Twenty-year-old Keltie Byrne was tidying up the pool area after the 1:30 p.m. show at Sealand of the Pacific in Victoria, B.C., when her rubber workboots skidded on the wet pool deck, sending her into the pool. As a dozen spectators watched, she tried to climb out. But the marine park’s orcas dragged her underwater. Despite being a competitive swimmer, Byrne had no chance against the persistent orcas Haida, Nootka and Tilikum. To the whales, unaccustomed to having trainers in the pool, Byrne was the most interactive toy they had ever played with. She resurfaced and cried for help twice. Ten minutes later, she surfaced again, but was still. She had drowned.

On February 20, 1991, journalists wrote about the first person to be killed by orcas at a marine park. Barbara McClintock, then-Victoria bureau chief for The Province, arrived on the scene around 3:30 p.m. and gathered with other reporters in a parking lot overlooking the marina. From their lofty vantage point, they watched the recovery efforts and tried to piece together the story. At this stage, Sealand employees were dragging a weighted net along the bottom of the pool, trying to recover Byrne’s body from the whales, which kept it away from the crew for two hours. “You could see a ‘something,’” she says now, “which later you realized was a body.”

Unable to get closer to the action, the reporters had little to work with. No one could verify the story—even with witness accounts, the police were reluctant to release any particulars to journalists. The coverage of the accident was sparse at first, with details added as reporters gathered more information. No one knew how or why this had happened, and the shallow news items reflected that. McClintock’s vaguely worded article appeared in The Province the next day with the lede, “A whale trainer was dunked to death by three killer whales yesterday.” Police hadn’t even identified the trainer, and the story relied solely on one witness to provide any details or context of the accident. The result was a jarring 162-word article on the front page with the final line that read, “Then the whales became quiet.”

Over two decades later, Liam Casey recalls the enormous audience for “Inside Marineland,” the Toronto Star investigative series that was published in 2012. Casey’s colleague, Linda Diebel, wrote several stories in which eight whistleblowers claimed that Marineland failed to adequately care for its animals. Diebel, who spearheaded the investigation, made allegations claiming that Marineland’s water filtration system caused the animals serious health problems; dolphin skin fell off in chunks; Smooshi the walrus had an inflamed flipper, a chemical burn apparently caused by the water; six of seven seals were either blind or had serious eye problems; two aggressive belugas attacked and killed a baby beluga named Skoot. Later, Casey joined Diebel to pen an article that alleged Kiska the orca seemed lethargic and lonely in her concrete pen.

In addition to garnering widespread public interest, however, the series drew the ire of Marineland; its owner, John Holer; and Holer’s lawyers. Three months after two articles were published in 2013 about orders given to Marineland by the OSPCA to address problems first identified by the Star‘s investigation, Marineland sued the Star; in its statement of claim, Marineland denied the range of allegations in the Star series, saying its water filtration system is not substandard, nor are its animals neglected in any way. The Star stood by the allegations, and filed a statement of defence in response to Marineland’s lawsuit. The lawsuit was outstanding at time of publication.

Readers devoured the Star’s Marineland stories, which were part of a momentous shift in the way reporters cover animal issues. Today, animal-related journalism is becoming a blockbuster business, drawing a big audience and encouraging news outlets to devote scarce resources to the coverage, including more senior reporters. Thanks to the emergence of enterprising animal stories and high-profile documentaries, there is an acute awareness of animal welfare issues that didn’t exist a couple of decades ago. Interviews with reporters, experts and activists show that there is more serious interest in, and greater knowledge of, the problems animals face. But since the subject matter inevitably has soft and fluffy connotations, the animal beat still risks being perceived as less-than-serious journalism.

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Tilikum, one of the whales involved in Byrne’s death, would help change the way journalists cover animal tragedies. The orca was moved to a new home at SeaWorld Orlando in 1992, almost one year after the incident with Byrne, and Sealand closed its doors forever by the end of that year. On a summer morning in 1999, trainers at SeaWorld Orlando found Tilikum with a nude body of a deceased male draped across his back. Canadian newspapers linked the man’s death to Byrne’s, and coverage included details that had been missing in the initial news reports about her death. In 2010, another trainer named Dawn Brancheau died in the pool with Tilikum.

This time, the coverage wouldn’t be so scattershot. After Brancheau was dragged underwater to her death, Tim Zimmermann, a correspondent at Outside magazine, wrote a 9,000-word feature that appeared in the July 2010 issue. Zimmermann’s “The Killer in the Pool” examined the 45-year history of keeping whales in captivity and the accidents that transpired in that time, focusing mainly on incidents involving Tilikum. Instead of simply recounting events, Zimmermann sought experts to explain how and why these types of incidents occurred. “If you want to try to get an inkling of what captivity means for a killer whale,” he wrote, “you first have to understand what their lives are like in the wild.” He pursued the most qualified sources, including Ken Balcomb, a marine biologist who had been tracking orcas for almost 35 years, and Don Goldsberry, who captured orcas for aquariums and notoriously hated reporters.

