My mother has always told me that I should do whatever possible to be a voice for the disabled community. At one of my lowest points on my journey to self-acceptance, she made me attend a leadership conference with the hope of building my confidence. While there, I reconnected with my childhood friend Chantelle Fogarty-Griswald. Chantelle would love to be a voice for people with disabilities, but the speech delay caused by her type of cerebral palsy (CP) makes this challenging. My CP doesn’t affect my voice, but I’ve never been one for public speaking. Instead, I decided I would write. In journalism school, professors advised us to write what we know. And throughout my time at Ryerson I’ve taken the opportunity to write multiple stories about what I know best: disability.

It’s difficult for stories about minorities, such as those focusing on people with disabilities, to be heard in the daily news cycle. When stories are published, these people are often depicted inaccurately. This becomes detrimental when you consider the power journalism has to inspire understanding and change. But recently, there’s been progress. Journalists at major Canadian newspapers such as The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star are becoming increasingly intrigued by disability-related stories and are being conscious of how they’re telling them.

Language is crucial for the disabled community. “The words cripple and crippled are offensive to the disabled and also too vague to be useful,” states the ninth and latest edition of The Globe and Mail Style Book. “If we must use a vague term, make it disabled.” As good as this is, it’s ironic because the guide also cautions against such generalizations such as “the disabled” or “the deaf.”

Toronto Star public editor, Kathy English, said in an email that the latest Star style guide, last researched and updated in 2010, encourages the idea that “a person is an individual first” and should not be reduced to just their disability. These ideals are good to know, but Sylvia Stead, public editor at the Globe, summed it up best in an email: “Ideally, word usage should be based on knowledge of the subject and also asking the person being interviewed how they would want to be described,” she wrote. “It’s important to stay current in terms of language usage, but also to listen to the individual.”

This is something that Tavia Grant aimed to do while working on a recent feature for the Globe’s Report on Business about the employability of those with disabilities. The piece was originally intended to be a short weekday feature after she attended the February 11 Rethinking Disability Conference hosted by the Ontario Disability Employment Network. “But I happen to have a great editor that thought, first of all, that it was a business story and gave it that prominence,” Grant says. Since she’s not a health or social issues reporter, she did her research and took her language cues from her sources. She admits it was a learning curve and although she still may have made a few mistakes, she was quite mindful of her work and tried to build awareness without perpetuating stereotypes.

Andrea Gordon, a Life reporter at the Star, often writes about developmental disabilities. She says that she sort of fell in to the beat over the years as one story about children’s mental health led to another. Since then, she has developed a passion for the bringing these stories to light. “I guess what I’m attempting to do is to provide a voice and present a perspective that maybe that isn’t often heard.” Gordon says the best way to accomplish this is to let the source’s voice drive the story. But she also tries to be mindful of language. “People get upset when they see too much use of the phrase ‘autistic child,’ ‘autistic person,’ versus a ‘person with autism;’ that kind of language people are really sensitive to,” she explains. “So you try to be respectful of that but, at the same time, there are only so many words, there are decks and headlines, and sometimes people take shortcuts and it’s out of my control.”

One of the challenges for journalists writing about a developmental disability—particularly with people who are nonverbal or unable to communicate with the written word—is the reliance on parents or caregivers. Though most parents know their child best “you still have to be sensitive to the fact that this is still one step removed,” says Gordon. That’s why it’s important to hear from those who can speak for themselves. “But there aren’t a lot of those people so maybe we need to look harder for them,” she continues.

Writer and activist Melissa Graham uses her blog Bitch on Wheels to make sure her voice is heard on matters affecting people with disabilities. On February 7, in reaction to the discussion of legalizing assisted suicide, she wrote, “Ableism, not assisted suicide, is what we need to work against.” Graham would like to see more people with disabilities writing stories. She often gets asked to speak about not just the experiences of her own disability, but disabilities in general. “I can’t speak for everyone and some journalists understand that better than others,” she says. “Some media outlets are more progressive than others, and it’s easier to get that message across.”

There are some journalists with disabilities who won’t report on disabilities because they don’t want to be branded as a one-beat reporter. While I respect this, I have no qualms about covering disability-related stories. In fact, I’ve began freelancing for Holland Bloorview’s BLOOM, a magazine for parents of disabled children. My goal is to use my knowledge and abilities to provide awareness and understanding of an often-overlooked and misunderstood community by writing what I know.

Image courtesy of Steve Johnson. 

Linda Lewis always had a clear idea of what she wanted. Caroline Connell, who worked with her at Today’s Parent, could see the gears of her mind turning as she listened to art concepts. She’d say, “Yeah, that’s great, but I think it should be like this,” before presenting little sketches she’d just drawn during the discussion. “What do you think?” Lewis would ask. The staff teased her about her terrible drawings, but they always knew that what she came up with was good. “She would sort of pretend to entertain everyone else’s ideas,” says Connell, “but she pretty much had it figured out herself.”

Later, when Lewis had a chance to create a Canadian edition of More, an American lifestyle magazine, she knew what she wanted it to reflect: the looks, lives and desires of women 40 and over. When it launched in 2007, she wrote in her Letter from Linda: “You’ve reached middle age when all you exercise is caution. I read this sentence every day because it is written on my bathroom wall.” She admitted that although she was the first (and likely the last) person to purchase such kitschy wallpaper, she didn’t believe a word of it. Then 46, Lewis embraced her age—even if it meant having a muffin top around her waist, losing her glasses on top of her head or accidentally wearing two mismatched boots to the office.

For Lewis, who died of leukemia in July 2013, being an editor came naturally. Thanks to her open and honest relationship with readers, her perseverance to get the best stories and a good sense of humour, she led a successful career—even as the Canadian magazine industry faltered.

