From the National Post:

Dead at 68: Christie Blatchford was a tenacious voice for victims, a thorn to the smugly comfortable

She'd been off air for several months at CFRB, but the station recently announced she was on the mend and would be returning "soon." Obviously, that was not to be. One of the few who worked for all the Toronto dailies.

The station ran a full pre-produced John Moore obit on their 8:30 AM news Wednesday, so they knew this was coming. That could not have been an easy piece to voice.   

I’ve been a fan of Christie since our days at Ryerson. She Was a fire cracker even back then. She will be missed

Not sure what the funeral or memorial plans are, but from the stories coming out on Wednesday, those should be some eulogies!

I was at Mark Dailey's funeral a number of years ago. Some of the stories were amazing, including my favourite that the cops would be sure to say "inform Inspector #2" over the radio, a coded message that Mark be summoned to a scene before any of the other reporters got word of a murder or a police-involved event. Never knew about that, but that's how he got a number of exclusives over the years and the amount of respect they had for him. And of course, his nickname was "The Inspector." 

I can only imagine the stories about the hard drinking, tough talking, yet soft hearted Blatchford, who sometimes referred to herself as a "broad." Those tales will be worth the price of (the free) admission. If they have a public ceremony, I would think it will attract quite a crowd. 

6079 Smith W wrote:

6079 Smith W wrote:

RadioActive wrote:

From the National Post:

Dead at 68: Christie Blatchford was a tenacious voice for victims, a thorn to the smugly comfortable

She'd been off air for several months at CFRB, but the station recently announced she was on the mend and would be returning "soon." Obviously, that was not to be. One of the few who worked for all the Toronto dailies.

The station ran a full pre-produced John Moore obit on their 8:30 AM news Wednesday, so they knew this was coming. That could not have been an easy piece to voice.   

Moore was in tears when they went back live from the taped obit. Joined shortly by a similarly choked-up Jim Richards.

Gonna be a lot of tears on Canada's First Rogers Batteryless today

The Showgram just started, and Jim Richards, no stranger to getting weepy on air, is barely holding it together.

Now its Ryan Doyle's turn to choke up. He just announced they are putting a seat at the table for her at this afternoon's round table.

A real reporter for sure, arguably the best in Canada. Blatchford's reporting during the Jian Ghomeshi trial was superb.

I never met Blatch but I sure feel like like I knew her personally. My condolences to The Boy and everyone who loved her. This boy is sad today at her passing. 

paterson1 wrote:

Christie Blatchford sold a lot of newspapers over the years for The Sun, Star, Post and Globe. At her peak she was appointment reading when covering major crime trials, and she would write like nobody else. No nonsense, all business, clear thinking, always personal and never played favourites that was her style.    Blatchford was likely the only print journalist who had worked for all four Toronto dailies at some point.  Her sometimes friend and partner in crime Rosie DiManno in the Star today said it best, calling Christie Blatchford the best damn journalist in the country. 

When I think of Toronto journalists, I think of two - Christie & Rosie.  Two no-nonsense "tough broads" who are classic reporters who can write on any subject, any event.   They're somewhat relics of a time gone by and I mean that in a good way.

RIP Christie.

It's not quite accurate or fair to say Christie Blatchford was, "by the end of her career, one of the only journalists left in the country, in that she relentlessly pursued the story and not her agenda or the angle."

Clearly, she was an incredibly dogged and hard-working reporter, columnist and commentator. She certainly followed her instincts long after the trail ran dry. And she persisted in committed fashion with a wide variety of topic areas, from sports to crime to politics to aboriginal issues.

But Christie is hardly one of the few who have done this or are doing this. I will always wish for more investigative and in-depth journalism than we happen to have at any given moment. But she has good company at Canada's various daily newspapers, both large and small, and at current and past broadcast programs like W5, the Current, Marketplace and Fifth Estate (as well as some radio and TV newscasts). When I worked at a couple of the smaller dailies, it amazed me that amongst all the routine daily reporting my colleagues produced quite a few gems that took considerable effort. Before the advent of the internet, we actually sent reporters to other locales to check out things like company track records there, or the performance of waste management systems. Not every one of my colleagues lived and breathed journalism - lazy sods are found in every line of work - but quite a few did. I have also participated in a couple of journalism associations that have long offered extensive professional development, worked with journalists to hone government information access requests, and promoted a plethora of investigative and reportorial skills and methodology development.

Furthermore, to say Christie operated without an agenda is hardly fair even to her. It's a significant undertaking to operate truly objectively. At the very least our reporting is informed by what we know, what we perceive, our life experiences, and so on. Some try very hard to keep their views in check. But Christie quite often took sides, whether with a faction of society or from a moral perspective. In fact, that's something that very much made her the particular journalist being remembered here. Moreover, much of the work Christie did was explicitly as a columnist and a commentator. Her "agenda" was very much out in the open, evident for all to see. Some agreed with her; others didn't; and in some cases feelings were mixed and nuanced - some agreement, some disagreement. I often liked the way she cut through prevailing political correctnesses even when I felt she didn't portray the overall issue as I happened to see it.

Let's remember a tough-talking firecracker of a broad (her word) who committed journalism in arguably somewhat of an old-fashioned, hard-edged way. But let's not recast her into what she clearly wasn't.
 

@ Saul and 6079 Smith ...

Two excellent posts. Bravo. And thank you.

Chrisphen wrote:

Posted without further comment.

THANK YOU.

Finally one person willing to speak the truth. 

She made a career providing a voice to the unafflicted.  How noble.

Dale Patterson wrote:

Saw this in the Sun's Letter To The Editor section:

[size=100][size=125]BLATCHFORD WAS ALL CLASS[/size][/size]

Way back when I was a Toronto Police officer, I was off-duty trying to buy two tickets to a Canada Cup hockey game that was being played at Copps Coliseum in Hamilton. All the scalpers took one look at me and my brush cut and refused to deal with me fearing that I was working undercover. I spotted Christie Blatchford in the crowd and explained my dilemma. I had never met her before. She laughed and said “stay right here and leave it with me.” Five minutes later she returned with two tickets. When I asked her how much I owed her, she waved her hand and said, “Enjoy the game.” Class, pure class.

Tom Newell

Niagara Falls

Maybe I'm mising something here. It's late. But if this is meant to convey respect for her, how?