Zimmermann’s work had a depth of detail missing from much of the previous reporting. For example, he compared Sealand to McDonald’s and SeaWorld Orlando to a five-star restaurant, with its 220 acres of custom marine habitat. At SeaWorld, “there were seven different killer whale pools, including the enormous Shamu show pool, and seven million gallons of continuously filtered salt water kept at an orca-friendly temperature between 52 and 55 degrees [fahrenheit]. There was regular, world-class veterinary care. Even the food was a custom blend, made up of restaurant-quality herring, capelin and salmon.” Without having to look beyond this one magazine article, readers with no previous understanding of orcas could receive a close-up look at a controversial issue. Zimmermann provided enough depth and detail to allow his readers to draw their own conclusions.

Tilikum’s story would eventually find a wider audience beyond the magazine. After reading “The Killer in the Pool,” documentary filmmaker Gabriela Cowperthwaite started a project of her own—the 2013 film Blackfish, starring Tilikum, with Zimmermann billed as associate producer. After making a scant $2 million during its theatrical release in the summer, the documentary was viewed by nearly 21 million people when CNN aired it on television that October.

Blackfish became a rallying cry against the billion-dollar industry of marine parks. Since the film’s release, SeaWorld has published open letters criticizing the documentary’s claims that marine parks are harmful to orcas and refuting allegations that the park attempted to cover up facts about Brancheau’s death. A section of SeaWorld’s website is dedicated to arguing that Blackfish is propaganda. The documentary opened a Pandora’s box, prompting questions about the morality of keeping cetaceans in captivity.

After Blackfish made the rounds in Vancouver, National Post correspondent Tristin Hopper had an “icky” feeling about SeaWorld aquariums—and a news hook for a feature. Hopper reported that shortly after the documentary appeared on Netflix, supporters of the film converged on the Vancouver Aquarium in Stanley Park, rallying to get rid of the beluga whales kept there. Soon after, the Vancouver park board put an end to the breeding programs of most whales and dolphins at the aquarium.

This Blackfish effect was not the first time animal journalism had gone Hollywood. Grizzly Man (2005) told the grim story of a man who trusted grizzly bears too much; The Cove (2009) exposed the slaughter of thousands of dolphins in Japan; and Project Nim (2011) was about the attempt to break the barrier between human and chimpanzee. These documentaries are commercial productions made for entertainment, but after watching them, millions of people became knowledgeable on topics they might not be otherwise drawn to. Animal rights advocate Lesli Bisgould fought long and hard to convince reporters to cover stories about the issue. “It took a long time to get these ideas into the public consciousness,” she says. “But people have now seen these images that are too ugly to forget.”

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Despite the attention that big stories attract, animal journalism still struggles to be taken seriously. Early in the 1990s, editors at The Vancouver Sun put out a call for new column ideas. Reporter Nicholas Read approached them with a concept close to his heart: a regular missive about animals and their welfare. To his great surprise, the Sun decided to give it a try. Read wanted to do something important, since he believed nobody was writing in a serious way about animal issues at that time.

His column, “The Ark,” ran once a week in the Sun beginning November 1, 1991. When John Cruickshank became editor-in-chief four years later, he reduced the column to biweekly appearances. In an email, he explains his thought process behind the cut. Cruickshank felt he needed to make the Sun look more serious in order to compete with The Globe and Mail. “I thought a pet column was kind of flakey. Readers told us they valued it. Live and learn,” says Cruickshank, who is now the publisher of the Toronto Star. Read now teaches journalism at Langara College in Vancouver, and he notes that many reporters’ mindsets regarding animal stories have changed: “People who run news organizations have recognized that they are popular, but they could and should be better.”

That popularity comes with a price—the internet is saturated with critter content that is neither newsworthy nor beneficial to the cause of animal welfare. Bisgould calls it a “chicken or the egg” situation, asking, “Is it the media’s fault for giving us these stories or is it our fault for eating them up?”

The problem isn’t just the steady stream of inconsequential cat photos. According to Casey, animal stories get covered by journalists because they are quick and easy to do, and there is an appetite for them.

In a news clip aired on CTV Calgary last September, a small black bear cub can be seen on a golf course with its mother and two other cubs lounging in the background. The reporter’s voice chimes in, “This oh-so-cute bear cub was caught on camera over the weekend trying to capture the flag at Mountainside Golf Course in Fairmont, B.C.” The cub grabs the flag pin and runs in circles before taking one of the golfer’s balls into the woods. It was, according to the reporter, “a front-row seat to a once-in-a-lifetime show.”