***

Lewis and her identical twin, Leora Eisen, were both bookworms growing up, even turning reading into a competition. “She read Anna Karenina and War and Peace first,” says Eisen. “So I had to read them.” They both went into journalism, though Lewis chose magazines while her sister became a TV documentary director. After completing her master’s degree at Syracuse University in New York in the mid-1980s, Lewis wrote for several of Canada’s top magazines, including Saturday Night, enRoute and Chatelaine. Although general interest publications had long been in trouble and no one was getting rich, there was still a lot of work for freelancers.

In 1993, Lewis joined Today’s Parent as managing editor. As a mother of two young children, she always had many story ideas, so former editor-in-chief Fran Fearnley, who wasn’t a parent, relied on Lewis’s judgment. It also didn’t hurt that she could write well. “She was an excellent writer, which isn’t always the case with every editor,” says Fearnley. “She had such a wonderful way of combining important commentary with a light touch and bringing in examples from her own life.”

When Lewis took over as editor in 1997, she wrote editorials about her own experiences as a mother. In “The Facade of Competence,” she discussed four then-recent events: First, “‘Mom’s a really good. . . uh. . . speller!’” she wrote. “When asked what they thought I was good at, this is the response my two bright and adoring children came up with. Yup. That’s it.” Second, when a dinner guest asked what her best dish was, Lewis just stared at him as she served cold leftovers made by the nanny. Third, after a friend said she rarely yelled at her kids, “Casey and Nikki are looking at her longingly; they probably want to trade mothers.” And fourth, after messing up carpool plans, Lewis admits: “I phoned Barb when I finally remembered at 11:21 a.m., and announced that I should be fired from my job at a parenting magazine.”

There was no danger of that. Today’s Parent flourished during Lewis’s nine years as editor-in-chief, which was all the more impressive given the upheaval in the industry at that time. A recession in the early ’90s hurt advertising sales, and then came the internet. It provided a platform for cheap, seemingly endless content tailored to specific demographics, unleashing new competitors like online magazines and blogs. Some print magazines failed while many struggled. But Today’s Parent had its niche and knew how to serve it, says D.B. Scott, a Canadian magazine blogger, consultant and president of Impresa Communications Ltd. The online threat was hard to ignore, so Today’s Parent filled its website with articles from the print edition as well as blogs, videos, contests and sponsored content.

Lewis also launched For Kids’ Sake, a program celebrating people making a difference in children’s lives. Each year, from 2004 to 2011, it awarded up to $10,000 to recipients and their charities. Ildiko Marshall, former group publisher and vice-president of the Today’s Parent Group at Rogers Publishing says, “The magazine was incredibly successful—she was a fabulous leader for the editorial.”

By 2006, it was time for a new challenge. At 45, her children now teenagers, Lewis became founding editor-in-chief of More Canada and asked senior editor Sarah Moore from Today’s Parent to join her. The magazine ran articles such as “This is What 52 Looks Like” and “More Beautiful at 40 Than at 20?” as well as pieces on everything from acne, weight and exercise to cosmetic surgery, menopause and cancer. Features celebrated women who were doing what they loved, making a difference and starting over. For example, “Bear Essentials” was about a woman who guided tourists through the polar bear habitat of Churchill, Manitoba, and “Church and Fate” profiled an editor who became an Anglican deacon. “It’s a lot about being comfortable in our own skin. We’ve lived a few years, know what we want and that’s a lot of what the magazine is about,” Lewis said in a 2008 interview on CTV. “I think it’s about accepting who you are and what you are doing and recognizing that there’s still a lot of living left to do.”

One of her favourite interviews was with Michaëlle Jean, and she later wrote about how much she liked and respected the Governor General—though she thought it was unprofessional to admit—because Jean was just like other women. In fact, Jean was late to the photoshoot and interview because she’d squeezed in much-needed time with friends. The two women hit it off and continued to write each other. Just before Lewis died, she received Jean’s last note.

At More, Lewis wrote openly about her life, weight (she was often accused of being too skinny), relationships, divorce, being a single parent of two teens and the ups and downs of getting older. In September 2008, she discussed meeting her readers. At a corporate luncheon one woman told her, “When I read your editorials, I feel like I’m sitting on the couch right next to you, chatting over a glass of wine.” On the subway, a woman next to her said, “Excuse me, are you Linda Lewis from More? I’m 46 and I totally get it.”

 ***

When Lewis started at Today’s Parent, the magazine operated out of an old three-storey brick building in downtown Toronto. Editors worked from home, but when they came into the office, they perched wherever there was room; it was a fun and engaging space. At the time, Lewis was a busy wife and mother, but she never tired of work. Connell says Lewis’s mind was always on the magazine. It was not uncommon for her to assign pieces “absurdly far in advance” and she always finished ahead of deadline. She was also an insomniac, according to Connell. “She used to come back with manuscripts that she’d written her notes on, and say, ‘Yeah, I did that one at four in the morning because I couldn’t sleep.’”

Lewis also pushed her editors and writers to do their best work. Vanessa Craft, who was a beauty editor at More, says Lewis was open-minded when her staff came to her with ideas, but she also challenged their reasoning to ensure their suggestions were appropriate for the magazine. “Linda always put the readers first and made you view your ideas, your stories and editorials through their eyes,” says Craft. She often received comments such as “jargony and press release-y” on her drafts. Dan Bortolotti, who wrote for Today’s Parent and More, sometimes grumbled as Lewis sent him away to re-interview and rewrite, but could never deny that her feedback made his work better. He valued her ability to improve stories while still maintaining the writer’s voice.

