimonials.

Obstacles we faced One of the mistakes we made is using our real name on a sign-in sheet at one of the last seminars we attended. By then we had requested an interview with Marco Kozlowski and asked several questions about the discrepancies we found in his marketing materials. The staff were on the lookout and Googled Paisley Woodward’s name. She was asked her to leave the seminar, and escorted out the door. The sales guy brazenly told the audience that Kozlowski had talked to our boss at CBC and that our story was bogus. He also made a YouTube video to attempt to discredit the story, which is featured prominently whenever his customers Google his name.

The impact We published this story in the fall of

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2015 and subsequently heard from dozens of Canadians who told us they felt they had been ripped off with promises that were never fulfilled. Several complained to the federal Competition Bureau about misleading marketing practices. The testimonials we showed to be inaccurate are no longer used, but the company has changed its name and is still operating.

The Montreal Gazette and a UK paper followed the story. Some of our sources were given refunds. Kozlowski told CBC the errors in his advertising materials were the fault of a marketing company, which had since been fired. He said he never promised financing. Two of Kozlowski’s sales staff members quit and contacted us, saying they no longer believe what they were selling. We continue to hear from former students on a weekly basis and may be doing a follow-up story.

Tips When doing consumer stories, factcheck all marketing claims. In Canada, businesses are not allowed to mislead or lie when making a sale. By contacting the people whose photos were used, we determined that some of the marketing claims were false.

Compare advertising in different cities.

In Kozlowski’s case, he would claim a student named Steve was from Montreal in Quebec ads, or Surrey in Vancouver newspaper advertisements. We also noticed a photo of a so-called profit cheque was repeatedly used for several different success stories. Mistakes or errors in advertising are not only misleading, they are a good way to evaluate the credibility of a business.

Links to our stories: Part 1 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britishcolumbia/marco-kozlowski-investor-seminars-testimonials-1.3325211 Part 2 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britishcolumbia/marco-kozlowski-s-promise-of100-financing-not-kept-former-studentssay-1.3335818 Natalie Clancy is an investigative reporter based in Vancouver with a 25-year track record for breaking stories. This is Natalie’s 4th CAJ Award for investigative reporting.

Paisley Woodward is an award-winning investigative producer with CBC’s investigative unit in Vancouver.

2016 AWARDS EDITION

Manuela Noel says she and her husband Mike did not get her money’s worth after paying for Marco Kozlowski’s (pictured below) mentoring program. Credit:CBC

Marco Kozlowski is the front man in this case, and he has left a trail of furious investors across Canada. Credit: CBC

Natalie Clancy in studio with Marco Kozlowski and Sir Richard Branson (left) on the plasma.

Finalists Jennie Russell, Charles Rusnell Smoked out CBC News – Edmonton

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Canadian Association of Journalists Award: Text Feature Maclean’s Shannon Proudfoot Slipping Away

S

lipping Away told the story of Jo Aubin, a 38-year-old London, Ont. man with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, and his wife, Robin Giles. Alzheimer’s is brutal no matter who it strikes, but Jo’s age raises so many compelling and difficult questions: How rare is this? How does the disease progress? How does a young couple cope with this, dayto-day and in a much bigger sense? There was clearly a substantial story to tell.

The idea for the piece originated with my friend Chazza, who is mentioned briefly in the story; her husband, Shawn, has been one of Jo’s best friends since Grade nine. She suggested a story to Robin and Jo as a way to raise awareness and feel like they were making a difference, given that there wasn’t a lot that could mitigate the devastation of Jo’s prognosis. When they decided they wanted to go ahead with it, Chazza put them in touch with me.

Robin and I did a long preliminary phone interview. It was in that first conversation that she mentioned the Christmas morning when she first realized something was wrong with Jo. That stuck with me— an ordinary, happy moment when something just turns sideways with someone you love and know so well—and it was clear almost immediately that’s where the story would begin.

I made plans to visit Jo and Robin in London a few weeks later, and my hope was to spend lots of time doing interviews, and also to follow along as they went about their usual errands. I wanted to be able to convey the pragmatic, everyday things you have to think about with Alzheimer’s. Then it became clear that Jo’s illness had reached a point where they

were spending most of their time at home, so we changed course.

The three of us ended up spending virtually the entire weekend in Jo and Robin’s apartment, doing long, intense interviews.

At one point, we went out for dinner with their friends, and that helped me understand how outsiders were oblivious to any difficulties Jo was having, and what that was like for him and Robin. Except for that scene and another with Robin and her friends at lunch, nearly everything in the story is reconstructed from interviews.

The biggest reporting challenge was exactly what Jo faces every day: the toll Alzheimer’s has taken on his memory.

I was very conscious of giving him the respect of telling his own story as much as possible, but there was no ignoring the progress of his illness. The three of us developed a pattern where I would ask questions, and Jo would answer as much as he could, but sometimes flatly tell me he couldn’t remember. Then Robin would chime in to fill in the blanks and offer her own impressions, often bouncing her replies back to Jo for confirmation.

Robin is everything you could wish for in an interview subject, particularly on a story this fraught: she’s articulate, insightful, bluntly honest and recalls everything. I relied on her heavily as a tour guide, but as a result, I felt like I needed to work hard to keep the story balanced and make sure Jo wasn’t sidelined. Ultimately, I decided that this was a profile of two people: one living with a disease, and one living alongside it.

The one thing I hadn’t found by the time I finished my interviews with them in London was where the story would end. Normally, my instinct would be

for some note of uplift, but that seemed glib and dishonest. But I also felt like it would be too hard on the reader—and on Jo and Robin—for the ending to be very dark. Right before I left their apartment, I wandered around looking at the items on their living room walls, which Robin had curated with obvious care. That is the only reason why, when I went to Dr. Borrie’s office the next morning, I recognized the phrase “I am mine” in Jo’s memory test.

As soon as I left there, I knew that’s where the story would end.

The story would be primarily a profile of the human side of this disease, but I wanted to weave through it key medical and scientific background. Dr. Borrie had sent me a paper from the New England Journal of Medicine that traced the biomarkers of early-onset Alzheimer’s.

I used that study as a framing device to intertwine the earlier years of Jo’s life with the disease.

Aside from unique reporting challenges, the other major difficulty with this story was an emotional one. These people had trusted me with the most intimate details of some of the hardest moments of their lives, and I really, really wanted to get it all right. At the same time — and it feels frankly self-indulgent to mention this, because this is someone’s real life, and all I did was write about it — this story had a profound effect on my own emotions while I was working on it. It continues to live under my skin.

