2 The Emerging Face of Public Service Journalism

In the first few years of the fledgling Michener Award, entries from media organizations varied wildly in their interpretation of public service journalism. The judges saw the gamut. “We had examples of coverage ranging from crime and violence to storm, slum and near-disaster, from ‘investigative’ reporting to thinly disguised promotion, and most of it extremely good,” the Michener Awards judging panel noted in an early adjudication report.¹ The criteria were clear. Judges were looking for entries that showed evidence of “disinterested journalism” and “impact” for the public good at the local, regional, provincial or national level. So, the announcement of the 1971 Michener winner must have raised a few eyebrows. The CBC-TV retrospective documentary series, “The Tenth Decade,” while disinterested, showed scant evidence of impact.

The series told the tumultuous story of the ten years between Canada’s ninetieth and one hundredth birthdays — 1957 to 1967. The series used a collage of archival film and tape to look back and reflect on the political, social and cultural changes in Canada through the lens of federal politics. It took viewers behind the scenes of well-known political events of the decade. The judges — all of whom had extensive experience in journalism² — opted for CBC-TV’s descriptive narrative over two other finalists, both from the Southam newspaper chain. One was a joint investigation by the London Free Press, Ottawa Citizen and Windsor Star into issues surrounding the preservation of the Niagara Escarpment in southern Ontario. The other honourable mention went to the Ottawa Citizen for its examination into the Ontario government’s Parcost program that put pressure on doctors and pharmacies to prescribe and dispense generic drugs.

In contrast, “The Tenth Decade” re-examined defining political moments and issues of the time, such as the John Diefenbaker Conservative government’s refusal to allow nuclear-tipped missiles on Canadian soil. There was the salacious Gerda Munsinger political sex scandal, the defeat of the Tories that led to the ousting of John Diefenbaker as the leader and the failings of the new Liberal government. Building on this was the growing nationalist fervour in Québec — at a time when much of Canada was preparing to welcome the world to Expo 67 in Montreal as part of the country’s centennial celebrations.

Given the rapid societal and institutional changes underway in Canadian society, the late 1950s and 1960s were worth documenting and reflecting upon. But was “The Tenth Decade” the kind of storytelling for which the Michener Award had been conceived? Cameron Graham, the executive producer, described it as a feature account of a historical decade. The politics in those ten years, he said, were extremely intricate with a different ethos. “Whatever else it was, Canada was about Canadian politics. We were working in a time when we could go in and ask [politicians] can we cover you guys having this little meeting or can we follow you around and see what you’re doing? . . . We would always say, we won’t be putting it on the air until after the event you are talking about had occurred. So, they would say, yeah you can come in.”³

For example, Graham recalled an episode that examined the 1967 Conservative leadership race where John Diefenbaker lost to Nova Scotia’s Robert Stanfield. During the convention Graham had three film crews wandering the halls of the CN Chateau Laurier hotel in downtown Ottawa, filming the backroom struggles for power. “I was like a General and I’d say, go here, go there and see what’s going on. I would wonder what someone is doing and say, let’s send a crew up to their room. So we got all this interesting stuff,” Graham recalled. “This was the basis for a lot of the film footage in “The Tenth Decade.” . . . A lot of the shenanigans that were going on.” It was lively storytelling.

“The Tenth Decade” focused on personalities, issues and ideas with disparate political threads from the decade woven into a compelling narrative. “So, it becomes a pretty interesting film that way. I don’t think you could do that now,” Graham observed.⁴ CBC-TV’s Peter Herrndorf acknowledged the wide appeal of the series, but as for impact, “there was very little audience or institutional follow-up. It was just that people had a slightly different take on the history of their own country.”⁵

One could say that in giving the Michener to the “The Tenth Decade” the judges recognized the end of an era, not only politically, economically, socially and culturally, but also for journalism. Attitudes and practices were changing quickly. Time was expiring for “insider journalism” when top reporters and columnists regularly cultivated their relationship with powerful politicians to their mutual advantage. Instead, with the rise of investigative journalism in mainstream media, that relationship became more adversarial. The perception of journalists as sympathetic lapdogs of public institutions had changed. Younger journalists saw themselves as watchdogs of public institutions acting on behalf of citizens. Journalists started to go beyond the “who, when, where and what” of stories. They were demanding “how and why” — accountability from those in authority on behalf of the public. At the same time, media organizations started to adopt codes of ethics that stressed independence.

By the 1970s, the ghost of CBC’s This Hour Has Seven Days was finding expression in mainstream media in Canada. To stay in step with the new decade, the Michener Awards would pivot to reflect the changes and celebrate bold, innovative journalism. But there was work to do. The new award lacked profile and outreach, putting organizers in a tough spot: journalists and media organizations could not submit their work for an award they didn’t know existed. Behind the scenes, the two people running the show — Bill MacPherson, as award administrator, and Fraser MacDougall, who became head of the judging panel in year three — worked singlehandedly throughout the decade to build the award’s reputation for excellence, pay the bills and raise the profile among media outlets to ensure the award took its rightful place in the industry. Their efforts to boost the award were bolstered by the governor general’s annual ceremony at Rideau Hall.

Watchdogs in the Public Interest

If the Roland Michener Award, as it was called then, was about rewarding media outlets for stories with impact for the public good, then the two winners in 1972 set the bar high. The Scotian Journalist, a muckraking Nova Scotian bi-weekly newspaper, and Toronto’s Globe and Mail tied. “Ex aequo,” wrote Judge Bill Boss. “The results might be interpreted as meaning that the panel had difficulty in reaching its decision. This was not the case. . . . The panel had little difficulty in reaching the consensus that equal excellences this year had been demonstrated by two of them so markedly that a distinction could not be drawn.”⁶ Boss went on to write that, when the judges considered resources, both organizations demonstrated excellence.

The winning story from “Davey’s Raiders” at the Globe and Mail exposed the self-interest and blatant conflicts of interest among municipal and provincial politicians in performing their public duties. In one case, two Toronto aldermen voted to change the zoning in areas they held an interest.⁷ At the provincial level, it was no better. Ontario’s Attorney General resigned after the Globe revealed he had bought land northeast of Toronto while the Cabinet was planning to promote growth in the area. Another story involved the Department of Municipal Affairs approving a subdivision of land in which a minister had a financial interest.⁸ The public shaming was enough to nudge the new Conservative government of William Davis to pass legislation requiring all political parties in Ontario to disclose financial contributions; it also introduced conflict of interest regulations that were considered the most progressive in the country. In 1974, the Trudeau Liberals followed with the Election Expenses Act that provided the first regulations to limit funding for federal candidates and parties and their campaign spending.

