(Long read) It was the summer of 1965. I just turned 15. That August, I first encountered Frank Herbert’s Dune as I browsed the paperback racks in a small independent pharmacy on Toronto’s Yonge Street, north of Lawrence Ave, close to the old Glen Echo trolley bus loop (I can’t remember the exact spot).I still […]
It’s early in the season for the new anchor of the storied CBS Evening News, but with three regular broadcasts, Tony Dokoupil has fouled out every night. That doesn’t look good for the third-place network news show. Breaking news can always disrupt a carefully planned remote newscast that is out of the studio and on […]
So who is this Bari Weiss, the new editor-in-chief of CBS News? She was a critic of cancel culture who is now a leading advocate of cancel culture from the right. In one of her founding columns in her Free Press blog, “The New Founders America Needs” from a 2022 address at the “conservative” University […]
On Tuesday, November 11, 1975, I was just a few months into my first reporting job, mostly as the police reporter, on the Sudbury (Ontario) Star. That day would unexpectedly provide me with my first news “scoop,” a UFO story that would eventually be picked up across North America, first by the wire services and […]
(long read) When US President Donald Trump is not demanding that Canada become “the 51st state” he muses about redrawing a border, a border that is defined by treaties dating back to 1783. In mid-March Trump, in a media scrum outside the White House, talked about redrawing the border. In Trump’s derailed train of […]
Rex Murphy, one of Canada’s best known, loved and hated TV commentators and columnists has died at 77. I have mixed feelings about his passing. I was Rex Murphy’s online editor from 1998 to 2003 when I was web producer for CBC’s The National. In those days his writing was superb and he had incitive […]
UPDATE THREE 1531 Pacific Time May 15, 2023 The UK ADHD Foundation has issued a statement Response to BBC Panorama “Private ADHD Clinics Exposed” As I suspected, Panorama failed to reach out the ADHD community groups in the UK. This is a major failure of journalistic ethics: Whilst we welcome responsible and informed television […]
Masthead for Field in March 1908 In May, 1908, 114 years ago, two presumably rich, presumably British, hunters came to Kitamaat Village, hired two Haisla guides named “Frank” and “David” and went bear hunting in the Kitlope, Giltoyees and up the Kemano River. One of the two hunters, named John H. Wrigley, would later write […]
On Sunday, March 16, 2014, the lead item on CBS Sunday Morning was about how the trauma of war is often passed on to the children of veterans. The item concentrates on the current crisis with U.S. veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan and also touches on Vietnam through the story of Christal Presley who took […]
Back in the 1980s when I first embarked on historical investigations, the US State Department had its own analog, paper-based Wiki that covered almost every diplomatic dispatch going back centuries, millions of three by five inch index cards. And each told a story. It was amazing to go through those old cards to find what […]