Lewis was just as demanding at home, where she would dock her son Casey’s allowance for grammar mistakes on his homework. She also showed no mercy as a Scrabble player. Tim Pennock, Lewis’s boyfriend during the last four years of her life, admits that he never expected to win a game and he considers the few times he managed to stump her to be victories.

But Lewis was forgetful. It was not unusual for her to come to the office wearing jeans inside-out. Faith Cochran, More’s art director, says Lewis wasn’t big on formal meetings, so she was more likely to run from office to office as thoughts came to her. If she didn’t, the idea might have left her mind as quickly as it arrived.

When Lewis was away on medical leave due to cervical cancer in 2000, her staff picked up the slack. Bortolotti had never worked so hard, but he and his colleagues wanted to make her proud. It was a test for those in the “School of Linda,” a test he feels they passed thanks to her training. “Everything we do now,” says Craft, currently beauty director of Elle Canada, “is filtered through the ‘What would Linda do?’ lens.”

Although Lewis was driven and demanding, she certainly had a fun side. In 2009, she and photographer Laura Arsie travelled to New Zealand’s North Island together. They laughed as they struggled to kayak down Mohaka River and ride bicycles around Hawke’s Bay—although some of their troubles may have stemmed from enjoying the wineries a little too much. Arsie photographed all of their adventures, including one at a mud spa where Lewis encouraged her friend to take her photo as she lay covered head-to-toe in mud.

While in Barbados on vacation in 2012, Lewis and Pennock discovered a small café. When the owner noticed them, he showed them a National Post article on the wall: “The Worthy 30,” about the most influential women in Toronto. “It was her picture in a little pub in Barbados,” says Pennock. “I go, ‘Oh my god, you gotta be kidding me.’ You’d think she’d brought me there to show me the picture.” But when the owner told them the list’s author, Shinan Govani, was a regular customer, they realized it might be on the wall to honour him, not her—much to the humble Lewis’s relief.

“I always picture her looking up to the sun smiling,” says close friend Callie Maister. “Not that I’ve ever seen her do that, but it’s how I picture her.” It was always important to Lewis to maintain a close group of friends outside of work—not that it was difficult. People were drawn to her energy, humour and intelligence. Lewis and Eisen were “a pair of extremely bright girls, but so focused if they were writing or reading or discussing something; you could scream ‘Fire!’ in the room and they wouldn’t hear you,” says Maister. “But when Linda focused on you, you had absolutely all of her attention.”

***

In November 2012, soon after being told she would have to take at least a year’s leave to treat acute myeloid leukemia, a representative from More’s parent company, TC Media, visited Lewis at home to inform her that, after a seven-year run, the December issue would be the last. There wasn’t enough advertising to sustain it. “Advertising support—that’s always what brings any magazine down,” says Moore. “It’s not circulation. People who adore it, buy it.”

Although More had a circulation of 120,000, it had launched right before the 2008 economic recession and was never able to generate the ad revenue it hoped for. TC Media was principally a printing company that, according to Scott, went into magazine publishing to keep its presses running. Eventually, the company ran out of patience. This wasn’t the first time: it closed Homemakers in 2011 (after downsizing it in 2003) and sold Canadian Home Workshop and Outdoor Canada in 2009.

Lewis had every intention of returning to More after beating cancer for the second time. “I was devastated,” Lewis told the Toronto Star. “But let’s prioritize here. I am mainly concerned for my staff.” Friend and CTV National News anchor Lisa LaFlamme remembers the sadness Lewis felt the day she emptied her desk in preparation for at least six months of chemotherapy: “She loved the magazine—the strength, what it gave to women,” LaFlamme says. “It spoke to women of an age on issues that you never talked about, that no other magazine talked about. She just hit them head on.”

In her December-January 2013 editorial, “Isn’t It Ironic?” she explained that she was a cervical cancer survivor and had been living with a blood disorder that developed into acute myeloid leukemia. Instead of wearing an evening gown and drinking cocktails during the holiday season, she would be wearing a hospital gown and ingesting three types of chemotherapy drugs. “She was a master at honesty and real-life raw truth,” says LaFlamme, “even during the worst parts of her life.”

She kept her readers, friends and family up to date with her running commentary under the Twitter handle
@LindaOnLeukemia, where she discussed “things that don’t suck.” Lewis used the platform to promote humorous or touching moments of her ordeal. “Got excited when Supertramp was playing. Then realized it was a Coke commercial. I am old,” read one tweet in May 2013. Another: “Some days are so, so tough. But not today. Today, my magnolia tree bloomed, my kids made me smile and I ate a massive Dufflet cupcake.”

Lewis rarely failed to see the upside of an unfortunate situation. In March 2010, Cochran, Lewis and six other friends travelled to Las Vegas expecting the warm, sunny weather they needed to shoot a summer fashion feature. Instead, a blizzard stole the sunshine and covered Red Rock Canyon in a chilly white blanket—not at all a summer scene. But they hunted down any spot of sun they could find and swept snow away from the shivering model. Cochran was stressed about getting the shots they needed, but Lewis —to her art director’s annoyance—was optimistic they’d get something they could use, even if it was only a funny editorial.

Later that day, the sun came out and melted the snow, so they went home with a summer shot—and a funny editorial called “What Happened in Vegas.”

That was classic Lewis: optimistic to the end.

Photo courtesy Laura Arsie

Here is a sneak peek at one story from our Spring 2015 issue of the Ryerson Review of Journalism magazine.

When CBC first announced its intention and approach to investigating the Jian Ghomeshi scandal, it seemed to be more of a public relations stunt than anything else. To me, it seemed more to protect itself than those who have experienced harassment at the hands of the corporation’s superstar.