After the story was published, a number of people with family histories of Alzheimer’s disease contacted the doctors in the story to volunteer for ongoing studies, and others wrote to say they were donat-

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The biggest reporting challenge was exactly what Jo faces every day: the toll Alzheimer’s has taken on his memory.

Photograph by Dillan Cools

ing to research and support organizations.

I know that ripple effect meant a lot to Jo and Robin.

There was also a wonderful epilogue this spring. Quite a few people sent the story to Pearl Jam and their fan club.

When the band played in Toronto in May, Robin and Jo got a call just before the show, inviting them backstage. Eddie Vedder had a long chat with them and wrote out the lyrics to “I Am Mine” on his personal stationary, and he dedicated a song to them during the concert. It sounds like it was a huge, joyful moment for Jo and Robin.

Tips It’s okay—and important—to ask awkward questions. I wanted to make sure I understood things from Jo’s perspective, so I asked him to explain how things appeared to him, how he felt in certain moments, the limits of what he could recall and how people communicated with him that made things better or worse. I was almost apologetic about it, but in the end, I realized that asking people to help you understand their experience is just respectful.

You always need that clear-eyed, technical, editorial voice in your head dictating the strongest way to tell a story.

2016 AWARDS EDITION

These people had trusted me with the most intimate details of some of the hardest moments of their lives, and I really, really wanted to get it all right.

Photograph by Jessica Deeks

But it’s counter-productive — and probably impossible, on a human level — to maintain emotional distance when writing something like this. When our subjects are opening the most painful moments of their lives to us, I think we owe them our empathy.

Take note of and ask about the objects people surround themselves with: on their walls, in their bookshelves, on their desk or fridge. Most of those details won’t make it into your final draft, but it’s a great way to help understand someone, because most of us surround ourselves with things that point to what’s important to us.

Give people their full humanity, beyond the disease or circumstance that is the reason you’re writing about them. I went a little too far in that direction initially— most of the 2,000 words I cut from my first draft were earlier chapters of Jo and Robin’s lives—but I think it’s important to give your subjects three dimensions.

Link to the story: http://site.macleans. ca/longform/alzheimers/

Finalists Althia Raj How Trudeau Won Huffington Post Canada Angela Sterritt A Movement Rises OpenCanada.org Matthew Pearson The Passenger Ottawa Citizen Andrea Hill Who is it now? When sirens wail in La Loche, people can’t help but wonder if it’s yet another suicide Saskatoon StarPhoenix

Shannon Proudfoot is an Ottawa-based writer for Maclean’s magazine.

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Canadian Association of Journalists Award – Photojournalism John Lehmann Portfolio entry The Globe and Mail As photojournalist I’m always looking for a moment in time which best tells a story visually.

Often, those moments come before or after an event. I was in Fort McMurray for a story on the growing Islamic community and how it was taking root in Canada’s oil patch. A group of Muslim women living and working in Fort McMurray had come together to celebrate World Hijab Day in Fort McMurray at a local mall.

The international event put on around the globe is a day of education for non-muslims and a day to celebrate their faith. The group of proud Muslim women stopped and posed for a group photo just before the start of the event. I love the sea of colourful hijabs and how as a group they’re not focused on me, but their friend who climbed the stairs to take their photo.

The finalists Larry Wong Portfolio entry Edmonton Journal

Darryl Dyck Portfolio entry Freelance / The Canadian Press

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS The Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy provides the opportunity for an experienced Canadian journalist to pursue a one-year, in-depth examination of an emerging or challenging public policy issue.

The Atkinson Fellow is provided with a one-year research stipend of $75,000 and up to $25,000 for expenses beginning September 1, 2017.

The fellowship culminates in a series of published articles in the Toronto Star in the fall of 2017. The deadline for applications is Monday, February 6, 2017 no later than 5:00 p.m. (EST).

For more information on this opportunity and our selection process, please visit:

Steve Russell Portfolio entry The Toronto Star

www.atkinsonfoundation.ca/grants/atkinson-fellowship-in-public-policy/

A COLLABORATION BETWEEN THE ATKINSON CHARITABLE FOUNDATION, THE TORONTO STAR AND THE HONDERICH FAMILY SINCE 1988.

EDMONTON, ALBERTA: MAY 13, 2015 Romy Weatherall walks throught the stable with her horse at the Whitemud Equine Centre in Edmonton on May 13, 2015.

Tima Kurdi, touches a photo of her nephews Sarah Wells weeps on the track after stumAlan, left, and Ghalib Kurdi outside her home in bling on the final hurdle of the women’s 400 Coquitlam, B.C., on September 3, 2015. Alan’s metres at the Ontario Provincial Track and lifeless body put a human face on the crisis of Field Championships at the University of Syrian refugees who died trying to reach Europe.

Windsor in Ontario. June 14, 2015.

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2016 AWARDS EDITION

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National Newspaper Awards- Investigations

Darrell and Brenda McMullin, whose son Corporal Jamie McMullin was being treated for PTSD before he took his life in June, 2011, at their home in Lincoln, New Brunswick, on June 2, 2015. Darrell, who is a former member of the military, is also being treated for PTSD. PHOTO CREDIT: Michelle Siu for The Globe and Mail

Renata D’Aliesio The Unremembered The Globe and Mail

O

ver eight days in late 2013, four veterans of the Afghanistan war were dead. They didn’t die on the battlefield. They died back in Canada, each taking their own lives after serving in the country’s longest military operation. The soldiers’ suicides stung the nation, raising myriad questions about the trauma they experienced in Afghanistan and about the military medical system that is supposed to help them heal.

Their deaths also sparked a simple query from The Globe and Mail to the Canadian Forces in early 2014: How many other soldiers had killed themselves after returning from Afghanistan?

I, of course, wanted to know more.

I asked for their ranks, the bases they worked at, their marital status, when they had deployed to Afghanistan, whether they had a mental illness, and whether they received treatment. Aware of how difficult it was to pry information out of the Forces under the former Conservative government, I was willing to settle for just an answer to the question of how many.

That, however, turned out to be a number that the military didn’t want Canadians to know.

The Forces’ communications department handled my request for about two months without sending a response, so I turned to the Access to Information Act, asking for all records created in response to my query for suicide statistics. I submitted more than two dozen access-to-information requests to National Defence and Veterans Affairs, seeking, among other things, reports on suicide reviews and inquiries, audits of health clinics, reports on mentalhealth wait times and addictions treatment, and data on attempted suicides.

In some cases, it took more than a year for the records to be released, and many were heavily redacted. I had already faced numerous other obstacles in my bid to

delve deeper into the issue. My request for information beyond the suicide number -- ranks, bases, illnesses and so on – was denied because it was not releasable under the Privacy Act, the Canadian Forces told me.