After the network aired the video, other news organizations followed suit and it went viral. CTV Calgary’s managing editor, Dawn Walton, says, “Every time there’s a bear in a tree, it’s always a top story local media covers.”

Eric Taylor, professor of zoology at the University of British Columbia, believes that “fluff” pieces such as the bear video trivialize wild animals and are not newsworthy. As the chair of the federal government’s Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, Taylor can’t find humour in the “fluff” until other important issues get the coverage, readership and action they deserve. Frivolous animal pieces serve primarily as entertainment and as a way to increase gate revenues at zoos.

There will always be coverage when a new exotic animal arrives at the zoo or when a newborn animal gets a name. Rob Laidlaw of Zoocheck Canada, an organization that works to protect wild animals and improve conditions in captivity, says these stories reinforce an idea that it is acceptable to treat animals like surrogate humans.

For others, including Michelle Cliffe, a communications officer for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, the upbeat animal story is a news item that people can relate to. “We are bombarded by bad news,” she says. “Sometimes you need those little things that connect you in a positive way.” The appeal may also lie in the opportunity to see animals that only exist in the wild.

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Although no outlet appears to have dedicated reporters on the animal beat, news organizations have lately shown a willingness to put more resources into such coverage. Kim Elmslie, communications and advocacy manager for the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies, says journalists are taking more time to listen to animal welfare groups and understand complex issues. “When there was a trainer who came out with a series of accusations of things going on at Marineland,” she says, “the Toronto Star really seized that issue.”

In 2012, Diebel received information from a whistleblower claiming that something had gone seriously wrong the previous fall with the water at Marineland. After publishing multiple stories following months-long investigation, Casey, then on contract with the Star, joined Diebel in her 11-month investigation.

It was a major undertaking to convince Marineland employees to violate their confidentiality agreements and speak about the private, seemingly impenetrable company. Since Diebel and Casey published their multi-part investigative series and
ebook, three of the 15 whistleblowers have been sued by Marineland for defamation.

Elmslie says she was impressed by the articles and the depth of the journalists’ expertise. The investigation is a prime example of a news organization that was supportive enough to dedicate the funds and reporting resources to properly cover animal issues. In 20 years, Cruickshank has gone from cutting one paper’s animal column to funding months of full-time work by two reporters on a substantial investigation into animal welfare.

Despite the lawsuits, widespread scrutiny of orcas in captivity is finally making headway in Ontario. At the end of January, the provincial government announced plans to ban the acquisition and sale of orcas. The new rules include guidelines for tank sizes, bacteria content, noise and lighting, appropriate social groupings and other regulations for handling marine mammals. If Ontario passes the legislation, it will be the first province with specific standards for these animals.

Little did Casey know an assignment he received in 2011 as an intern would eventually contribute to more groundbreaking journalism. His editors at the Star sent him to Niagara Falls for a story in the summer of 2011. After a custody battle, a St. Catharines judge had recently ruled that Marineland’s captive orca Ikaika must be returned to SeaWorld Orlando.

“SeaWorld alleged that Ikaika had some mental health issues,” Casey laughs. “As a joke, they told me to go and see if he looked depressed.” Not knowing what a healthy or depressed whale looked like, he went to the courthouse in St. Catharines and pored over boxes of records from the case.

He found out that Ikaika was Tilikum’s son, and the story he wrote was a cautionary tale questioning whether Ikaika would cause any fatalities with his aggression, as his father had. Soon enough, both an investigation into Marineland and the story of Tilikum’s tragic life were engrained in the minds of millions.

These are just some of the many stories that have helped usher in a sea change in the quality of what once was shoddy reporting. The challenge now for Canadian journalism is to maintain the momentum toward influential animal stories. Maybe all it takes is a good, hard look at a warm and fuzzy subject.

A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the OPSCA claimed Marineland failed to adequately care for its animals, and that both Liam Casey and Linda Diebel spearheaded the investigation into Marineland. It was, in fact, eight whistleblowers who made the claim. Casey joined the Star‘s investigation months after Diebel first began reporting on Marineland. The story also incorrectly stated that six sea lions—not seals—were blind or had eye problems. The Review regrets the errors.

Susan Clairmont and her colleague John Rennison are fleeing to safety. It’s April 2003 and Clairmont is covering the case of Maria Figliola, who stands accused of hiring a hitman to kill her husband. According to prosecutors, she wanted her husband gone and she wanted his money so she could continue to buy her boyfriend lavish gifts such as a slick Mercedes-Benz and a steady supply of cocaine. Clairmont is outside Figliola’s home, but a man at the residence is unhappy with the reporter’s presence. He berates her and Rennison with angry threats of violence. He smashes Rennison’s camera and a car window before the pair manages to get away. They drive to the local hospital where a police car waits.