Globe and Mail legislative reporter Jonathan Manthorpe had written extensively about financing inequities in political parties and was part of the team recognized for the 1972 series. On the day of the ceremony, the Globe team had lunch at the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and several other federal ministers. “I remember Trudeau looking as though he’d rather be somewhere else. He seemed to be fairly bored by the whole process,”⁹ Manthorpe recalled with a grin and twinkle in his eye. “It was a pleasant lunch but no sparkling conversation.” Then they were off to Rideau Hall for a brief stand-up ceremony. Roland Michener presented the award to Globe editor Richard (“Dic”) Doyle “a very cheerful man, especially in situations like that,” Manthorpe said in a soft accent that reflected his upbringing in England’s Suffolk County. He chuckled as he recalled that Doyle “almost hopped, skipped and jumped” as he went to collect the trophy. “I never saw it again. It disappeared into his office. . . . The reporters who actually had done the work, we had no mementos of the thing at all.”¹⁰

Manthorpe used his research, much of it targeting Bill Kelly, the “chief bag person for the provincial Tories,” to write a book on the history of the Ontario Conservative Party, The Power and the Tories.¹¹ The bottom line for Manthorpe is that the Globe series and his subsequent book had lived up to the Michener values and had an immediate and significant impact on how political parties collect money. “I think it did a fair bit to lessen patronage and corruption. It was worthwhile.” This was a clear message to politicians and others that the days of “The Tenth Decade” were over; the media would be watching and holding those in positions of authority accountable. The Michener judges described the Globe and Mail series as “a classic case of a ‘biggie’ taking on the mighty by persistently digging for facts” and praised the Globe for upholding “the best traditions of journalism as a bastion of democracy” and helping to improve the quality of democracy through journalism.¹²

If the Globe was the established biggie, then the Scotian Journalist, the other 1972 Michener Award winner, was the polar opposite. It was an example for smaller media outlets that they, like the upstart alternative from Halifax, could produce stories that changed the lives of people. In this case, it was women living in a regional minimum-security prison on a farm in Riverview, now a suburb of Moncton, New Brunswick.

The newspaper’s owner and editor Frank Fillmore, a dyed-in-the-wool leftie, and reporter Debbie Sprague devoted an entire ten-page edition of the Scotian Journalist to the deplorable conditions at the Coverdale Interprovincial Home for Women.¹³ The so-called home was founded in the 1920s by the Anglican, Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian churches with the stated intention to rehabilitate up to a hundred women at a time serving “terms of two years or more and had committed crimes of prostitution, vagrancy, theft, forgery and other offences.”¹⁴

When the three-storey building opened in 1926, it boasted dorms, a chapel, classrooms, a room for hair-dressing instruction and a gymnasium. The administration claimed a high success rate of rehabilitation and pointed to the low number of repeat offenders.¹⁵ A much different picture emerged in 1972 from a confidential official 400-page report by Glenn R. Thompson, an expert in prison management and the treatment of offenders. Thompson found that the institution was more of a work camp than a place of rehabilitation. The women did chores on the farm and in the kitchen, laundry and dining room six days a week; many spent their time serving the needs of the staff. Thompson found the teachers and staff ill-qualified.

He also identified a litany of health and safety issues. For example, staff shortages resulted in the women being locked in their rooms with a chamber pot from 5:30 p.m. to seven o’clock the next morning. Those in detention for breaking rules, some as minor as spilling water, were denied basics such as regular meals, water and sanitary pads.¹⁶ The complaints came from both residents and staff. A staffer told the paper that “dogs are better used than residents.”¹⁷

Fillmore, citing the public interest, reprinted the recommendations and stories from on-the-ground reporting. They had the intended effect. A week later, the women were moved and the institution closed. That was the kind of impact for the public good that the Micheners wanted to encourage among media outlets.

The Scotian Journalist belonged to a new breed of alternative newspapers that dug into issues not often seen on the front pages of the established daily newspapers of record — stories such as racial and gender inequities, environmental wrongdoings and injustices in the policing, justice and correctional systems. For example, reporters at the competing Mail Star and Halifax Chronicle Herald often found themselves playing catch-up with investigative scoops in the then-independent weekly Dartmouth Free Press and other alternative papers. Competition was fierce and often personal and helped to raise the quality of journalism.

Frank Fillmore and his son Nick started with a newsletter — People and Community News — and then, in 1969, the weekly, The 4th Estate. Each of these startups came with a pledge to tell it like it is: “Sometimes, you won’t like that, for if we have one over-riding purpose and dedication it is to shake the community and force it to face that which is so difficult to face — Truth.”¹⁸ The father-son partnership dissolved after two years with Fillmore Sr. taking his brand of social activism journalism to start the Scotian Journalist in 1971. Paul Willies was a fifteen-year-old high school student who became a cub reporter for the bi-weekly. “Frank was such a maverick, he just wanted to do things his way,” recalled Willies. “He [Frank] was always taking on the establishment and doing everything on a wing and prayer.”¹⁹ For audiences in small cities like Halifax, stories like Coverdale were eye-opening, and they built audiences.

The announcement that the Scotian Journalist had won the Roland Michener Award and would be going to Rideau Hall on May 9, 1973, produced absolute fury in the publisher of the rival Dartmouth Free Press. Bruce Cochran was quick to tell Globe and Mail correspondent Lyndon Watkins that the Free Press had done the Coverdale story six weeks earlier. “Everybody in the plant is irate about it,” he told Watkins. “All he [Frank Fillmore] was doing was publishing a report which it [the Free Press] had leaked and whose contents were already well known.”²⁰ Cochran claimed that the paper would have submitted its material for a Michener Award “because it had measurable and good effects,” but it had not received an entry form.

Fillmore acknowledged that the Free Press had reported on Coverdale and went on to say the Scotian Journalist had published far more detail, including an exclusive interview with the matron of the jail. “They [the Dartmouth Free Press] were cleaned out and they know it,” Fillmore told the Globe’s Watkins. “Nothing was done about the home until we came out with the report. Four or five days after, the place was closed.”

The Dartmouth Free Press felt differently. Within days, managing editor Gerard McNeil fired off a letter of protest to the governor general’s secretary. McNeil wrote that he was “flabbergasted by the award” to the Scotian Journalist. “It is inconceivable to me, as a reporter and editor of some experience, that a newspaper could get a national award for a story that was at least five weeks old.”²¹ McNeil had professional standing. He’d been a respected reporter in the Ottawa bureau of the Canadian Press before returning to Nova Scotia as editor of the weekly. He submitted a dossier of stories the Free Press had done and credited Mysterious East in Fredericton for being first to the story and prompting the government investigation by Glenn Thompson.

This was the first challenge to a decision of the Michener panel. “Whoever the judges were, they must have made the award to the Scotian Journalist without checking the context,” wrote McNeil. “Some remedy seems to be in order, if only to uphold the standard of the Michener Award itself.” He appealed to the Office of the Governor General to undertake an impartial study of the press clippings “in the interests of the award if nothing else.”²² There is no record of Rideau Hall’s reply to McNeil. Protocol would dictate that this matter would be sent to the Federation of Press Clubs of Canada.

Award administrator Bill MacPherson lobbed this hot potato over to the judging panel for review.²³ Chief Judge Fraser MacDougall consulted other members who didn’t have much time for the “shrieks of anguish”²⁴ from the Free Press. McNeil’s indignant protest went nowhere. MacDougall responded that the panel worked with the material it received. He added that if the Dartmouth Free Press felt its story was worthy, it should have submitted its collection of stories. MacDougall did not address the issue that the Free Press claimed it had not received an entry form. It may have been a coincidence, but the following year the Dartmouth Free Press received an honourable mention at the Michener Awards ceremony. The terse citation praised the Free Press for “its courage in the face of a hoodlum invasion that threatened the lives of its staff and the security of its plant.”²⁵

If nothing else, this incident brought to light the Michener’s growing pains. The Michener Award wasn’t high on the agenda of the journalists who belonged to the Federation of Press Clubs. The annual mailouts and word-of-mouth encouragement simply weren’t good enough to reach all the newsrooms. This lack of public profile and outreach meant that media outlets overlooked or disregarded the Michener Award when submitting their high-quality work for national and regional newspaper or broadcast industry awards. In those early years, the Michener lacked the institutional heft to raise its profile, but what it stood for — excellence in journalism in the public interest — was gathering momentum.