In fact, the investigation plan was so questionable that the CBC’s own union representative, the Canadian Media Guild, cautioned employees against speaking to lawyer and investigation leader, Janice Rubin. Why? It could cost them their jobs.

Despite it being voluntary, CBC offered informants no reward or security. Rubin would record all interviews but those being interviewed were not allowed to do the same. Interviewees were eventually extended the seemingly fair opportunity to review a transcript of their interview, but not make changes.

Although the investigation was about Ghomeshi, it seemed that anyone who volunteered information was also volunteering to be investigated. Not only does CBC have access to the recordings, but it has also told CMG they may be “relied on by management to discipline the employee being interviewed.”

Making the whole investigation seemingly pointless.

But it turns out that I, and everyone else who questioned CBC’s intentions, may have been wrong. On January 5, the network announced Chris Boyce, the executive director of CBC Radio, and Todd Spencer, its executive director of human resources and industrial relations, had been placed on leaves of absence.

The removal of Spencer is almost expected, as HR played an important role in enabling the harassments to go on by failing to stand up for the employees, but suspending of Boyce is the most reassuring He fumbled through his interview in November, where he said that it had not been his place to conduct a police investigation but believed they did what they thought was best at the time, but “in any case, hindsight is 20-20.” It is well known that Boyce had a lot invested in Ghomeshi, as he was “instrumental” in making him a star, and would be one of the least keen to see him fall from fame; therefore, he may have turned a blind eye.

There are still questions about whether or not these senior executives were sent home with pay, or what will come next. But at least it appears CBC deserves more credit than I initially gave.

 

 

Thanks for Wonderlane for the featured image. 

]]>

Do pumpkin spice condoms exist or what about a three breasted lady?

Arielle Piat-Sauve met with Craig Silverman, founder of  Emergent.Info, a real time rumour tracker.

Listen here:

On a Friday afternoon late this past summer, Scott Fee, an anchor for Victoria’s CHEK News, sat waiting to tape what might have been the station’s final 5 p.m. newscast. Over a month earlier, Canwest Global—the station’s cash-strapped owner since 2000—had announced that it planned to shut down the money-losing station. Employees had been trying to broker a deal with Canwest all summer, but now, Fee’s future was out of his hands and written in the script in front of him. He looked up from his notes and read to the camera the day’s top story. “A deal by employees and several local investors has been accepted by Canwest,” Fee announced, poker-faced. “CHEK TV has been sold,” he continued, slowly breaking into a smile, “and is now not only your island’s own, but your island-owned.”

CHEK employees and local investors bought the station for $2 (on top of $2.5 million that was raised to cover the operating costs during the handover). A Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) hearing to approve the handover began on October 30, and a decision is expected in mid-November. The employees and investors will run the station as an independent broadcaster and become Canada’s first employee-owned station.

While television stations are losing money and shutting down across the country, CHEK journalists are making a statement. By putting their own livelihoods at stake, they’re voicing confidence that the future of broadcasting is not only in news that’s local, but news that’s locally owned as well. “We don’t need huge ratings points and as many dollars as corporate TV,” says station manager John Pollard, “but I think what we can do is prove to Canada that local TV can survive.” The group’s strategy is simple: keep the operation small. The station will reserve modest profit expectations, while keeping a narrow focus on what it does best: local news. And though ethics experts question the idea of journalists with a direct financial stake in their work, debt-ridden news outlets across the country may find themselves looking to what the 53-year-old station has done as a model that could work for them, too. Employees in employee-owned companies do end up saving their own jobs, after all, but is that enough to save local news?

CHEK employees think so. They’ve shifted their 11 p.m. newscast to 10 p.m., a move they hope will generate larger audiences. They’re also toying with the idea of producing shows based on local interests such as gardening and home repair, which Pollard refers to as “DIY programming.” Levi Sampson—one of CHEK’s main investors, who organized a similar employee buy-out at the HARMAC pulp mill in Nanaimo last year—believes that keeping a local focus can help make the station profitable again. Under Canwest, he says, money was wasted on importing expensive prime time programming from the U.S. “You can’t make enough advertising dollars to make it up,” he explains. Instead, the station will now air programming it can produce itself at a lower cost.

Under the new model, Sampson and a small group of local investors comprise about 70 percent of CHEK’s ownership. These investors form the board of directors, but aren’t involved in day-to-day operations. The station’s 45 employees dug into their own pockets to raise $500,000, giving the group about a 30 percent stake in the company. The management remains intact, but employees now have more opportunities—an internal blog, for example—to voice their thoughts on how the company should be run.Just five years ago, I was a student,” the 35-year-old Fee says. “If someone had told me five years ago that I’d be a co-owner of a television station…it’s unbelievably surreal.” He says it’s been a steep learning curve, but already an owner mentality is starting to form amongst employees. “You’re concerned about more than just the story you’re working on,” he says. “You’re worrying about the company as well.”

This idea of owner-operator journalists does, however, raise ethical questions. Journalists pride themselves on separating editorial decisions from business ones—a difficult distinction when reporters have their own pocketbooks on the line. Dave Secko, assistant professor of journalism ethics at Concordia University, says that as the line between journalist and entrepreneur becomes blurred, more and more focus from the public is placed on journalistic independence. Because of this, Secko says, conflict of interest—real or perceived—and public skepticism will have to be managed carefully. But Rob Germain, CHEK’s news producer, doesn’t see this as a problem. “We realize that as journalists, it’s our integrity that’s valued more than anything,” he says. Selling out will turn off audiences, and without an audience, he explains, “We won’t have advertisers.”