I contacted provincial coroners and medical examiners, hoping they tracked military service among suicides, but they don’t. This left me in a quandary. Even if I was successful in getting suicide data through the access-to-information legislation, the numbers wouldn’t include names of former soldiers.

Neither the Canadian Forces, nor Veterans Affairs regularly monitors how many military members kill themselves after they are released, a troubling data gap. Could I find a way to fill it? I spoke with researchers, but no one was hopeful.

The information I sought required linking Statistics Canada’s mortality database with military personnel records. Neither was accessible to the media. Stumped, I resorted to the only other avenue I could think of: I began searching death notices for possible military suicides.

It was a painstaking task. No single online repository captures all death notices in Canada. I scoured more than a decade’s worth of obituaries using at least 10 different websites, both military and media – an exercise made even more daunting by the fact suicide is almost never disclosed publicly as a cause of death. Some notices made no reference to Afghanistan or the military at all. I searched the notices for words and phrases such as “PTSD,” “Wounded Warriors,” “Soldier On,” and “died suddenly” to pinpoint military deaths that appeared to be suicides.

Bit by bit, my spreadsheet grew. I identified more than 50 probable cases and began reaching out to families for confirmation and to ask them to share their stories – stories that touch on some of the

last remaining taboos in both the military and in journalism.

The Unremembered series, published in the fall of 2015, revealed that at least 54 Canadian soldiers and veterans had taken their lives after returning from their Afghanistan tour. Part of that number -- 42 -- was contained in military records created in response to my suicide query and obtained under the access-to-information legislation. The other dozen – veterans and more recent suicides -- were identified through the obituary search.

The toll has since grown. While uncovering the suicide number was vitally important, it was only part of the story.

The Globe’s investigation included an examination of the lives and deaths of four infantrymen from the Gagetown base in New Brunswick. They were all husbands and fathers, all tough soldiers who returned from Afghanistan mentally frayed.

Our probe of their suicides found that questionable decisions were made in their medical care and in the handling of their army careers. A shortage of mental-health staff and support programs was also a persistent problem, as was the military’s process for releasing mentally wounded soldiers from the Army. Documents revealed military brass had rejected recommendations to improve mental-health care that stemmed from an inquiry into one of the suicides. In another case, the military forgot to give a family the inquiry report, a mistake rectified after The Globe’s queries.

The Unremembered series included other revelations. Documents obtained under the access-to-information legislation and further reporting showed that the Canadian military was expelling wounded members at an ever-higher rate and had rejected an internal recommendation to expand its addictions program, that Veterans Affairs had yet to adopt an expert group’s recommendation to regularly re-

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Helene Bilodeau, centre, with her daughters Cloe, left, and Elody, right, pose for a photo at their home in Geary, NB on June 2, 2015. Her husband Sgt. Paul Martin, 37 took his life in September 2011 and was being treated for PTSD. PHOTO CREDIT: Michelle Siu for The Globe and Mail

view veterans’ suicides, and that a military support unit created to help ill soldiers had been chronically understaffed and underresourced.

The Globe series helped trigger significant commitments to improve mentalhealth care and reduce suicides. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau directed National Defence and Veterans Affairs to work together on a suicide-prevention strategy.

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan ordered the military’s top commander to make suicide prevention a priority and to examine why an increased number of soldiers have taken their lives in recent years. An expert panel was to be assembled to review the military’s mental-health programs.

Veterans Affairs Minister Kent Hehr pledged to improve veterans’ care and to find a way to commemorate soldiers who died by suicide after serving in Afghanistan.

Also, The Globe revealed that Veterans Affairs is planning to report on suicides of former military members annually starting in late 2017 – a first for Canada.

Tips Before diving into an investigation involving the government, check what 2016 AWARDS EDITION

auditor and ombudsman reports have been done on the issue and read them thoroughly to identify specific queries to pursue through interviews and access-toinformation (ATI) requests.

Go after records created in response to your questions. The ATIs take time to get back, but can contain critical information that was initially withheld.

Think about impact. A story on the suicide statistics alone would not have resonated. The voices of families were crucial, along with other documentation.

Be patient and sensitive when dealing with families coping with suicide, one of the most difficult types of death.

Links to the stories http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/ veterans/article26499878/ http://tgam.ca/unremembered Renata D’Aliesio is a reporter with The Globe and Mail’s investigative team. She has received five National Newspaper Award nominations and two Michener citations for her work at The Globe and Mail, Calgary Herald and Edmonton Journal.

The finalists Gabrielle Duchaine, Caroline Touzin and Olivier Jean, La Presse, for an examination of coroners’ reports into the violent death of minors in First Nations communities Jayme Poisson and Jesse McLean, Toronto Star, for a look into how an alarming number of police officers in the Toronto area are seemingly out of control http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/09/18/disciplined-opp-memberstill-a-high-ranking-cop.html http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/09/19/hundreds-of-officers-inthe-greater-toronto-area-disciplined-forserious-misconduct-in-past-five-years. html http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/09/20/to-swerve-and-protect.html http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/09/21/police-officers-caughtusing-their-position-for-personal-gain-inrecent-years.html

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National Newspaper Awards – News Photo Winner

National Newspaper Awards – News Feature Photo Winner

Dave Chidley

Justin Tang The Canadian Press

The Canadian Press

Pierre George, the brother of killed protester Dudley George, is engulfed in flames after attempting to pour gasoline on a fire during a protest against a community march intended to “walk home” to the gates of the former Camp Ipperwash on Sunday, Sept. 20, 2015, in London, Ontario. The land is being returned to the Kettle and Stony Point First Nation after being expropriated by the Federal government during the Second World War.

National Newspaper Awards – News Photo Finalists Jim Young Reuters

Prime Minister-elect Justin Trudeau is embraced by his mother Margaret Trudeau (R) as he arrives to give his victory speech after Canada’s federal election in Montreal, Quebec on October 19, 2015.

Mark Blinch The Globe and Mail

Toronto taxi driver Suntharesan Kanagasabai clings to a moving car as he accuses the driver of working for Uber, during a protest against Uber held by Toronto taxi drivers in Toronto, Wednesday December 9, 2015.

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Prime Minister-elect Justin Trudeau hugs his mother Margaret Trudeau as he makes his way on stage for his acceptance speech at Liberal party headquarters in Montreal on Monday, Oct. 19, 2015 after winning the 42nd Canadian general election.

National Newspaper Awards – News Feature Photo Finalists Chad Hipolito The Canadian Press

The bow of the Leviathan II, a whale-watching boat carrying 21 passengers and three crew members, capsized after being hit by a rogue wave near Plover Reefs. Six people died.