Digging deeper

Media organizations started to see the value of going beyond the daily news cycle and giving journalists the freedom to dig deeper. This new generation of journalists didn’t regard those in authority as allies, and they were pushing for greater access to information and challenging the boundaries of reporting. What was professional and ethical behaviour when, for example, it came to undercover reporting and using new technologies to get a story? The Michener judges inadvertently entered the debate when they gave the 1973 Michener Award to CTV News for a story that spoke directly to using new technology to challenge authority.

The announcement that CTV’s program Inquiry would get the 1973 Michener Award for its program “Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil” was greeted with some skepticism in rival newsrooms. Reporter Tim Ralfe and his producer Jack McGaw had decided to expose the lax standards of Canada’s anti-eavesdropping laws that allowed secret recordings of some third-party conversations which invaded personal privacy.²⁶ Ralfe — a reporter with a reputation for “fight and courage”— was gung-ho for the assignment.²⁷

There are various accounts of what happened on the morning of Wednesday, October 17, 1973. Apparently, Ralfe walked into the main block of the Parliament building carrying a roll of duct tape and a store-bought $185 listening device. About an hour before a New Democratic Party caucus meeting, Ralfe secretly slipped into the room and taped a “matchbox-size radio transmitter”²⁸ under the boardroom table.

It was high drama. CTV parked its unmarked van outside Centre Block on Parliament Hill. Ralfe, McGaw and an audio engineer sat inside, waiting to record the NDP caucus meeting, “the most secret type of gathering in Parliament,” NDP Leader David Lewis declared that afternoon in the House of Commons.²⁹ An RCMP officer approached the van just at the moment when the transmission stopped. The CTV crew thought they had been busted, but all the officer did was write a parking ticket and stick it under the windshield wiper. As the officer moved on, the bug started transmitting again and the crew let out a collective sigh of relief.

What they didn’t know was that inside the boardroom, NDP caucus leader Ed Broadbent had brushed up against something under the table and he pulled up the tiny transmitter. “This looks like a bugging device,” Broadbent told caucus members. He then put the transmitter on the table and the caucus carried on with the confidential meeting as the tape recorder in the van captured the conversation.³⁰

Meanwhile, CTV’s McGaw and Ralfe had already decided to admit to the illegal taping. As soon as the caucus meeting ended, they handed over the tape recording and assured NDP leader David Lewis that the audio engineer had been the only one to hear what had been said at the meeting and he was sworn to secrecy.³¹ Lewis was furious with CTV’s underhanded actions. The aftermath of the phone bugging and subsequent break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, DC, was fresh in people’s minds and still unfolding on the front pages of the newspapers.

When Lewis took his seat in the House of Commons that afternoon, he stood on a question of privilege to announce that CTV had bugged the NDP caucus meeting. “Whether or not it is illegal under the present Criminal Code . . . is irrelevant. Certainly, it is totally illegal as far as the rules of Parliament are concerned.” Lewis went on to call the actions of CTV “morally and socially wrong in every respect” and described the bugging as “indecent and anti-social.” MPs were in an uproar and gave unanimous support for a motion of censure against CTV that ordered Ralfe to return all the tapes immediately.³²

This “was typical of McGaw’s style of activist, advocacy journalism in which events are devised and filmed to make an editorial statement,” wrote Tim Kotcheff, a former CTV executive.³³ In news reporting, this only happens as a last resort, when all other avenues to get the information have been exhausted. In his Globe and Mail column, Geoffrey Stevens called the CTV stunt a “distressing, disgusting episode,” especially since the show’s producers knew that the wiretap laws were at the committee stage and would become law soon.³⁴

In Behind the Headlines: A History of Investigative Journalism in Canada, Cecil Rosner wrote that the CTV program raised the question of whether the news magazine Inquiry was nothing but “a form of cheap ‘gotcha’ journalism” to attract viewers and ratings.³⁵ It was a time when the two established Canadian networks, CBC and CTV, found themselves competing with new players: Citytv in Toronto and a third national network, Global Television, had entered the field. With all of them vying for audiences and advertisers, journalists were pushing boundaries.

None of the criticism or controversy over the CTV win was evident as media gathered on May 16, 1974, in the foyer of Rideau Hall for a late afternoon award ceremony. At the stand-up reception Governor General Jules Léger, a former associate editor at Le Droit, university professor and diplomat, held out his hand to CTV producer Jack McGaw. “I hope you haven’t got an electronic bug on you,” Léger joked. McGaw replied, “No sir, not today.”³⁶ The citation of the Michener judges praised CTV, noting that the program “took a series of facts, which were being reported by all media at the time, and, using imagination and courage, probed beyond the surface.” They described the episode of Inquiry as “an outstanding example of in-depth reporting by a medium still discovering its ability to dig with impact, instead of being content to skim superficially.”³⁷ The Michener jury was likely attracted to the enterprise journalism of the story because CTV was using the latest technology to push conventional boundaries, and the program had achieved concrete impact.

Despite his initial fury, even NDP leader David Lewis was of two minds about the show. In an interview with Ralfe, Lewis condemned CTV’s actions, and at the same time, he applauded the editorial objective of the documentary. A few months later Parliament passed Bill C-175, the Protection of Privacy Act that made it illegal to use secret wiretaps or any electronic listening devices.³⁸ CTV’s wiretapping story showed that journalists were prepared to push those in power to the point of risking access to power and insider information.

As Rosner writes, “Hidden cameras, concealed microphones and night lens equipment were frequently the only means of accomplishing the task” of exposing the darker sides of society.³⁹ For example, CBC-TV’s two-part documentary “Connections” received an honourable mention at the 1977 Michener Awards ceremony for its shocking undercover video of the world of organized crime in Canada. Two and a half years in the making, and at a cost of more than $300,000, “Connections” was a far different kind of journalistic storytelling from “The Tenth Decade” five years earlier. Audiences went behind the scenes with CBC and listened as crime figures described in graphic terms how a network of crime from the United States had spread into Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. Ratings for the broadcasts over the two nights went through the roof. Peter Herrndorf, then head of planning at CBC, recalled how viewers were “stunned” by the revelations. So were politicians, who called for a royal commission and for the provinces to band together to fight organized crime. “In those six, seven months after that came out, there was a lot of change in the way banks, credit organizations and all kinds of other organizations that dealt with the public because they’d learned some lessons from the organized crime documentary,” said Herrndorf. “So, both government and the private sector changed their practices and policies. That was part of what we had hoped to do.”⁴⁰ Most journalists get into the business to achieve results like that in their reporting and the latest technology started to open new possibilities.

As Rosner points out in Behind the Headlines, journalists of the 1970s looked beyond wrongdoings and injustices. They drilled down to examine how the policies and practices of institutions — like banks, businesses, churches, government courts and police services — affected the lives of citizens.⁴¹ One such Michener Award-winning example was the Vancouver Sun’s reporting in 1976 into the illegal activities of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Security Service, SS (replaced by the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, CSIS, in 1986).

