This is the season for looking forward to the year ahead, but also for reflecting on the 12 months that have just passed.
This holiday season, Gazette staff writers will share their memories from the past year. Members of the newsroom have been asked to write a short piece about something memorable that happened to them during the course of their professional pursuits in 2011, whether it be their favourite story to cover, a memorable interview or a most memorable moment.
Below are three such reflections. The first instalment was published on Dec. 24 and the last will appear on Dec. 31.
Dateline: January 29, 2011.
I stumble out of my car at Edmonton's Gallagher Park to cover the 37th annual Great Northern Concrete Toboggan Race — an age-old event where engineers from across the nation compete to see who can build the fastest sled out of solid rock. (Yes, it's as awesome as it sounds.) I'm here to cover the University of Alberta team.
It's 20 below and blowing snow. I'm late, angry, and lugging 20 pounds of equipment. I trudge up the hill, stumbling and swearing due to the ice. A familiar-looking concrete-and-metal sledge whizzes past. Was that the U of A team? Yes. Copious expletives. Wild spray with the camera in their direction. Back down the hill.
I get to the bottom. What's with the film crew? Wait, is that comedian Rick Mercer of the Mercer Report? Was he in the sledge? Yes. I got shots of him in the sledge screaming? Yes!
There follow many hours of tomfoolery. I see trained engineers dressed as cows, ghosts and Sherlock Holmes. I hear triumphant cheers as one-tonne sleds roar across the finish line at almost 70 kilometres an hour, and shocked silence as one of them flips catastrophically, sending two riders to hospital. It's science. It's stupid. It's fun.
Team Pac-Man gets to the starting line. I'm shooting them from the bottom of the hill, from well behind the hay-bale safety barrier. The flat, 300-pound concrete racer picks up impressive speed as it comes down the hill. Are they headed right for me? Yes! Awesome!
Gosh, they're moving quickly. They'll stop at the hay bales, yes?
No.
Boom! Dust and debris fly as they blow through the barricade like it's not there. Expletives spill from my mouth as I scamper aside and the sled blasts past with a whoosh. They miss me by about a metre.
Did I get the shots? Yes. Did the near-hit get on Mercer's show? Yes. (You can see the clip by clicking on The Rick Mercer Report section at www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows. Go to ‘season 8, episode 14.' At about six minutes, 10 seconds into that episode, look for the distant figure by the bales at the bottom of the hill who quickly backpedals to the left of the screen.)
Was it worth it? Heck yes.
My most memorable professional moment of 2011 came just after our rival paper Saint City News ceased its operations on June 24.
At the time I was covering city hall for the Gazette, which meant that every Monday at 3 p.m. I'd set up my laptop in the gallery overlooking council chambers, then spend the next several hours monitoring the proceedings in order to comb out bits of meaningful news for our readers.
I started covering city hall in the fall of 2010 and the above routine had always included the presence of Saint City News reporter Ian Kucerak. But when I arrived for the June 27 meeting I found myself all alone up in the press box.
People might assume that, because we worked for rival newspapers, there would be friction between us rival reporters. That wasn't the case with Ian and me. We were on friendly terms and sometimes exchanged eye rolls or pained expressions during particularly groansome stretches of council debate. What remained unspoken between us was the understanding that we were out to crush each other like bugs … but only with our stories. It reminded me of the relationship between the Looney Tunes cartoon characters Sam Sheepdog and Ralph E. Wolf — professional rivals while on duty but buddy-buddy after quitting time.
At any rate, even though I was the last guy standing in a town that had just gone from having two city hall reporters to one, I didn't feel victorious. Rather, I felt a sense of loss. Gone was the guy who pushed me to do my best, my comfortable leaning post.
Furthermore, I suddenly realized that, unless people were sadistic enough to watch council meetings in person or on Shaw cable, their knowledge of city decisions would be whatever I tapped out on my keyboard. Gulp. I felt a return of the nervousness I used to feel when I was a new reporter covering an important story.
That feeling lasted throughout that June 27 meeting and the next day while I was writing up my stories for our Wednesday paper. Over the coming weeks, the feeling gradually waned as I settled in to the new normal, but that initial double-whammy of loss and nervousness remains my most memorable moment of 2011.
There are many stories that have a deep personal impact on me for one reason or another. I've written about people just turning 100 years old and I've written about the young who are fighting difficult battles with their health. A large part of what makes this job so rewarding is when I get to talk about things that can make a world-changing difference in people's lives.
You can't change how long you get to live and I believe you shouldn't feel guilty if you had something bad happen to you outside of your control. Every now and then, something horrible happens to every one of us. The most important thing is how you respond.
That's why it was so important for me to talk to Lynne Rosychuk of Morinville. Two years ago her daughter, Jessica Martel, was killed by her common-law husband. Domestic violence is a major problem and it keeps growing. We live in a complex world with a lot of stressors and tough, emotional situations that don't always have clear solutions. The economy is a problem. Relationships are tricky. Some people are natural-born bullies. We all need to learn to just take a breath and not take our frustrations out on other people.
Rosychuk broke her two-year media moratorium to talk with me about what happened to Jessica and how the mother of two wanted to get out. She even had a plan, something the family helped her with. This is exactly what all the experts say you should do but even that didn't work.
So the system is imperfect. Even the fine people at SAIF (Stop Abuse in Families) have been stymied in their efforts to bring a women's shelter here, and the brick wall was set up by the Alberta Council of Women's Shelters who wouldn't even answer SAIF's calls.
Rosychuk now has to raise her two grandchildren. No one has the solution, but at least she is doing what she can to keep the conversation going on something that actually matters. I was very proud to help her do that.