The 20-metre vessel was towed to calmer waters near Vargas Island looking towards Cat Face Island as it waited for inspection in Tofino, B.C., Tuesday, October 27, 2015.

2016 AWARDS EDITION

Ivanoh Demers La Presse

Guy Turcotte, whose eyes are visible through a glass door, is waiting to attend his ex-wife Isabelle Gaston testimony at his second trial for the murder of his two children in the St. Jerome, Que., court house on September 28, 2015.

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National Newspaper Awards: Editorial Cartooning/Caricature Bruce MacKinnon Halifax Chronicle Herald

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artoonists whose work is entered in the NNAs are asked to submit a package of five cartoons covering a range of key issues from the year. 2015 produced many events that had a profound impact, not just on Canadians generally, but especially on those of us who make our living in journalism and satire.

It was a big news year, culminating in a federal election in late October. But the year started out huge overseas, with the shocking terrorist attacks in January on the offices of the satirical French magazine, Charlie Hebdo. I always find such disturbing events daunting and difficult to address, though they seem to be happening with increasing frequency. As a cartoonist and satirist my first impulse and most desired goal is to make people laugh in the process of delivering a strong message.

These types of issues make that goal difficult if not impossible to achieve. Many of us turn to pathos and solemn or emotional statements to react to such stories, but there is a fine line between poignant and simply maudlin. This is what makes these issues such a challenge. But the gravity of this story, in terms of the direct attack on cartoonists, journalists and free speech, increased the pressure to meet that challenge.

In the days following the attack, when shock and sorrow gave way to anger and outrage, I went with a metaphor that used the simplistic fundamentalist idea of an “afterlife waiting room” in the clouds,

where martyrs wait for judgement day to find out if they will enter paradise. In the cartoon, the attackers, still dressed in their black face masks, are seated and looking around at the coffee tables on which the only reading material is Charlie Hebdo magazines. It was a way for me to attack and ridicule fundamentalist extremism and make the point I wanted, using humour rather than sadness or pity.

For Canadians, in particular, the biggest event of 2015 was probably the federal election. The remaining cartoons in my submission addressed some of the major issues which had a part in shaping the outcome of the campaign.

One issue was a growing public outcry over government bullying of the Canadian scientific community fuelled by funding cuts, the elimination of research programs, and an increasing number of government restrictions on communications policies.

Another depicted the plummeting price of oil and resulting economic turmoil as a way for the government to distract people from the scandal and criminal trial surrounding Senator Mike Duffy.

Then there was an idea I had been saving for election night. Always a pressurepacked time for a cartoonist when the election is too close to call, I had at least four different cartoons ready for the various possible outcomes, several of which had been created in spare moments before election day. Several nights previous, Toronto Blue Jays outfielder José Bautista

was captured in an iconic photo triumphantly tossing his bat in the air after hitting a crucial home run against the Texas Rangers in the 2015 MLB playoffs.

The next day I told my editor I was going to use that image in a concept on election night. The only downside was having to wait till election night to combine what would be two of the most memorable moments of 2015. In the end, the image I drew was Justin Trudeau dressed as the batter, tossing not a bat, but Prime Minister Stephen Harper, directly into a garbage can.

The cartoon which got the most response, however, was one I did as the election began. I wanted to present a general overview of my impression of the four leaders of the major parties to kick off the campaign. The general sense that Stephen Harper was a machine-like leader with limited ability to empathize or connect with people emotionally; the feeling that Justin Trudeau was an inexperienced leader with the style and political pedigree but not necessarily the intellect of his father; the impression of NDP leader Thomas Mulcair as an angry man lacking the charisma that it takes to win the heart of a population; and the view of the Green Party’s Elizabeth May as a wellintentioned leader unlikely to make an impact with her fledgling party, all seemed a comfortable fit for a metaphor based on the classic film, the Wizard of Oz.

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Despite the four word balloons that made it necessary to bring that cartoon to fruition, I still feel that a single wordless image is the ultimate goal in editorial cartooning. That said, sometimes a good punch line or wordplay can carry the day. For me, making people laugh, while making a strong point, is one of cartooning’s greatest rewards. Three of the five

Finalist André-Philippe Côté Le Soleil

2016 AWARDS EDITION

cartoons in my submission were wordballoon-free, and all five used humour to drive home the point.

The industry is changing and while editorial cartooning careers in the traditional sense appear to be diminishing, I believe in the power of a concise, hard-hitting, gut-splitting, well-drawn cartoon. These will always have value and an audience.

Bruce MacKinnon is an award-winning editorial cartoonist for the Halifax Chronicle-Herald. On June 30, 2016, he was appointed to the Order of Canada, “For his contributions as one of Canada’s most skilled, empathetic and provocative editorial cartoonists.”

Finalist Michael de Adder Chronicle Herald/BNI

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National Newspaper Awards: Explanatory Work Body and Soul Jon Wells Hamilton Spectator

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hen I emailed a list of story pitches to Cheryl Stepan, my editor at the Hamilton Spectator, I wanted to include an idea that I wasn’t sure I wanted her to approve.

That might sound odd, but I think it’s good to tackle a story that feels out of your comfort zone. A nice example of that was years ago when I pitched witnessing an execution. The editors accepted – gulp – and I flew down to Virginia. At the last minute, as I waited with several other witnesses to enter the death house – that’s what they actually called it -- the governor stayed the execution. Which was probably just as well.

The idea I pitched to Cheryl also involved death, but in a very different sense: a piece about the anatomy lab at McMaster University. It would fall into the category of places that a rare few in the community ever see, offering a chance to pull back that curtain and write what I found and felt.

She said yes, and I instantly felt trepidation, which had to be a good sign. Apart from the novelty of it, and challenging myself, I felt it could be a powerful story explaining what goes on in the lab where students dissect cadavers, and just as important, discovering who the donors had been.

I figured the biggest hurdle would be getting approval from McMaster for me to get into the lab, a secured area open only to instructors, staff and students. One card I had in my favour, though, was that I had written fly-on-the-wall medical stories in Hamilton in the past, about Hamilton General Hospital’s Emergency Department,

Injected pink latex allows blood vessels in the brain to pop with colour on the monitor, as though this male cadaver is a living patient.

Photo Cathie Coward/Hamilton Spectator

and the Intensive Care Unit. Both series came off well (ICU was nominated for a National Newspaper Award), and with both projects patient confidentiality was respected and I did not burn any bridges.