The Vancouver Sun’s Ottawa reporter John Sawatsky relied on sources in the RCMP to tell the story of misdeeds and a cover-up that extended into the senior management levels at RCMP headquarters in Ottawa. His investigation started after a member of the RCMP SS admitted during a trial that he was working for the Mafia in his off hours and had planted a bomb at the home of a Montreal supermarket executive. Constable Robert Samson also testified that in his day job with security service, he had been ordered to do much worse. Just four months after the Watergate break-in, Sampson said he was part of a joint police force team called “Operation Bricole” that illegally broke into the Agence de Presse Libre du Québec (APLQ) and took documents.⁴²

Swasey’s front page story unmasked a web of deception at the highest levels:

Sources indicate that the RCMP knew the truth about the raid soon after it took place and, knowing the raid was illegal, turned a blind eye to it. The RCMP took no action to see that the matter was prosecuted as it does routinely on other break-ins. Instead, the RCMP acted to hide the material in filing cabinets under the responsibility of John Starnes, who as director-general of the security service was the country’s top spy chaser.⁴³

The Michener citation praised Sawatsky’s “tenacity and skill” and said the story shook “the very foundations of Canada’s legal system — respect for law and order of those sworn to uphold them on behalf of Canadians.”⁴⁴

As Sawatsky told Rosner, it was the first public evidence of a Watergate in Canada where RCMP management had been implicated in methodical illegal activity.” As Rosner wrote: “Faith in the RCMP was so strong that it seemed preposterous to think that the organization could be deliberately involved in flagrant law breaking.”⁴⁵

Sawatsky’s story was so hot that no other media outlets tried to match or advance the story. Even the New Democratic Party refused to raise it in the House of Commons the day the story broke. But subsequent inquiries by the Québec government and Ottawa revealed more RCMP wrongdoing, including arson, break-in and theft.

Over the years, the Michener Award would validate media outlets that exposed structural failings of institutions and, in doing so, helped to change public policies and attitudes, tighten operational procedures and improve the lives of marginalized and voiceless people.⁴⁶ Journalists would embrace and adapt the latest technology, like cameras and data, to get to the truth.

Award in Jeopardy: Federation of Press Clubs falters

In the decades since those early awards, media organizations have come to applaud the Michener for its impact on the quality of journalism and society. In the early 1970s, though, it was an uphill climb. Outside of the Ottawa-Toronto axis, the award was an arriviste in the competitive field of journalism awards. Publishers and broadcasters still gravitated to established, high-profile national journalism awards such as the National Newspaper Awards, Canadian Women’s Press Club Memorial Awards and RTNDA broadcast awards.⁴⁷ Even regional awards appeared to have more sway. At the Federation’s annual meeting in Montreal in 1973, Bob Weber of the London Press Club spoke of the media’s keen interest in the Western Ontario newspaper awards, “But there is not all that interest in the Michener Awards.”⁴⁸ If the purpose of this award was to recognize and celebrate the best of journalism in the country, then it had to become better known in the industry. Acting on behalf of the Federation, Bill MacPherson and Fraser MacDougall embarked on a long and arduous road to increase the profile and reputation of the fledgling Michener Award in Québec and the regions.

When it came to the Michener, this industry ennui was reflected in the very organization responsible for the award — the Federation of Press Clubs. While delegates at the 1973 annual meeting of the Federation discussed adding more categories of awards and had suggestions for new sponsors — private industry, insurance companies, government and media companies — no one actually volunteered to do the leg work. Bill MacPherson, the chair of the Michener Award, read the room correctly when he advised caution. “We shouldn’t be beating the bushes for awards, but we should be ready to act if somebody comes to the Federation and suggests an award.”⁴⁹ He was not keen to add more awards to the roster. Neither were the members of the judging panel.

By May 1976, the judges, some of whom had now clocked four years of judging, wrote to express their “misgivings” about the Federation’s support for the award and concerns that the Michener Award is either “not effectively promoted or it is not being taken seriously by media management in the various media.”⁵⁰ Their letter complained that the Federation had not put enough effort into attracting Francophone, regional and small media — a problem that still haunts the Michener Awards. The judges noted the award was short on “both the number and calibre of meritorious public service it was expected to display.” They pointed to the number of entries for 1975: zero for weeklies, news agencies, radio or television networks, and magazines, and only one French-language entry from a TV station.

The judges claimed they knew of stories “of a calibre comparable to the better entries submitted this year” that were published and broadcast but not entered for a Michener Award. They urged member press clubs to designate “monitors” to identify possible Michener entries and suggested the Federation crowdsource to “enlist the co-operation of readers.”⁵¹ That message was repeated at the annual meeting in the fall when Bill MacPherson urged local clubs to “talk up” the awards.⁵² The growth and success of the award depended on it. However, other issues dominated the meeting. Delegates seemed more interested in grumbling about the Federation’s poor communications and lack of administrative support for member press clubs in cities across the country than in finding ways to promote the award.

There is no record of how many media outlets submitted stories for 1975, but the paucity of entries may have been why the list of finalists was short. The news release announced a tie for the Michener: the Montreal Gazette and the London Free Press. No runners-up, and no honourable mentions. Remarkably though, each of the two entries that shared the Michener Award that year was an outstanding example of the kind of unrelenting inquiry and initiative that the awards were intended to inspire. Both finalists addressed issues ripe for urgent attention back then and provided the impetus for actions that are still unfolding some fifty years later.

The London Free Press, a mid-sized daily, tied for the 1975 Michener for its five-part series about mercury poisoning in Indigenous lands of Grassy Narrows in northwestern Ontario. The Free Press revealed extensive mercury poisoning and health issues in the communities of Asubpeeschoseewagong (First Nation) and Wabaseemoong Independent Nations of One Man Lake, Swan Lake and Whitedog.

Reporter George Hutchinson’s investigation began as a follow-up story on the “Mercury Crisis of 1970” in the Sarnia area, south of Lake Huron. Five years earlier, Del Bell of the London Free Press had detailed the findings of Norvald Fimreite, a young graduate student at the University of Western Ontario, who found evidence of toxic mercury discharges from the Dow Chemical Chlor-Alkali plant in Sarnia. Since 1949 the effluent had seeped into the St. Clair River, Detroit River, Lake Ontario and Lake Erie and had contaminated fish.⁵³ The revelations ended a $1.2 million fishery for forty families in Lake St. Clair in southwestern Ontario.⁵⁴ As Hutchinson was to discover, Sarnia was just the tip of an industrial environmental disaster in Ontario. Some 1700 kilometres northwest of Sarnia, another environmental disaster had been ignored — mercury contamination of the land and waters of Grassy Narrows.

Hutchinson, the Queen’s Park provincial reporter, was on assignment following Ontario Liberal leader Robert Nixon. During a stop at a fishing lodge up north he landed a couple of pickerel and “had them quick frozen,” he said with a laugh.⁵⁵ Tests conducted at a University of Toronto lab found Hutchinson’s catch had “four to five times the acceptable level [of mercury] for human consumption.”⁵⁶ Effluent from Dryden Chemicals and Reid Paper Limited, a pulp and paper operation, had polluted the English-Wabigoon River system on Indigenous lands.

