Over time I will be writing about things that obsess me. Stories out there I just can’t let go of. Great stories that, as far as I know are not being covered at all by a media that seems to have lost its cojones.
I will be outspoken and entertaining and truth-seeking.
1) Who Killed The Journal.
CBC TV’s “The Journal” is regarded by many as the best current affairs journalism in the history of Canadian Broadcasting. However after ten years it was unceremoniously cancelled. And the story ion who did it and why has never been told. An odd thing for one of the most historically important turning points in the history of a supposedly open and transparent culture.
It’s a devil’s brew, and what I have learned unsurprisingly , the people who were involved want it silenced. Great skullduggery, backstabbing, and political nastiness. Would make a great TV series.
2) Fatal Clash.
Last January a dear colleague of mine from the 1980’s CBC Radio Sunday Morning, Michael Finlay was attacked on the Danforth by masked man in a Devil’s cloak and subsequently died.
The man who attacked him Robert Robin CropEaredWold has agreed to co-operate fully, telling
his incredible backstory of Blood Loyalties, crime sprees and the fatal clash of that day.
By paralleling their lives much is revealed about the
state of contemporary First Nations/ Settler relationships, and the unique judicial system in Canada which treats first nations criminals differently than any others.
A dramatic, fascinating and tragic tale of a Canada broadly neglected.
3) What happened to Doctor Barry?
Years ago working late at night at The Journal, I took a collect call from a military doctor in a shopping mall in Quebec City.
That call unleashed a series of documentaries about the murder of a Somali boy by Canadian Airborne soldiers in Somalia, the closing down of the Canadian Airborne Regiment and the biggest scandal in Canadian military history.
A tortured federal inquiry into what happened was shut down by Prime Minister Chretien. So many lawyers were charging the government 1500.00 dollars plus a day, some representing clients with only a tenuous link to the turture and murder of Shidane Arone, The inquiry cost 25 million dollars.
At the end of a remote rural road in Northern Ontario, cut off from the world, a defrocked Barry Armstrong licks his wounds. What happened to him is mind-boggling and would also, in the right hands, make a tv series that would probably be too hot for any Canadian network, stricken as they are with a lingering attack of not rocking any boats.
4) The Curse of the Ram:
The Dodge Ram is one of the most successful automobiles in American history. Its unabashed about its appeal to aggressive machismo. Every year 5-thousand Rams gather for their annual brouhaha.
Yet the Ram is one of the most polluting vehicles on the road, one of the most crash-prone vehicles on the road, and one of the biggest gas guzzlers.
It’s the Bad Boy of North American trucks.
After I was nearly wiped out by a Ram driver going 170 kmh, I decide track down the driver. To examine the Ram driver archetype and fossil fuel loving, right wing mania that seizes so many of them.
A dark comic tale of defiance in the name of male belligerence.