McMaster gave me the green light, although the university insisted that a public relations official be present for my visits. That was fine. Actually, it felt good to have someone there who had also never seen cadavers dissected.

The second obstacle was mental: how would I cope with what I saw? I was in the lab in the winter of 2015 for several sessions, watching dissection and also neurological surgical skills practice on cadavers.

It was jarring at first, absolutely. But then fascinating, and enlightening.

In the spring, I attended McMaster’s Service of Gratitude for the donors, and found family members who agreed to talk to me, and in addition Mac’s people lined-up others for me. The service was moving, and as I took notes I knew this scene would be how I opened the story, and closed it.

My experiences in the lab, and at the service, inspired me to not only explain the program, the people involved, and anatomy education in general, but to touch upon notions of mortality and spirituality -- and I asked students and anatomy lab staff questions about these things.

That aspect of the story kind of evolved organically, and it prompted me to title the project “Body and Soul.”

Meanwhile, I used interviews with families to draw portraits of the lives lived by the cadavers: this is who they were, this is where they have ended up, “teaching from

the dead,” as I titled part two. For the science, I exchanged dozens of emails with the anatomy program’s engaging director, Bruce Wainman, and attended one of his lectures. If the director had been anyone less energetic or helpful than Bruce, I don’t know how the series would have turned out. After it was over he told me he found my constant questions a bit exhausting. But he never stopped answering them.

The series ran in the fall of 2015. Spec photographer Cathie Coward did a terrific job with visuals, John Bullock shined as always with the design. Cheryl as always provided great encouragement, suggestions, and the time I needed to get it right.

As far as the impact goes, I was told that the anatomy program received many calls from residents wanting to sign up as donors, and I received tremendous feedback from readers. It felt good, because I had wanted to deliver a story that offered learning and a lively and inspiring journey.

My goal had been to convey the emotion and illumination I had felt in the lab, about this vessel we are travelling in.

In the end it felt to me like a gift, having the opportunity to research and write a story of this nature – and that’s what I said at the podium in Edmonton, when I accepted my NNA in the Explanatory category.

A few tips for journalists or students tackling similar stories: Get access: Make a strong pitch to whoever you need to get on board for a fly-on-the-wall type piece. Take great care writing up the email, let them know you will not burn them, but don’t misrepresent what you’re after, either.

Read and watch everything you can

26 MEDIA

Andrew Palombella injects latex into the cadaver’s carotid artery the day before a surgical skills session in the lab.

PHOTO CREDIT: Cathie Coward/Hamilton Spectator

Finalists Philippe Mercure, La Presse, for his series on the centennial of the theory of relativity

Pamela Jamieson and her mother Iris Jamieson with a photo of their father/ husband Bill Jamieson, a former police officer who donated his body to science.

PHOTO CREDIT: Cathie Coward/Hamilton Spectator

even remotely related to your topic to inspire and contextualize: Watching the sci-fi movie Ex Machina, for example, gave me the title for part three of the series (“The Machine”).

“Over-research/underwrite”: This was golden advice from my former editor, Dana Robbins, many years ago. Flood the 2016 AWARDS EDITION

Mary Agnes Welch Winnipeg Free Press The dissolution of devolution An analysis of the crisis in Manitoba’s child-welfare system http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/special/cracksinthesystem/The-dissolution-of-devolution-361591361.html

zone on research, and then carve the story out of your best stuff.

Don’t overwrite a powerful story: If the material is compelling, get out of the way of the story and just roll it out there for readers to experience.

John Wells is an award-winning journalist at Hamilton Spectator and author

of seven books, including Death’s Shadow, Poison, and Heat. Here are the different ways to check out his work: jwells@ thespec.com, https://www.facebook.com/ Jon-Wells-Spec-author-344275660597/, https://twitter.com/jonjwells

27

National Newspaper Awards – Local Reporting

Finally, on the Friday before Labour Day in 2015, we got hundreds of pages of inspection reports from every daycare in the province. It was nearly two years after we first started fighting for the records.

Illustration credit: Adam Huras

Karissa Donkin and Adam Huras Daycare stories New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal

By Karissa Donkin

‘Y

our child isn’t in here. What’s it to you?’

It started with a no.

Curious about daycare safety after a death inside an unregulated facility in Ontario, reporter Karissa Donkin started asking questions about daycare standards in New Brunswick nearly three years ago.

Those questions, and requests to see copies of daycare inspection reports, were met with a brick wall.

The government said the inspection reports had to stay private because releasing them could hurt a daycare’s business.

Hurt their business? What, we thought, do they have to hide?

We wouldn’t know the answer to that question for nearly two years, after a protracted battle that spanned two governments. All for information that’s available within about 30 seconds online in Ontario.

The battle started in October 2013, when Donkin filed a right-to-information request asking for three years’ worth of inspection reports from Saint John daycares.

The government took the request and asked every daycare in Saint John if it was OK to give an unnamed applicant copies of their reports.

Several daycare owners in Saint John had a meeting and talked about it, one owner later told Donkin. They collectively said no.

“Your child isn’t in here,” an owner said. “What’s it to you?”

After we got a no, we appealed the decision to the province’s Access to Information and Privacy Commissioner, Anne Bertrand.

Premier Brian Gallant, then the leader of the Opposition, publicly called for the release of inspection reports. But getting full, uncensored copies was not much easier once his Liberal government took power.

In the spring of 2015, Bertrand decided we should have access to the records.

Soon after, government officials couriered a giant box of hundreds of pages of reports to the Telegraph-Journal’s Saint John office.

They showed that most daycares couldn’t prove they properly screened employees and volunteers, and the problem was happening year after year for many facilities.

Without proper background checks, there was no way to prove these people were fit to work in a daycare.

Inspectors knew. The department knew.

Still, people were allowed to work with kids without proving they are capable of doing so.

The documents also showed that government was censoring the records being posted on the new online daycare inspec-

tion registry. The registry entries lacked detail, and were posted after daycares were given several chances to fix problems inspectors found.

That initial story prompted a crackdown. The education minister vowed to get tough on daycares that broke the rules.

He ordered inspectors to send employees without proper screening home and vowed to hire more inspectors.

One employee was fired from a daycare after inspectors determined he or she never should have been working with children.

We still don’t know what turned up on that person’s late background check.

To see if the problems were widespread, we asked for daycare inspection reports from every New Brunswick daycare from 2014.

We figured it wouldn’t be a problem. A new government with a premier who had called for the information to be public was in power. And Anne Bertrand had already ruled on the issue.

Instead, we found ourselves locked in another protracted battle with government over access to daycare inspection reports.

Even though Bertrand said the documents should be public, the government sent a letter to every daycare in the province, asking if it was OK to release the information.