The Ontario government immediately banned guiding and commercial fishing, but the ban did not extend to eating the fish, the main food source for the Anishinaabe Nation. With the mercury in the food chain, people eating the toxic fish were slowly being poisoned.

As Hutchinson’s Michener Award-winning series showed, the devastation from the loss of guiding and fishing was more than economic and social. There was a serious health crisis — one that government officials were denying. Similar to Minamata, a small city on the southern tip of Japan where the release of toxic chemicals from an industrial plant had accumulated in fish, which were then eaten by residents, the first signs of mercury poisoning in northwestern Ontario appeared in the local cat population.

Now there is only one [cat]. “They all died,” explains Chief Andy Keewatin. The most recent was in March. The cat was seen convulsing, performing a ‘dance’ of death, racing in circles and leaping into the air. . . . The case was frighteningly reminiscent of the cat death a month earlier near the Whitedog Indian reserve, farther west. That cat, too, danced.⁵⁷

Tests on the cat’s carcass showed the mercury levels far exceeded the levels of cats in Minamata, Japan.

Hutchinson and photographer Dick Wallace travelled to Japan with representatives of the two First Nations to meet with a research team from Japan’s Minamata Disease Patients Alliance. Medical and scientific monitoring estimated that 90 per cent of residents in Grassy Narrows First Nation were experiencing disabling neurological symptoms from mercury poisoning. After the London Free Press stories, governments promised action, but like the situation in Japan, industry and government were slow to accept responsibility and make changes.

In 1976 when Hutchinson stepped forward in a low-key ceremony at Rideau Hall to accept the Michener Award, he found himself face-to-face with His and Her Excellencies Jules and Gabrielle Léger, “mindful that high-school dropouts aren’t meant to mingle with governors general.” Almost fifty years later, the memory remains clear: “They were most gracious. He was from my perspective at that time in life, very austere and fitted the position. She was engaging . . . a delight.”⁵⁸ Returning to his seat, Hutchinson handed the trophy to his publisher, Walter Blackburn, who “was absolutely thrilled and very possessive about it after that. And for years it sat on his desk. . . . It was a lovely sculpture,” Hutchinson recalled. Receiving the award at Rideau Hall was the validation the newspaper was seeking — a prestige payoff for the money and months invested in an exercise of public interest journalism.

Hutchinson and Wallace followed up with the book Grassy Narrows in 1977.⁵⁹ “It was an emotional experience because I couldn’t come up with answers,” Hutchinson said. “It struck me that the people of the North, both white and native, had difficulty dealing with the enormous pressures that are upon them regarding the environment. The white population is dependent on resource extraction. The native people are involved in resource protection. And there’s a tremendous clash of interests. It takes a great deal of political acumen to bridge those differences. It takes time, and it still hasn’t happened. It’s closer than it was.”⁶⁰

Change in Grassy Narrows has since come incrementally. In an article for the Toronto Star in April 2017, on the fortieth anniversary of the Grassy Narrows, Hutchinson’s post-mortem was grim. “If it wasn’t so tragic, you’d be excused for saying déjà vu all over again; Scientists flagging Minamata disease in the northern wilderness. Native protesters marching on Queen’s Park. Politicians feigning concern or denying culpability. Industrialists mute. The public wringing its hands.”⁶¹

The intensive media coverage of Grassy Narrows in the 1970s waned as journalists moved on to other stories. However, that initial coverage by the London Free Press and other media provided a foundation for the two First Nations communities in the region to organize and hold successive governments accountable to clean up the toxic mess and to financially compensate residents for their loss of livelihood and debilitating health from mercury poisoning.

It has been a fifty-year fight for recognition and compensation. In that time, the work of community activists has kept the issue in the media: court battles,⁶² hunger strikes,⁶³ sit-ins and rallies.⁶⁴ The results have been compensation for some residents, $85 million towards clean up⁶⁵ and almost $20 million to build and operate a specialized care home for people suffering from mercury poisoning.⁶⁶ The story of the Wabaseemoong Independent Nations and Grassy Narrows First Nation will never be over as long as the toxic mercury remains in the waterways. “It’s going to be in the sediment of that river system for a hundred years, and we’re only halfway through that,” Hutchinson said in 2022. “Now they are talking about remediation. Well, I am still waiting for science to explain how they’re going to do that. There are hundreds of square miles of water and sediment. How are they going to clean up is beyond me.”⁶⁷

As with many other Michener award-winning stories, the story of mercury poisoning of communities pointed to a bigger, deeper and more complex problem that could not be remedied by any series of news reports. In the case of Grassy Narrows, the London Free Press’s dogged reporting kept the issue on the front page, forced incremental change and gave the Indigenous community a platform and opportunities to continue to hold those in authority to account.

And of the other 1975 Michener Award winner? A Montreal Gazette series exposed abuse and inhumane conditions in detention centres for young women run by the Québec government. When Québec’s Ministry of Social Services twice turned down Gillian Cosgrove’s request to do interviews, she went undercover and took a job as an éducatrice in Maison Notre-Dame-de-Laval, a major detention centre in Montreal for girls between the ages of twelve and eighteen.

“I had this image of being a crusader for change. . . . I really wanted to effect change and I wanted to effect it for people who were helpless to do it for themselves,” she said in an interview.⁶⁸

Many of the girls had been taken from their homes because of abuse or neglect, and they needed protection. Others were kids who had run away or skipped school too many times. Suddenly, these girls found themselves living nose-to-nose with juvenile delinquents, psychiatric patients and special-needs youth. In the first installment of her Michener Award-winning series, Cosgrove wrote:

It was my fourth day working as an “educator” at Maison Notre Dame de Laval detention centre for juvenile girls, where I witnessed the plight of many of Québec’s estimated 40,000 children in substitute care. . . .

After 24 hours in “ice” a chastened Stephanie (not her real name) returned to the living unit upstairs and told me more about her experience in solitary confinement.

“I couldn’t stand it. I went crazy. I was screaming at them to let me out,” she said in a subdued tone, fidgeting with the hem on her skirt.

It was then the guards entered her cell, handcuffed her, and tied her on her back with leather straps.

“It’s mean to handcuff a kid,” she said. “And when they lie you down, you can’t move, you can’t itch, and you have to pee and shit in your pants and lie in it.”

Stephanie [age 14] is just four feet, 10 inches tall and barely 90 pounds.

. . .