As for whether this model could succeed elsewhere in the country, CHEK employees don’t see why it wouldn’t. Pollard says it can work for local television all over Canada, as long as there’s a large enough population base. According to Pollard, Victoria—with a population of about 80,000, or 345,000 including suburbs—is a big enough city to garner national advertising dollars, imperative for any television station.

But others, including Duncan Stewart, who runs his own Toronto-based media consulting firm, DSAM Consulting, disagree. Unlike Pollard, Stewart is doubtful that a city of Victoria’s size can generate adequate advertising, and says an independent broadcaster would be generally more vulnerable to dips and lows in the economy. Although he’d like to see the CHEK model succeed, it likely won’t. “It’s important to remember that the Aspers weren’t idiots,” says Stewart, who until recently wrote a column for the National Post. “They knew how to do this stuff.” Nor does he buy the argument that sticking to local content will keep CHEK afloat. “That strategy has been tried many times in Canada—but it may not draw advertising and ratings enough to justify the cost of doing it.”

John Morton, a media-industry analyst and columnist for the American Journalism Review, echoes Stewart’s concerns. Morton has studied employee-owned media companies in the U.S., and says that so far, similar models in the States have been unsuccessful. Part of the reason for this, Morton says, is that a switch in ownership doesn’t change the surrounding economic conditions. “Employee-ownership is not a panacea,” he says. “All the things that plagued the station before likely will remain.”

Regardless, CHEK employees are pleased that they’ve made it this far. “You wouldn’t believe the atmosphere in the newsroom,” Graham Barnes, one of the major investors, says. “These people own the station. They are in charge of their own future.”

Simcha Jacobovici’s black and white limo pulls up to a red carpet outside the Princess of Wales Theatre. Floodlights roam the downtown Toronto skyline as he and his entourage-wife, sister, mother and in-laws-arrive at the reception for the screening of Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies and the American Dream, a film he codirected and produced. In front of the theatre he poses with his family for the cameras, an impressive figure at 6’3″ elegant in black jacket and pants, a round-collared white shirt, wire-rimmed glasses and large Middle Eastern-style black kippah on top of his chin-length blond hair. The night passes by in a blur for him-an endless parade of well-wishers and handshakes.

It’s a cold November evening, and the screening is a fundraiser for the Toronto synagogue and community centre Jacobovici has founded, the Jewish Film Festival and the Bloor Jewish Community Centre. The film, based on a book by Neal Gabler, tells the story of Hollywood moguls-heads of the largest movie studios. They were Jewish men who had immigrated to America and rejected their traditional pasts in favour of an invented reality they viewed as the American dream.

“One of the hopes I have for this film is that it would make Jews and other people who bought into this assimilationist fantasy buy out of it a little,” Jacobovici tells the assembled audience of more than 2,000 when the movie has finished. He speaks of one of its messages: to be proud of one’s roots, of one’s identity-part of the moguls’ downfall came from abandoning the world of their fathers.

Hollywoodism also has an anti-idolatry theme. “We created gods out of movie stars,” he says. “This film brings down the icons and puts things into perspective.” To Jacobovici, an Orthodox Jew and established documentary filmmaker, movies can be the bearers of false idols-the scourge of his religious beliefs-or they can send a constructive message and “make people proud of who they are.”

Twelve years ago, Jacobovici and his coproducer, Elliott Halpern, founded Associated Producers, a documentary film company. Together they have produced 15 feature-length documentaries and reaped more than 60 awards, including the 1996 and 1997 Emmys for outstanding investigative journalism for The Plague Monkeys, about the Ebola virus outbreak in Zaire, and The Selling of Innocents, about the child sex trade in India. Jacobovici’s best-known film to date, 1991’s Deadly Currents, about the Arab-Israeli intifada, won a Genie for best feature-length documentary.

Jacobovici has been called a guerrilla filmmaker-a moniker he earned by making intense, controversial films, often under the most trying of circumstances. He has led camera and crew into the geographical outposts of the Sudan, where he nearly lost a leg to an insect bite, for Falasha: Exile of the Black Jews. He has ventured into the political hot zone of the West Bank, where his life was threatened by extremists and rubber bullets, for Deadly Currents. He is quick to say that he is not a “fearless cowboy”-he feels the weight of keeping his crew safe. And since his marriage to Nicole Kornberg in December 1991 and the birth of their two daughters, he is conscious of being more careful. But his colleagues consider him courageous, someone who will go to great lengths to get the story that his insatiable curiosity drives him toward. His powerful, point-of-view documentaries are charged with passion and possess an earnestness that speaks of his faith in their message. He believes that documentaries must venture beyond the realm of entertainment. “Film should educate, celebrate and challenge our notions of identity,” he has said.

Canada’s history of documentary filmmaking dates back to the 1930s, when John Grierson founded the National Film Board, a government agency designed to support Canadian film. “For Grierson, viewers are passive receivers of information, ideas and feelings that have been arranged and presented by the filmmaker,” writes Clarke Mackey in an essay on Deadly Currents in the summer 1992 issue of Queen’s Quarterly. “This is still the most common type of documentary being made today.” According to Mackey, Simcha Jacobovici belongs to “an alternative school of filmmaking practice”-one that is meant to “induce the pleasure of learning.” Jacobovici is proud that his films don’t offer solutions to problems but instead create a framework for discussion and for asking questions. This open-ended approach, however, must not be confused with the notion of objectivity. “I don’t believe that any film is objective,” says Jacobovici. “Every film has a point of view….What I consider good filmmaking is bringing honesty and balance to your point of view.”