The battle went back to Bertrand’s

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office. She told the department it should have never asked the daycares for permission, and set a June 2015 deadline to release the documents.

The government ignored her, continued asking daycares for permission, and missed the deadline.

We wrote stories about the missing documents nearly every day for weeks to remind our readers that government disobeyed Bertrand’s advice and continued to withhold the documents we were obligated to see.

Finally, on the Friday before Labour Day in 2015, we got hundreds of pages of inspection reports from every daycare in the province. It was nearly two years after we first started fighting for the records.

A team of reporters spent the weekend inside the tiny New Brunswick Legislature Press Gallery office poring over these documents.

We found a range of problems. Onethird of daycares couldn’t prove they properly screened employees. We found issues with cleanliness, poor record-keeping and, in one case, an owner who kept guns at the facility.

The woman who owned that daycare didn’t see any issues with keeping her guns in the same place as her daycare.

“They’re all registered and licensed properly,” she said.

Our series prompted more change. The education minister said our findings left him “shocked and disappointed.”

He ordered more than 100 daycare workers to be sent home. Another person was fired. A week later, a daycare in Moncton closed its doors.

We believe our stories have made it safer for New Brunswick parents to leave their children in daycares.

2016 AWARDS EDITION

But we’re just as excited to have won an access-to-information fight.

We spend a lot of time in New Brunswick fighting for basic information that’s already public and easily accessible in other provinces.

There were, and maybe still are, people in New Brunswick who don’t think this should be public.

That’s because there isn’t a culture of open information in our province. It is often secrecy by default.

But it helps every time we win a fight like this. It’s a precedent we can use when fighting for documents in other cases.

Slowly but surely, it picks away at that secretive culture.

Getting to that point wasn’t easy. The Telegraph-Journal doesn’t have an investigative team. Like most newspapers, it can be a struggle to fill the pages and a project like this was not a priority every day of those two years.

But once we realized the change we could make, it became our top priority.

To us, the story is proof that investigative journalism matters. Real change can happen if you push hard enough, ask the right questions and look in the right places.

That kind of digging and persistence is needed in small provinces like New Brunswick more than anywhere else.

People are nice, but that doesn’t make it free of corruption, government scandal and, in this case, standards ensuring the proper care of children going unmet.

Nearly three years later, the uncensored daycare inspection reports still aren’t online. Getting them still requires a rightto-information request and, likely, months of waiting.

The battle continues.

Tips for young journalists Don’t take no for an answer when you ask for information from a government body. Just because they give you 400 reasons for the no, doesn’t mean it’s justified.

Know your rights. Know your province’s right-to-information legislation so you can fight back when you get a no.

File freedom-of-information requests often, but file smart. Do research before you file and know what kind of records the public body keeps.

Stick with it. It can often take months (or, in our case, years) to see the product of your work or to see change unfold. But it’s worth it in the end.

Link to stories: You can read them by clicking here.

Karissa Donkin @kdonk is a journalist in CBC’s Atlantic investigative unit. Before that, she worked at the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal and the Toronto Star.

She is a 2012 graduate of St. Thomas University’s journalism program.

Adam Huras @adamhuras is the provincial editor and Fredericton legislative bureau chief of the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal. He previously worked at the National Post. He is a graduate of Ryerson University’s school of journalism, class of 2008.

Finalists The Brandon Sun The Runaways Ian Hitchen https://s3.amazonaws.com/bsunproduction/runaways/index.html Stratford Beacon Herald Laura Cudworth For coverage of a teacher denied time off to accompany his 90-year-old father to the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands http://www.stratfordbeaconherald. com/2016/01/01/two-2015-storiesleft-lasting-impression-on-reporterlaura-cudworth

29

National Newspaper Awards - Arts and Entertainment/Culture The Globe and Mail

Jacquie McNish

Greg McArthur

Kate Taylor

Crystal Myths: Behind the ROM’s philanthropic façade

B

y the spring of 2014, journalists in the arts section of The Globe and Mail had been hearing the rumours for months: there were leading donors to the Royal Ontario Museum’s 2007 renovation who had never paid. Lavish public recognition had been granted to donors who had failed to make good on their pledges to the $300-million capital campaign that added the Michael Lee- Chin Crystal to the museum’s historic Queen’s Park building.

Yet, all the reporters had managed to get into print was one small story politely noting the ROM’s official explanation that, after the 2008 financial crisis, museum administrators had worked with some unnamed donors to adjust their payment schedules.

When investigative reporter Greg McArthur heard the same story from another source, he came to his colleagues in Globe Arts with an idea. The Ontario government had taken over the museum’s $72-million construction loan from a bank: a request under Ontario’s Freedom of Information Act for documents held by the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sports, which oversees the museum, might expose the true state of finances on the project.

Five months after the request was made, The Globe received 290 pages of ministry briefs, e-mails and financial statements.

These documents painted a disturbing portrait of a publicly funded institution

that was financially handicapped by debts accumulated as a result of uncollected donations it continued to trumpet. They also revealed that Ontario bureaucrats were losing patience with an institution that had repeatedly deferred scheduled payments on a loan backed by the taxpayer.

But the delinquent donors either weren’t named in the documents, or their names had been redacted. Over the next months, McArthur, Globe Arts journalist Kate Taylor and Report on Business writer Jacquie McNish worked multiple sources until they felt secure enough they could produce a story that would name three names.

Eight years after the building had opened and 12 years after he made the commitment, lead donor Michael LeeChin, for whom the ROM’s Crystal is named, still owed about $10-million of a $30-million pledge, but was on a payment plan. Food magnate Shreyas Ajmera, for whom a gallery inside the new ROM was named, had made no significant contribution towards a $5-million pledge.

The Russian-Canadian billionaire Alex Shnaider, who appeared alongside his wife Simona in a large photo panel celebrating the major donors, had never paid anything on a pledge worth between $5-million and $10-million.

McArthur eventually contacted all three donors: Lee Chin declined to comment – although after the story appeared he told Globe and Mail reporter Tim

Kiladze that he felt it was his duty to make lead pledges to both the ROM and, more recently, the Joseph Brant Hospital in Burlington, Ont., to get fundraising campaigns rolling. Ajmera told McArthur there had never been any deadline for making good on his pledge, but before The Globe could publish the story he did finally contribute $1.25-million. Shnaider explained through a lawyer that his pledge had been conditional on a business deal that had yet to materialize.