“These girls have done nothing wrong,” a senior educator told me on my first day of work. “Most of them are protection cases, many of them runaways. They are not delinquents and should not be treated as such.” Then he added with a sardonic chuckle. “Most of us did more things wrong in our youth than these kids ever did.”⁶⁹

Cosgrove said she couldn’t believe this was happening in a provincial institution funded by taxpayers’ dollars. “This was Québec, it wasn’t the Québec of Duplessis, it wasn’t the dark ages.”⁷⁰

Her three-part exposé in the Montreal Gazette of harrowing abuse moved 45,000 people to sign a petition demanding reforms and an end to the mistreatment. Then Minister of Social Affairs, Claude Forget, promised to reduce the use of solitary confinement. On February 1, 1975, the government called a provincial inquiry into youth protection and detention services and appointed Manuel G. Batshaw, Directeur Général, Services Communautaires Juifs, a respected Montreal social worker, as chair. The eleven-volume Comité d’étude sur la réadaptation des enfants et adolescents placés en centre d’accueil (known as the Batshaw Commission report), was released on December 22 of the same year. It recommended special care for youth with developmental problems, improved treatment and programs and better-trained childcare workers. The report also recommended each child’s case be reviewed after six months in an institution.⁷¹

Cosgrove’s 1975 series shed some light on the closed world of Québec’s children and youth services. Those stories contributed to a process of change that included the introduction of the Youth Protection Act in 1979 and the closure of juvenile protection centres such as Marian Hall in Beaconsfield, a community west of Montreal. Cosgrove remembered the feeling. “I said, ‘Oh my God, I won the Michener Award, and I changed the law. Aren’t I wonderful?” She believed that “the kids are going to have love and guidance, not horrible punishment” and she said she “went on her merry way.”⁷² Cosgrove and the Montreal Gazette moved on to other stories, as media tend to do.

Forty years later, in 2019, a group of women, survivors from the Québec detention centre, “Marian Hall” on Elm Avenue in Beaconsfield, found Cosgrove on social media and invited her to join their private Facebook group. Cosgrove was a legend with the former residents. One woman told her, “We were in the hole, and we heard that this girl had snuck into an institution and you became our beacon of hope, you spoke for us. We didn’t have any voice. You were our voice,”⁷³ Cosgrove said. For those girls in detention it was evidence that even if nothing much had changed, someone cared. The abuse and solitary confinement continued long after the release of the Batshaw report, even after Marion Hall closed in 1979 and the girls moved to other facilities.

Cosgrove said these revelations “shattered” her confidence in the power of journalism to effect meaningful change. The law changed, but they didn’t demolish the cells or hire specialists. “So, I look back in sadness thinking that I had done something, but I really hadn’t,” Cosgrove said. “I should have gone back to the exact same cells and just done that proper follow-up,” not just rely on the assessment of experts.⁷⁴

Cosgrove is still trying to make it right, “so it doesn’t happen to another kid.” She appeared in a CBC the fifth estate 2019 documentary “The Forgotten Children of Marian Hall”⁷⁵ and is supporting the survivors in their class-action lawsuit seeking compensation from the Québec government.⁷⁶

Journalists want their stories to change the world. But change inches forward slowly. Problems persist. Tragedies happen. The Québec government has been forced to revisit the ongoing issues with its youth protection policy and practices. In October 2019, the government of Québec appointed yet another special commission to look into the rights of children and youth in protection following media coverage of the death of a neglected seven-year-old girl in Granby, southeast of Montreal, earlier that year.”⁷⁷ The Québec government has created a national director of youth protection to review youth protection services and the law. The Laurent Commission’s final report, released in May 2021, called for a major shift and sweeping changes to the child protection system.⁷⁸

Gillian Cosgrove’s Michener Award in 1975 brought the abuses to the public’s attention. It was also a spur for reporters elsewhere to look at living conditions for children in their government-run centres. Two years later, the Globe and Mail published a comprehensive look at Ontario’s child protection laws through the story of fifteen-year-old Michael. The series won the 1977 Michener Award for its concentrated campaign — seventy news stories and sixteen editorials — aimed at reforming child protection laws. The judges noted that coverage disclosed shortcomings in provincial and federal legislation. The series brought about proposed legislative changes and, in some jurisdictions, official inquiries.

In 1979, the Edmonton Journal received an honourable mention for its forty-five stories that showed how youth at Westfield, a provincially run centre, were locked in solitary confinement — small, poorly ventilated “thinking rooms” — as punishment, even for minor misdemeanours. The province’s social services department employees were ordered not to speak to reporter Wendy Koenig. The director of Westfield tried to prevent her from researching and writing the story. After publication, government staff filed libel charges against the newspaper. The Alberta deputy minister of social services even sent a letter to the publisher claiming that the series “amounted to character assassination of the worst sort.”⁷⁹ The Edmonton Journal and Koenig were vindicated in a report by Alberta’s Ombudsman, Dr. Randall Ivany, who credited the coverage for prompting the investigation. He recommended that provincial juvenile centres limit stays in solitary confinement rooms to no more than forty-five minutes.

Koenig kept digging into the story. The Edmonton Journal received the Michener Award the following year for her two-part series that exposed abuses in Alberta’s child welfare and foster care system. The “moving and deeply sensitive” account of the mistreatment of children at a provincial institution in Peace River, Alberta, resulted in its closure and an inquiry.⁸⁰ The other story focused on children placed in the home of a man with a history of violence and mental illness. This story triggered an investigation and resulted in better screening of foster parents and monitoring of children in foster homes.

Reporters investigating provincial and Indigenous child protection services across the country continue to find a “sad record of failure.”⁸¹ In 1996, Toronto Star reporters Kevin Donovan and Moira Welsh gathered data from the provincial coroner’s office that showed how children’s aid workers, doctors and other professionals failed to protect children between 1991-1995. Their findings pressured governments and organizations to assess and change their practices and won the Star a Michener Award.

The passing of the federal Young Offenders Act in 1982 aimed to shift the focus in provincial courts from punishment to rehabilitation, but reform is slow. Stories from two Michener finalists from Canada’s north in 2018 revealed ongoing abuses against children in facilities that were supposed to protect them. In the Yukon, a CBC North series documented continuing physical abuse and neglect of youth living in group homes. Research from APTN found that Indigenous youth are overrepresented in foster care and six times more likely to die by suicide than the non-Indigenous population.⁸²

In 2020, APTN won the Michener Award for its series “Death by Neglect,” an investigation led by Kenneth Jackson and Cullen Crozier into a First Nations child welfare system and the deaths by suicide of three sisters. The teens — Sasha Raven Bob, Shania Raven Bob and Arizona Raven Bob — had spent their lives in the care of the Weechi-it-te-win Family Services First Nations protection agency in northern Ontario. “There is no reason why Sasha Raven Bob [the last surviving sister] shouldn’t be alive today but if not for neglect by everyone who ever knew her,” said Jackson in his acceptance speech.⁸³ Crozier and Jackson’s search for answers and accountability uncovered a culture of silence and fear along with a trail of neglect that permeated Indigenous, provincial and federal child-protection agencies across the country.

The APTN coverage resulted in profound changes, said Pierre-Paul Noreau, president of the Michener Awards Foundation. “Within weeks of APTN’s broadcasts, several investigations were launched into individual cases; several families were reunited; new funding was announced for on-reserve child welfare; and a pandemic moratorium was imposed on Ontario youths aging out of care. And, while this humanitarian crisis continues unabated, it is this kind of wide-ranging impact that makes this series undeniably Michener-worthy.”⁸⁴

Stories like these revealed the immense changes in the journalism industry, which was increasingly pursuing hard-hitting investigative stories that pushed the boundaries of reporting. The Micheners recognized these stories, but their profile in the industry was still low enough that many worthy local or regional stories were not submitted for awards. As a result, big and medium-sized media outlets dominated the nominations — mostly newspapers, and mostly from southern Ontario. In the first ten years, the award’s champion, Bill MacPherson, would work diligently to make the Michener Award more inclusive and national. But to ensure that more media outlets — big and small — knew of and submitted their best work to the Micheners, the awards needed something that would make people notice them.