John Katz, a former professor of Jewish film at York University, is familiar with Jacobovici’s films and also knows him personally through the synagogue Jacobovici founded. “Simcha becomes more of an advocate in his films for an idea, an argument, than a lot of filmmakers,” he says. “His films don’t have that pasty indecisiveness that a lot of them do.” Jacobovici does achieve a degree of journalistic objectivity because of his Talmudic approach to filmmaking. “He looks at all sides and he’s always questioning,” Katz explains. “When you study Talmud [the written text of the Jewish oral law], you study with a partner and you may change sides, even to a side you don’t believe in, because you’re interested in the question, in the argument.”

In the 1993 book Brink of Reality: New Canadian Documentary Film and Video, author Peter Steven writes that “no producer stays completely independent,” and says producers will always be accountable to their “world view, sympathies and connections.”

“I’m always thinking as a Jewish person,” says Jacobovici. While only a few of his films have Jewish themes, all possess a degree of moral and societal introspection, evident in documentaries such as The Selling of Innocents and Northern Justice, the 1995 film about treatment of the Inuit within the Canadian judicial system. He has said that “all the films I make are Jewish because I bring that sensibility to it.”

For Jacobovici, religion and film are both a means to an end-a way to ensure cultural survival. In an age where market and industry have become civilization’s temples, he has found a balance between the secular and spiritual worlds. David Ostriker, an Orthodox Jewish documentary filmmaker who has known Jacobovici for 13 years, says, “You have to reconcile who you are and what you do, and combine the two. Simcha has done that to a large degree.”

Jacobovici’s passion for making documentaries with a social conscience stems from his background and upbringing. In   an interview with the popular Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz in December 1996, Jacobovici said: “The three outstanding foundations of my life are my ‘Israeliness,’ my Judaism and the fact that I am the son of survivors. They are the driving forces behind the subjects of my work-oppressed and suffering groups-and the guiding hand that leads me in the manner of my work.”

He was born in 1953 in Petah Tikvah, a small city in central Israel, five years after the creation of the state and eight years after the Holocaust, where he was raised with his younger sister, Sara, in a spiritual, though not Orthodox, home. There was a strong faith in God in the home, and at night the family would gather to say a prayer they had created. His parents, Joseph and Ida, had come to Israel from Romania after surviving the war. Jacobovici says that growing up as the first generation since the birth of Israel “felt special.” He and his sister were raised to believe that they were the first Jews in 2,000 years who were not going to be victims. “We weren’t going to take orders,” recalls Jacobovici. “We were encouraged to talk back, we were encouraged to break rules, we were told that there were no rules for us.”

When Jacobovici was 9, the family moved to Montreal because Ida needed a cooler climate for health reasons and Joseph, an engineer, had just received a contract for work there. But the experience of spending his formative years in a victorious country that had just secured independence affected him deeply. Jacobovici maintains that his “Israeliness” has very much remained a part of who he is (he now calls himself an Israeli-born Canadian). Jacobovici grew up arguing politics with his family over breakfast and constantly questioning and criticizing. “Nobody was an authority figure for me,” recalls Jacobovici of his youth.

In 1974, he graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in philosophy from McGill University. Soon after celebrating his 21st birthday, he volunteered for a year in the Israeli army out of a sense of nationalistic duty, an experience that reinforced his “Israeliness.” He also spent a year working on a kibbutz. Afterward, he moved back to Canada to pursue studies in international relations at the University of Toronto, earning an MA. He continued on toward a PhD, but soon made the transition from academic to activist, leaving his final thesis unfinished. He had all the necessary qualities of leadership-beneath his Bee Gees-inspired haircut and thick-framed glasses, he was intense and charismatic. He was elected president of the first Canadian chapter of Network, a North American Jewish youth activist organization, where one of his accomplishments was successfully negotiating the removal of national origin from Canadian passports. Another issue he struggled to publicize was the suppressed story of the Falashas, Ethiopian Jews. The international Jewish community was aware of the Falashas’ situation and many disapproved of the low-profile approach the Israeli government was taking to it. In Ethiopia, the Falashas had been living as practising Jews for thousands of years in a land where their religion was barely tolerated. Many had tried to escape famine and oppression by fleeing to Sudan, but ended up in overcrowded refugee camps where they were shunned and abused. In 1978, Jacobovici began writing articles describing the Falashas’ persecution, and eventually published several pieces in The New York Times. Without any experience or knowledge of the field, Jacobovici decided that film was the “next logical step” in spreading his message: “I thought documentaries in film are what op-ed pieces are in writing.” Unable to find an established filmmaker willing to take on the story, he organized the production himself. Between October and December 1982, he travelled in Ethiopia and the Sudan, to the remote corners of the mountainous region where the Falashas lived. To fund the documentary, he promised additional films about the area for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the CBC Man Alive series. In turn, they provided money up front. With Jacobovici was an experienced crew that included former National Film Board documentary filmmaker Peter Raymont, whom Jacobovici had commissioned as director. During the shoot, however, Jacobovici became involved with the actual filming, although officially his role was that of interviewer and political expert. “My analysis wasn’t just verbal, it was visual,” he says. He would point out shots he wanted, and ultimately directed three-quarters of the 80-minute documentary. Jacobovici’s vision strained his relationship with Raymont and the two men haven’t spoken since. “He felt like he could have made the film himself,” Raymont says.

From this directorial debut, it was evident that filmmaking came naturally to Jacobovici. Falasha: Exile of the Black Jews is a conventional documentary-presenting a clear, if somewhat plain, synopsis of the situation. Talking-head scenes prevail and there is little artistry in the narrative. But the film is nevertheless affecting. Stories the Ethiopian Jews tell of being tortured by local peasant associations are riveting, and their proclamations of religious devotion, touching.