The final story cast a dark light on the Crystal project, which the ROM continues to celebrate as the “largest and most successful cultural fundraising campaign in Canada’s history.” It raised troubling questions about charitable fundraising practices, exposing how the ROM had solicited philanthropists for lead donations that it labelled “gifts received” in an attempt to draw out others – even if the philanthropists would be given no deadline to pay and could be expected to take years to do so. And it revealed that Lee-Chin, Ajmera and Simona Shnaider had all sat on the ROM’s board of governors, the sister organization which oversees fundraising, and thus were responsible for enforcing their own payments.

The legwork Documentation cracked this story, making confidential sources much happier to talk. When Globe reporters first approached sources, asking if they knew

30 MEDIA

of delinquent donors, they got no useful responses. When they returned with documents obtained through provincial freedom-of-information requests that proved the government was concerned about unpaid pledges and asked sources for explanations rather than revelations, the sources loosened up, relieved not to be cast as the whistleblowers.

Cross-disciplinary teamwork was also key to getting the story. McArthur lead the investigative work; Taylor provided knowledge of the ROM, the history of the building project, and sources in the cultural community, and McNish researched the original bank loan and worked her contacts in the business community to bolster the sourcing.

As in any investigative project, patience and persistence were extremely important after initial inquiries to the ROM were met with resistance. The more phone calls the team made – the journalists conducted more than 30 interviews for the story – the more the ROM was forced to address The Globe’s questions while sources outside the museum also became more forthcoming as research progressed.

On the other hand, strategic timing was also necessary. In an investigation that lasted eight months, there were often moments when the team had to be poised to move quickly. McArthur knew that as soon as he called a donor asking for comment, the donor would alert the ROM and the museum might step in and attempt to manage the communication. Early in their research, Taylor got a tip that the ROM was planning to quietly cover or remove the lobby photo panel celebrating the donors because philanthropists who had paid up did not feel it was fair; she promptly put in a photo request and Globe photographer Fred Lum successfully shot the panel without alerting the museum to his presence. The panel was covered over soon after.

The impact The story became one of the most talked about pieces of Canadian arts journalism in 2015, surprising readers with the realities of big-budget cultural fundraising while warning cultural executives about the necessities of transparency and accountability on building projects. The journalists heard that it became a hot topic on non-profit boards as hospitals and arts institutions discussed the need for safe2016 AWARDS EDITION

Eight years after the building had opened and 12 years after he made the commitment, lead donor Michael Lee-Chin, for whom the ROM’s Crystal is named, still owed about $10-million of a $30-million pledge, but was on a payment plan.

PHOTO CREDIT: J.P. Moczulski for The Globe and Mail

guards against the kind of mess in which the ROM found itself. Crystal Myths proved that when traditional hard-news techniques are applied, the arts can be a source of stories with wide social and political relevance.

Story Link http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/ toronto/crystal-myths-behind-the-romsphilanthropic-facade/article23653032/ Greg McArthur @McarthurGreg is a member of The Globe and Mail’s investigative team. His reporting has been recognized by all of Canada’s major journalism awards: He has won two National Newspaper Awards, several National Magazine Awards and the top prize awarded by the Canadian Association of Journalists.

Kate Taylor @thatkatetaylor is a columnist and now lead film critic in Globe Arts.

The ROM story was her third National Newspaper Award nomination and first win. She is also the author of three novels, Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen, A Man in Uniform, and her new title Serial Monogamy.

Jacquie McNish @jacquiemcnish currently works as a senior correspondent with The Wall Street Journal after a long career as a senior writer with The Globe and Mail. She is the recipient of seven National Newspaper Awards and the author of four books, two of which won National Business Book Awards.

Finalists Simon Houpt, The Globe and Mail, For his coverage of English-language Canadian films, Canadian TV and CBC Radio’s “Q” http://www.theglobeandmail.com/ arts/books-and-media/and-then-therewas-shad-inside-the-search-for-thenew-host-of-q/article23447219/ Kevin Prokosh Winnipeg Free Press For coverage of the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre http://www.winnipegfreepress. com/arts-and-life/entertainment/ arts/Taking-the-show-on-theroad-294273291.html

31

National Newspaper Awards: Beats

Judy Maas’, whose sister was killed by serial killer Cody Legebokoff, works at Splatsin Health Services, on a B.C. reserve.

PHOTO CREDIT: Shawn Talbot for The Globe and Mail

Kathryn Blaze Baum The Globe and Mail

W

hen Tina Fontaine’s body was pulled from Winnipeg’s Red River in August of 2014, the lead investigator said society would be horrified if a litter of kittens had been discovered in such a state.

“This is a child,” he said. “Society should be horrified.”

It was.

Two days later, a vigil was held in Tina’s honour in the Manitoba capital, and I was there. It was my first story as The Globe’s beat reporter covering the issue of Canada’s missing and murdered indigenous women (MMIW)– a topic that would inevitably involve an exploration of indigenous issues more generally.

Tina’s case captured the nation’s attention, a tragic example of the trauma experienced in the indigenous community and the myriad ways in which governments and systems fail to protect children like her.

Her story would bring me back to Winnipeg and to her Sagkeeng First Nation reserve on many occasions over the next two years. Other MMIW stories would take me to places such as Edmonton, Regina and Garden Hill First Nation, a fly-in community in northern Manitoba.

Advocates had long championed a national inquiry into Canada’s missing and murdered indigenous women, and Tina’s case – along with an RCMP study that found there were 1,181 police-reported homicides and long-term missing person files involving indigenous women between 1980 and 2012 – renewed those calls.

As the Globe’s dedicated MMIW reporter, my NNA-winning coverage in 2015 included an investigation into Manitoba’s dangerous reliance on hotels for emergency foster-care placements, an in-depth

profile of an Edmonton woman named Cindy Gladue whose death and subsequent court case sparked rallies across the country, a story on the killing of an 11-year-old girl in Garden Hill, revelations about the night a Winnipeg teen was attacked and left for dead (the identity of the girl, who survived and is today a high-profile advocate, is now under a publication ban), and an exploration of how trauma reverberates through indigenous communities with sometimes deadly consequences.

The investigation into Manitoba’s use of hotels for foster-care placements involved repeated queries of the government for upto-date data, as well as spending time in the lobbies and parking lots of downtown Winnipeg hotels so I could meet foster children and third-party caregivers as they came and went. I walked hotel hallways and door-knocked rooms in an attempt to get a true sense of the government’s reliance on hotels.

We wanted to bring readers into these establishments and into the lives of the vulnerable children living there. We also wanted to hold the province to account.

One day in March of 2015, several months after the government promised to end its hotel usage, I found 10 indigenous foster children living in a single downtown Winnipeg hotel. By November of 2015, the province announced it had officially ended its use of hotels for temporary placements, including in remote and northern areas.