The Missing Ingredient

The Michener Award rewarded media organizations for their journalism that instigated change. Recognition of public interest reporting of this quality and impact was, of course, precisely the intention of the Michener Awards from the beginning. The challenge for MacPherson and Chief Judge Fraser MacDougall was how to get buy-in from Canadian publishers and broadcasters. They needed convincing that the Michener Award was not a flash in the pan. It should be considered the big prize, the one all media outlets should aspire to win. The support of the governor general and the ceremony at Rideau Hall were crucial to building the status of the award.

The judges were satisfied with the quality of the submissions but not with the number of entries. Was it that too few journalism organizations cared — or dared — to do the kind of stories the Micheners wanted? Or was the trouble closer to home? The Federation of Press Clubs of Canada was having trouble engaging its members — journalists affiliated with local press clubs in cities across Canada. In 1974, the Federation changed its name to Press Club Canada to give the disparate press clubs a sense of united purpose. The name change had little effect. When delegates met in Saint John, New Brunswick, two years later for its ninth annual meeting, Bill MacPherson repeated the grave misgivings of the judging panel about the organization’s support for the award. As before, he appealed to local press clubs and the regional vice presidents to encourage entries.⁸⁵

Delegates showed little enthusiasm for his appeals and suggestions to help the Michener Award. Instead, they complained that some of the press clubs had not received notice of the entry deadline for the Michener Award. Once again, Press Club Canada delegated MacPherson and chief judge Fraser MacDougall to keep the show on the road. It was becoming clear that if the Michener Award was to survive, it would be up to them, with help from Rideau Hall.

With little support from the organization, the four members of the judging panel made a few changes. In addition to honourable mentions, in 1979, they introduced a runner-up category, the Award of Merit “with the hope of stimulating wider interest in the award,” chief judge Fraser MacDougall explained in his report to the board of Press Club Canada.⁸⁶ Changes of some sort were essential to stimulate interest. That year the panel received twenty-six entries — the highest in its history. However, all but four came from newspapers. Three others were from radio, and one was from a magazine. Only one entry was French and two came from community newspapers. Evidently, the Michener Award was typecast as a newspaper award even though in the first nine years broadcasters received one-third of all commendations and won three Michener Awards.

MacPherson was increasingly worried that Press Club Canada was splintering and had reverted to city-based social clubs for journalists to grab lunch or get a beer after work. He sensed that the umbrella group had lost the drive to build the institutional structure necessary to support a professional award of the calibre of the Michener Award. In 1979, MacPherson wrote to W. R. Anderson, president of Press Club Canada: “The difficulties I, as chairman of the award, have confronted, have been increasing by the year to the point that I feel they are overwhelming.” He went on to say these difficulties were connected to “the very great problem involved in keeping the Press Club Canada itself alive and vigorous. . . . Now, it seems to me, Press Club Canada is either dying or dead, not having had a board meeting since 1977,” the Club’s tenth anniversary. He noted that members were not submitting their dues and “this has created problems periodically in keeping the Michener Award project afloat.”⁸⁷ Money was so tight that MacPherson was worried about finding $200 for the trophy and expenses of judging, printing and postage.

It is not known how Anderson responded to MacPherson. But, at the awards ceremony later that year, MacPherson announced with no fanfare: “The Federation, later renamed Press Club Canada, has unfortunately fallen into some disarray in recent times, but the task of administering the Michener Award has been taken up gladly by the National Press Club of Canada.” Some rescue! The awards found a new home with the Ottawa Press Club in name only. In practice, MacPherson and his chief judge were on their own. It was an increasingly unsustainable model. But that night was the tenth anniversary of the awards, and no one was dwelling on the problems. Hope for the future of the awards was at hand. There was a new governor general who would play an important role in giving the Michener Awards the boost it needed to gain wider recognition in the industry.

Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau likely wanted to shake up Rideau Hall when he recommended the appointment of Edward Schreyer as Canada’s twenty-second governor general in 1979 to succeed Jules Léger. Schreyer was forty-three years old and the youngest governor general since Lord Lorne, the Duke of Argyll, appointed at thirty-three years old in 1878.⁸⁸ A mere three years earlier, Schreyer had made his first visit to Rideau Hall to receive the Governor General’s Vanier Award as an outstanding Young Canadian of the Year.⁸⁹ Schreyer’s list of achievements was long. He had four academic degrees, taught international relations, and at twenty-two, had become the youngest MLA elected to the Manitoba Legislature. Later, he was elected federally and, in 1969, he returned home to win the provincial NDP leadership contest and form the first NDP provincial government in Canada.⁹⁰

Despite their divergent political roots — Michener, the Conservative, and Schreyer, the NDP — the two men formed a deep friendship. After taking office, Ed and Lily Schreyer welcomed the Micheners as guests to Rideau Hall for every Michener ceremony. The past and present governors general shared a conviction that they could use their non-partisan position to recognize and celebrate journalism at the highest level.⁹¹ In an interview, Schreyer said, “I recognized along with him [Roland Michener] the importance in a democracy of a free press. . . . The fact that the awards are held to recognize and commend those journalists each year who have shown in their work that they have achieved a high standard of journalism.”⁹² Schreyer and Michener came from a generation that believed that independent media were necessary for a healthy democracy. Their support of the Michener Award was one way they could contribute.

It was in this light that Schreyer and his wife, Lily, transformed the awards ceremony from what had been a perfunctory afternoon stand-up event into a gala evening, with music, a sit-down dinner with wine and dancing. It was a night to remember. Journalists in evening gowns and black tie arrived at Rideau Hall on that clear, cool Saturday evening in November 1979. They were greeted by the soft music of the Canadian Forces central band’s group Serenade of Strings at a reception in the long gallery with its blue and white Chinese carpets.

Their Excellencies Governor General Edward Schreyer and Lily Schreyer welcomed them. After the formalities of the receiving line, everyone moved into the ballroom with its neoclassical crystal chandelier and hand-carved columns for a four-course sit-down dinner. The menu was first class: “Le Ramequin en gelée à l’Indienne, le vol au vent de crustaces à la crème, Le Gigot d’Agneau rôti <Les Baux>, Le riz du Manitoba, Les Zuchettes aux fines herbes, L’orange Norvégienne, les petits fours served with a choice of wines, Sylvaner, Château Bertin St. Juline and champagne.”⁹³

This was an awards night like no other before — one that appropriately recognized media organizations for their journalism in the public interest. Besides the introduction of runners-up, it was the first year that the winner of the Michener Awards had not been announced in advance, which added to the excitement of the evening.

In his opening speech, Bill MacPherson acknowledged the new format and its “overtones of the Academy Awards.” He went on to say that “as one of the founding fathers, as it were, I feel like sort of the Gregory Peck of the Michener Awards.”⁹⁴

Over coffee and liqueurs, in true Academy Award style, J. J. Macdonell, the Auditor General of Canada, brought the sealed envelope with the name of the 1978 Michener Award winner and runners-up to the dais. MacPherson ripped open the envelope to announce the winner: the Kitchener-Waterloo Record for its series on unsanitary conditions in meat plants that were putting the lives of Canadians at risk. Farm reporter Jim Romahn was part of a new breed of journalists pushing for public access to government documents and data to add depth and context to their reporting.