An official guide of the Ethiopian government leads the camera through the dusty roads of Gondar province, to the places where Falashas are rumoured to be living. In a tiny village atop a hill, a young Ethiopian Jew waits until the guide is out of sight before he displays a forbidden Torah, tattered and frayed. The camera pans a row of Falashas behind a bramble fence, evoking the barbed wire and starving faces of the Nazi concentration camps.

One reviewer described it as a film “that believes in its ability to save a people.” Of Jacobovici, the Chicago Tribune wrote that “his is an admittedly partisan account, he is almost obsessed with the Falashas and condemns anyone not willing to go all out and rescue them.” Eight months after Falasha was shown in the Israeli parliament, Operation Moses, the airlift of Ethiopian Jews to Israel, was launched.

It was the success of this film that led to the creation of Associated Producers. It began in 1986, in Jacobovici’s townhouse on Broadview Avenue in Toronto’s Riverdale area, where he lived alone. The living room doubled as the company’s main control centre. Eight years later, when the company moved to its present location on lower Spadina Avenue, Jacobovici was still at the centre of all the action-his office is directly across from the main door, in between the boardroom and the kitchen. As he sits at his desk, engaged in one of his epic-length phone calls, he sees all who pass by and all that comes to pass in front of his wide office door.

Across the hall lined with award certificates, plaques and promotional film posters is the office of Elliott Halpern, Jacobovici’s business partner and coproducer. They had first met at a U of T political philosophy course back in 1980, but didn’t see each other again until years later. In 1984, Jacobovici had an idea for another film, but needed someone to write the script. In a meeting he describes as fortuitous, Jacobovici ran into his old schoolmate outside the building where Halpern was practising law. Although Halpern had no film experience, he had been editor of The Varsity, the U of T student newspaper, and Jacobovici thought he had “the right sensibility” for the story. In a “surreal conversation on the street,” Halpern agreed to write a draft. While that film would never reach production, it marked the start of a prolific creative partnership, and two years later, Halpern left law to help start Associated Producers.

Both men share many of the same ideals of filmmaking; neither wants to make “cookie-cutter” films that are driven by demand, but they do not see themselves as “esoteric art filmmakers” either. They strive to make films that have international appeal and exotic locations and that ultimately tell a good story in cinematic language.

Although Jacobovici has never studied film, claims no mentors in the medium and does not identify with any particular style, the artistry of a film is important to him, although not at the expense of content. SinceFalasha, there has been a noticeable artistic evolution in his documentaries. His 1996 film Expulsion and Memory: Descendants of the Hidden Jews, about Jews who were converted to Christianity during the Spanish Inquisition, achieves both ends through a mesmerizing quilt of flamenco music, sensual dance and seamless scenes.

In a Christian cemetery in New Mexico, many of the headstones are engraved with Hebrew words and six-pointed flowers symbolizing the Star of David. In Hervas, Spain, against a backdrop of worn, pale buildings, a young boy tells us, “In this town, if you go far back enough, we’re all Jewish.” Between scenes, a flamenco guitarist sits in a darkened room strumming a song-the tempo quickens and then slows as a Spanish dancer swirls, waving her arms to the hypnotic rhythm.

“A beautiful-looking film,” wrote John Haslett Cuff in The Globe and Mail. Jacobovici consciously uses music, art and dance in many of his films to advance the stories being told. While documentaries are visual recitals of facts, Jacobovici says they must be entertainment as well. “Are you telling the stories in a way that people feel like they’re being lectured? Or are you telling them in a way that people feel like they’ve gone on a journey?” he asks.

Jacobovici considers his increased artistry more of “a smooth evolution than a revolutionary break,” but according to Rudy Buttignol, head of documentaries at TVOntario, there was a turning point in Jacobovici’s career. “In Deadly Currents he transcended being a mere journalist and became a filmmaker, an auteur,” he says. “It was his nonfiction novel.”

“In each film that I make from Falasha to this day, I try to set myself challenges,” Jacobovici says. Sometimes that means using narration uniquely so that the film isn’t just an “illustrated lecture,” or even avoiding narration altogether and letting the people and places speak for themselves, as he did with Deadly Currents.

Deadly Currents was the film that propelled Jacobovici into the upper echelons of Canadian documentary filmmaking. Shot and edited over a year and a half, with Elliott Halpern and Ric Bienstock as coproducers and Steve Weslak as editor, Deadly Currents received wide acclaim and commercial success. Critics described it as “balanced and powerful,” and many considered it the best film they had seen on the Middle East conflict. For an independent film steeped in foreign politics, it had an extraordinarily lengthy run, playing in theatres in Toronto, Montreal, New York and Tel Aviv. It played for 11 weeks in Toronto, which is practically unheard of for a documentary. The $1.1-million film took in about $100,000 at Canadian box offices alone and an estimated $30,000 in the U.S.

Mournful music plays as scrolling text, outlining the fractured history of Jews and Palestinians and the claim each have on the land, travels up the screen against a background of a black-and-white photo of an army truck. At a swearing-in ceremony for Israeli soldiers, the film turns bright with colour. The story of the struggle is told through vivid characters; the Israeli soldier who is horribly burnt by a Molotov cocktail, the young Palestinian who is martyred and mourned by family after being killed and the street performer who is a descendant of both cultures and angrily rejects them.

The documentary won six prestigious awards, including a 1992 Genie. Despite such acclaim, many attribute the commercial success of Deadly Currents, and Jacobovici’s subsequent films, to his personality rather than his talents as a filmmaker.

Jacobovici is a master of media manipulation and has been described as a near-genius when it comes to getting publicity. Michael Posner devoted an essay to Deadly Currents in his 1993 book Canadian Dreams: The Making and Marketing of Independent Films. Of Jacobovici’s press savvy, he wrote: “The publicity campaign mounted for Deadly Currents was more nearly reminiscent of a military exercise than anything else, and Jacobovici was its high-profile general.”