The profile of Ms. Gladue was borne out of a conversation with an editor about the case. Ms. Gladue had bled to death in a motel bathtub from a wound to her vaginal wall, and her preserved pelvic tissue was brought into the courtroom as evidence.

The Ontario trucker who had paid for her

sexual services the night she died was acquitted of first-degree murder, and rallies ensued across the country.

Protesters said the 36-year-old had been a victim, in her death, of racism and sexism. All the while, next to nothing was known about Ms. Gladue. We wanted to change that. We wanted Canadians to see she was more than an indigenous sex worker found dead in a bathtub. Above all, she was a daughter and mother to three children.

When it came to the 11-year-old’s death in Garden Hill, I first obtained permission from the chief for myself and a photographer to enter the community, which was two flights and a boat ride away from Toronto, where I am based.

A killer was on the loose and we had to tread lightly, as we knew some community members had reservations about the media coming to the reserve, let alone at such a difficult time. We frequently checked in at the band office and did not take for granted that the council had trusted us to be respectful as we pursued interviews and photographs.

We made it clear that if family members decided they no longer wanted us on the reserve, we would leave immediately.

Instead, we were invited to the victim’s father’s solemn birthday gathering one evening; he had turned 41 years old just as he searched the woods for his daughter’s scattered remains.

In the case of the assault on the highprofile advocate whose name is now under a publication ban, I located the mother of one of the co-accused in Winnipeg and interviewed her briefly during one of my trips to the city. I could not immediately report much of what she told me because

32 MEDIA

the matter was still before the courts. Still, based on the interview with the mother, as well as conversations with the attacker’s sister and a family friend, I painted for Globe readers a clearer picture of what had transpired the night of the assault.

I encountered so much trauma in my reporting that, on the one-year anniversary of Tina’s killing, I felt it important to explore its ramifications deeply and scientifically. The crux of the feature was the notion that trauma begets trauma – that deaths and disappearances can ripple through families and communities with devastating force. I had spoken with so many victims’ relatives who had lost a sister, mother or daughter, and then found themselves suicidal or turning to drugs to escape.

My beat coverage over the past two years has been the most challenging work I have ever done, and might ever do.

Beyond the extensive travel, deadline demands and access-to-information denials and redactions, it was impossible not to be deeply impacted by the violence and grief at the centre of the stories.

Top of mind for me was doing right by the victims’ families and not re-traumatizing them with disrespectful or insensitive questions or coverage. I kept in close touch with families and indigenous leaders, reaching out not just when I needed something or had an interview to do. I did my best to keep sources updated on the progress of a story, knowing some felt tremendous anxiety and anticipation after sharing their stories.

I have spent countless hours with victims’ loved ones, and their heartbreak is not lost on me. I am grateful to those who 2016 AWARDs EDITION

have opened their hearts and homes to me.

It is to their credit that these stories were told.

Story links: Story that was part of my Manitoba hotels investigation: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/manitoba-foster-children-still-being-left-in-last-resorthotels/article23576306/ Profile on Cindy Gladue: http://www. theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ the-death-and-life-of-cindy-gladue/article24455472/ Story on trauma: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/traumascalamitous-echoes/article25968124/ Story on the Garden Hill killing: http:// www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ father-spends-bitter-birthday-searchingfor-remains-of-daughter/article24585438/ Story about the night of a high-profile attack: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/ news/national/family-of-co-accused-inrinelle-harper-attack-describe-the-day-ithappened/article23910390/ My author page: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/authors/kathryn-blaze-baum Kathryn Blaze Baum is a national Globe and Mail reporter who has spent the past two years covering the issue of Canada’s missing and murdered indigenous women.

Previously, Ms. Baum was a parliamentary reporter in the Globe’s Ottawa bureau.

Before joining the paper in 2013, she was a reporter for the National Post and a stringer for The New York Times. She has covered major news events, including the 2014 Moncton shooting, the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and two U.S. presidential elections. Ms. Baum hails from Winnipeg.

The finalists David Pugliese Ottawa Citizen For coverage of the military http://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/kenneys-claims-about-canadassmart-bombs-questioned http://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/up-to-400-canadian-d-day-veterans-miss-out-on-french-honour http://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/sexual-assault-crisis-centre-formilitary-personnel-to-have-limitedhours http://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/the-coming-war-with-russia Ivan Semeniuk For coverage of science The Globe and Mail http://www.theglobeandmail.com/ life/health-and-fitness/health/ scientists-unleash-the-power-ofimmunotherapy-on-stubborn-cancers/ article22371088/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/ technology/science/500-millionyears-ago-this-critter-had-a-bad-day/ article22984858/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/ technology/technology-video/videothe-true-meaning-of-outer-spacelatest-pluto-images-and-what-theymay-mean/article25554564/ 33

National Newspaper Awards - Feature Photo Winner

National Newspaper Awards – Sports Photo Winner

Tim Smith/Brandon Sun

Fred Lum/Globe and Mail

Ice skaters take advantage of the smooth-as-glass ice covering Clear Lake as the sun sets in Riding Mountain National Park, Manitoba, on Monday December 15, 2015. The lack of snow created a great opportunity for winter enthusiasts to enjoy the clear ice.

National Newspaper Awards - Feature Photo Finalists Mark Blinch/Reuters Canada

John Rennison/Hamilton Spectator

Seven-year-old Keegan Saila (Left) and David McKay, also seven, fall in behind re-enactors as they parade following the Battle of Stoney Creek re-enactment. Saila’s grandfather and McKay’s parents were re-enactors at the event on June 7, 2015.

34 MEDIA

Toronto Blue Jay Jose Bautista throws his bat in the air after hitting a three-run homer in the seventh inning against the Texas Rangers in game five of the American League Division Series Oct 14, 2015 in Toronto.

National Newspaper Awards – Sports Photo Finalists Steve Russell/Affiliate Toronto Star

A group of joggers calling themselves the “Black Lungs Toronto” runs across the Humber Bay Arch Bridge during extreme cold temperatures, -25C, in Toronto, February 16, 2015.

Team Canada’s Peter Orr celebrates after scoring the winning run with a slide into home as Team Canada beats Team USA in extra innings in the Pan Am Games baseball gold medal game at President’s Choice Ajax Park in Ajax, Ontario, July 19, 2015.

2015 AWARDS EDITION

Gord Waldner Saskatoon StarPhoenix Jordan Lloyd Carlier is bucked off by Jaw Breaker at the PBR Canadian Finals Bull Riding in Saskatoon on November 20, 2015. Jordan was uninjured.

35