The winner, it was true, had been selected from the disturbingly small intake of just nineteen entries that year, but the series had a huge impact. Romahn’s stories resulted in changes to meat-processing inspections across the country. His investigation for the Kitchener-Waterloo Record into the Burns Ltd. plant in Kitchener, Ontario, began in 1975 after CBC-TV’s Marketplace reported the cold cuts produced in the Kitchener meat plant had the highest bacteria counts in the country.

His big break came from a tip. “Not too long after that, one of the guys in the back shop [at the Record] was drinking at the Polish legion after work and he heard these guys who work for Burns Meats talking about American inspectors going through the plant and cutting off exports and I thought ah ha, I know what that is.”⁹⁵ When Canada refused to release any information, Romahn went to Washington. Using the U.S. Freedom of Information law, he received 340 pages of inspection reports on the Kitchener and other Canadian meat processing plants. They showed that in 1975 the U.S. Department of Agriculture had condemned not just the Burns plant, but twenty-five other Canadian meat-packing plants.

Romahn’s stories included a shocking list of safety and health violations in Canadian meat-packing plants:

Carcasses and vats of meat are contaminated; Sick animals and diseased meat could slip through lax inspection procedures before and after slaughter; Equipment is dirty and contaminated; Buildings are decrepit; Effluent is being discharged directly into a river; Toilet facilities in a wood plant are on a second story and urine could leak into meat-processing areas . . . ⁹⁶

The processing plants were ordered to close and to fix the problems before they could regain their right to export to the U.S.

Romahn kept pounding away at the issue, and his stories in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record series created a huge sensation. They were bad for business. “The labour union was really upset, the public was upset, and the city council passed a motion of censure against the Record,” said Romahn. “We never were threatened with a lawsuit because the company knew that what we wrote was accurate, true.”⁹⁷ There was more than anger and censure.

At one point a source in the U.S. Agriculture Department called Romahn to say, “Someone’s on your tail.” Under U.S. Freedom of Information regulations, he discovered it was Burns Security and he tracked down the guy. When Romahn called, the guy said, “Jim you’re the most boring person. We were looking for dirt to get you off the case and there’s just nothing there. I said, who hired you? He said, I can’t tell you, and he asked, how did you find out? I said, I can’t tell you,”⁹⁸ Romahn recalled with a laugh.

But then the threats became dangerous. In the middle of the contaminated meat plant series, Romahn recalled the terrible day when his wife, Barbara, picked up the phone to hear a man’s voice. “The guy said, your husband either comes off those stories or we will rape your daughters, who were three and five years old at the time. She [Barbara Romahn] was terrified and I kept saying to her, look, they’re just trying to frighten you. If they’re intending to do that, they would certainly not warn you.”⁹⁹ Romahn never found out who made that hate call. He swallowed his fear and pursued the story until he got action. While this was shocking at the time, by the 2020s, journalists would experience harassment and threats both on the job and online on a daily basis.

Investigative journalism is not for the timid. It requires this kind of courage and persistence to uncover and reveal the truth that leads to change in society. When Romahn stood at the podium at the Michener Awards ceremony in November 1979, he used his speech to criticize the lack of freedom of information laws in Canada and how that hampered his investigation. “The government had a copy of the report in Ottawa, but they wouldn’t release it,” he told the hundred people gathered at Rideau Hall for the black-tie gala.¹⁰⁰ At that time Nova Scotia was the only province in Canada with Freedom of Information legislation; it would be another four years before Canada’s Access to Information Act would become law in 1983.¹⁰¹ It had been a long fight — first championed in 1965 by NDP MP Barry Mather, a former journalist and secretary-treasurer of the Federation of Press Clubs Canada, who had unsuccessfully introduced the Administrative Disclosure Bill, a private members bill, at every session of Parliament until he retired in 1974.

In 1979, the Kitchener-Waterloo Record series was credited with initiating the reorganization of the entire Canadian meat inspection system.¹⁰² Nearly five decades later, Romahn isn’t so sure. “The second in command of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said, ‘We were like an ostrich with our head stuck in the sand until you came and gave us a swift kick in the butt.’ Well, that made a story, that made the award, but in practice, I don’t think it changed. So they talk a good line, but they just carry on.”¹⁰³ He says the promised reforms never materialized.

Romahn would win a second Michener Award in 1983 for revealing quality control problems in animal feed and fertilizer — a story he just will not let drop. Romahn still is writing about the fertilizer industry and how the lack of independent quality control is hurting farmers. “Of course, you always hope that you bring transformation. My hope was that the meat packing industry would improve, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency would improve, and the fertilizer and seeds [quality control], these things would improve. You always hold hope. You know, if I hadn’t done it, it probably would’ve gotten worse. But the main thing I think is that the public gains an insight. They learn something they didn’t know before about the way the system is failing them or needs to be reformed or fixed or whatever.”¹⁰⁴

The Kitchener-Waterloo Record would go on to win two more Michener Awards, proving that size is no barrier to meritorious public service journalism. Its second Michener was in 1981 for exposing a land swindle in which more than a thousand Canadian, American and European investors lost millions of dollars. The stories resulted in new regulations and the first-ever conviction and jail term under the Securities Act in Canada. In 2001, the Record received a Michener Award for its stories about the misuse of public funds in municipal leasing financing.

For all its back-room limitations, the very existence of the Michener Award was having the intended effect. The Kitchener-Waterloo Record was the poster child for improvement. Just a dozen years earlier, Senator Keith Davey had lambasted the daily and five other local media in Maclean’s magazine for their “paternalistic” decision in 1971 to withhold a story involving a multimillion-dollar development plan until council approved it. Davey wrote that the publications “have damaged not only the public they serve but Canada’s press as well.”¹⁰⁵

In May 1985, the assistant publisher of the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, K. A. (Sandy) Baird, wrote to chief judge Fraser MacDougall a letter of thanks. “Members of the public as consumers of information benefit because the Michener competition prompts the media to strive for improvement, and it helps the wider public understand how excellence in the media benefits society. . . . We like to think that our newspaper has improved because of our participation in the Michener competition. It has encouraged newsroom staffers to set their sights and standards higher.”¹⁰⁶ The Micheners had been established exactly for this reason — to encourage media organizations to invest in journalism that exposed injustices and held power to account in stories that resulted in change for the better. As the award’s reputation grew, media organizations like the Kitchener-Waterloo Record were encouraged to up their game.

Young, ambitious reporters were no longer content to follow in the footsteps of their predecessors — many of whom had been described in the Davey report as mediocre, boosterish and content to cover the Rotary Club or chase fire trucks. With the energy and enthusiasm of the 1970s inspiring them, a new generation of journalists embraced their public watchdog role. In addition to larger organizations, the enterprising journalists found a home reporting in smaller outlets such as the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, the London Free Press, and The Scotian Journalist. They embraced new technology such as hidden cameras, pushed for freedom of information laws, and went undercover to bring to light dysfunctional systems, institutional wrongdoings, and injustices among marginalized groups. Their reporting spurred institutional and policy changes. That in itself brings professional satisfaction, but the Michener Award was then as it is now the proverbial pot of gold validating the work of reporters and the media organizations that support them. And what better way to do that than with the endorsement of the governor general at a gala ceremony at Rideau Hall? Ed Schreyer’s timely intervention boosted the award at a critical point for its survival.