David Ostriker, a Toronto film producer and Jacobovici’s close friend says: “At the end of the day, Simcha is a greater promoter than filmmaker.”

Elliott Halpern agrees that Jacobovici’s promotional savvy drives the company. Halpern is more involved in the international business side, although both partners contribute creatively to projects. “I think we have a way of keeping each other grounded,” says Halpern.

Still, both are headstrong and opinionated-they sometimes have shouting matches in the editing suite, and employees at the film company have to mediate between their creative visions. “They’re like the odd couple: Simcha’s the idealist and Elliott’s the voice of reason,” says Mark Leuchter, a researcher and writer at Associated Producers since 1995. “After a conversation between the two, when they’re yelling back and forth at each other, Simcha’s taken away a little bit of reason and Elliott’s taken away a little bit of idealism.”

Not all of Jacobovici’s creative relationships have been as satisfying. He is notorious for being difficult to work with. Ric Bienstock, a Toronto independent filmmaker, has known Jacobovici since 1986 and worked with him on several projects. “Jacobovici is capable of immense charm,” she is quoted as saying in Michael Posner’s book on Canadian independent film, “but he is also a perfectionist. He knows what he wants and he’ll stop at virtually nothing to get it. Sometimes, he is abrasive, not only with colleagues, but with people whose cooperation he really needs to achieve what he wants.”

David Ostriker agrees that Jacobovici’s methods, however successful, could use some refining. “He pushes people without any grace at all. He gets away with it because he’s a charismatic leader.” Another close acquaintance of Jacobovici says, “Simcha didn’t make enemies because he’s successful. He made enemies because he’s abrasive and brazen. He’s self-centred when it comes to producing.”

Some of his peers and colleagues have described him as ruthless. John Katz, who has known Jacobovici since the time of Falasha, argues: “I would never call him ruthless. He’s determined and knowledgeable. He’s exactly what a film producer has to be.”

Jacobovici’s younger sister, Sara, a music therapist, says there is another side to him that not many people see. “People will call him arrogant because he is very sure of himself. But after he speaks or makes a presentation, he runs to me or someone he’s close to and asks, ‘How was I?’ He always seeks people’s opinions.”

Those who have worked for Jacobovici say that he drives himself as much as he drives those around him. Off the record, some complain that they haven’t received the recognition they deserved. “Simcha’s weakness is that he isn’t generous enough in sharing credit and hurts people, very often unknowingly,” says Ostriker. “He and Elliott have grabbed the limelight whenever they could, and sometimes it’s better to share it.”

Jacobovici says that while he and Halpern often get the credit for a film in the press, he believes that “filmmaking is a team thing.” He is also aware of what he calls an “I-hate-Simcha-club,” referring to some of the strained professional ties he’s had over the years, beginning with Peter Raymont over Falasha. “I’m always butting heads and I think it’s a positive thing,” he says. “I need that feedback, that argument, that tension and different perspectives. But you’re walking a tightrope-if you butt heads to the point where your egos are involved, then it’s destructive to the filmmaking process. I like to think that my ego’s strong enough that I can take criticism without letting my ego interfere.”

“Sim is a guy with a tremendous ego,” says David Ostriker, “but he has the blessing of being a devout Jew, and it keeps his ego directed in a very positive, productive way. It is Simcha’s will, or ego, that makes him do what others consider to be impossible or fruitless.”

Jacobovici says that some people are amazed that he could still be “a good filmmaker in spite of the fact” that he is an Orthodox Jew who keeps the Sabbath and will not shoot on Friday nights or Saturdays. As he evolved from student political activist to the consummate filmmaker he is now, Jacobovici’s religious beliefs followed an evolution of their own. While he always had a strong Jewish identity, about eight years ago he began to practice his faith through daily prayer, a kosher diet and Sabbath observance. His new lifestyle led Jacobovici to start the only Orthodox synagogue on Toronto’s Danforth Avenue, in the predominantly Greek area in which he lives. It began in his home on Broadview Avenue in 1992 and now occupies a three-room store above a beauty salon.

The fact that Jacobovici lives and practises Orthodox Judaism on the Danforth is significant. “It’s easy to be a Jew at Lawrence and Bathurst,” Ostriker explains, “but to be an Orthodox Jew in Greek Town is a serious commitment.” It is a conscious declaration of independence, a geographical resistance to conformity. Rather than inhabit the Jewish Orthodox enclaves along Bathurst Street, where kosher bakeries, synagogues and Hebrew schools abound, Jacobovici and his family choose to create their own centre.

In his life, film and religion are intricately entwined. Indeed, Jacobovici leads a life of balance-between the spiritual and the secular, between film and faith. At its best, a documentary is a historical document, a visual liturgy of a phase in time. As an explorer of the past and journeyer of the present, Jacobovici uses film to pursue the people who have preserved and tell our history. “I’m very conscious of the whole concept of tikun olam, of making the world a better place,” he says. He believes that a film can be made to create problems-or to help find solutions. “I would like to think that I’m making films that are part of the solution,” he says.

Soon, Jacobovici will be screening a documentary that Ostriker predicts could be “the most important film Simcha ever does.” It is about the legendary 10 lost tribes of Israel who have been missing since they were exiled and cut off from the two tribes of Judah in 722 B.C. Jacobovici says he has found them in places such as Afghanistan, China, Indonesia and India. For him, this will be a film of passion-a film that, likeHollywoodism and Expulsion and Memory, will explain our past and unite us in the present.