“It was definitely one of the scariest moments of my career,” says Clairmont, who has been a crime reporter and columnist at the Hamilton Spectator for 17 years, covering numerous murders and tragedies. Her crime coverage has taken her across Hamilton, creating what her husband jokingly calls her “murder tour.” When she drives by quiet homes and suburban streets, she talks openly about the cases that led her there.

Murder has always captivated journalists. The notorious Jack the Ripper, who terrorized London in the late 1880s, is still infamous today. By the 20th century, stories of American serial killers like Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer made national headlines. Then, in the early 1990s, Canadians became engrossed in the case of Paul Bernardo and
Karla Homolka.

Today, the widespread success of Sarah Koenig’s podcast Serial has tapped into the human attraction to true crime stories. The first season of the series analyzes the minute details of a single case: the murder of teenager Hae Min Lee in 1999. The podcast recounts in 12 episodes Koenig’s year-long research into Adnan Syed’s controversial trials and conviction for Lee’s murder. The former Baltimore Sun reporter draws listeners in by taking them through the events of the investigation into Syed’s case. Often, when listeners form opinions about Syed’s guilt, Koenig presents information that casts doubt and changes minds. She expresses her own confusion with the case and shares her views with the listener. The podcast forces listeners to ponder life behind bars, or worse, life as a wrongly convicted prison inmate. Koenig becomes a character herself, the model of a reporter-turned-detective digging deeply into a case. One of the reasons Serial is successful is that it involves listeners in the story by raising questions, inciting empathy and encouraging opinion. Serial, created by four women—Koenig and her production team—is an example of crime reporting at its best.

Historical stereotypes see the crime beat, like much of journalism, as primarily a man’s game. But in Canada, women have been strong voices in crime reporting for decades. Female reporters have helped redefine crime journalism and they’re responsible for some of this country’s most powerful stories.

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While some reporters say gender no longer plays a major role in the newsroom, an academic paper published in 2012 by Ann Rauhala, April Lindgren and Sahar Fatima of Ryerson University found otherwise. “Influential beats such as politics and crime remain male-dominated, with women covering a third of those stories,” it states. Their paper cites studies that found women reported only 37 percent of crime stories in 2005, even though crime and politics (two male-dominated beats grouped together in the report) accounted for 50 percent of all news stories.

Still, women are increasingly some of Canada’s leading crime reporters—from Rhiannon Russell at the Whitehorse Star, to April Cunningham at The Telegraph-Journal in Saint John, New Brunswick and Kim Bolan at The Vancouver Sun. Catherine McKercher, a journalism professor emeritus at Carleton University, says it was inevitable for women to become leading voices in crime reporting as more and more women enter newsrooms once overpopulated with male reporters. Chasing criminals, she says, is unpredictable regardless of the reporter’s gender. “It’s a dangerous place for a man to be, too. Why is it more difficult for a reporter just because she’s a woman?”

Clairmont has never questioned her place as a crime reporter. She was always a curious person. On a day when she stayed home sick from grade school, she browsed her mother’s extensive book collection, choosing Truman Capote’s true crime classic In Cold Blood from the shelf. The book contributed to her fascination with crime.

“If I didn’t get into journalism school, I would’ve gone to law school,” she says. Her interest in crime was piqued again when one of her graduate journalism school classes sat in on the
infamous Guy Paul Morin murder and rape trial. In the
courtroom, the case of a man who would be convicted and later exonerated held her attention. She found herself returning to the trial without her classmates.

After completing graduate school, Clairmont began working the crime beat following a gig as a general assignment reporter at The Peterborough Examiner. She was unfazed by danger. While five-months pregnant with her first child, she spent a week covering 9/11 in New York City. “That probably wasn’t the smartest thing I could’ve done,” Clairmont admits, but her curiosity makes her someone who cannot stay away from a story.

For some time now, Clairmont has been covering the double murder trial of Mark Staples, who was arrested in 2010 for the murder of his father and sister. His motive, according to the prosecutors, was money. On a day in late October, the modern, chilly room on the sixth floor of the John Sopinka Courthouse in Hamilton, Ontario, is almost devoid of Staples supporters. While the lawyers present evidence and witnesses take the stand, Clairmont listens intently and occasionally stops taking notes on her iPad to grab her smartphone and live-tweet case updates, which her newsroom colleagues later post on Storify. On an hour-long recess, Clairmont retreats to the media office at the courthouse, uploading a quick brief about the morning’s events.

During her lunch breaks throughout the trial, Clairmont frequently sees Staples. But encountering those accused of heinous crimes outside the courtroom does not seem to throw her—Clairmont has covered some of the most grisly crimes in the city. She reconciles gruesome details and ordinary human interaction every day.

When she started at the Examiner, she primarily worked with men and says she sought to mimic their unemotional attitudes and their focus on perpetrators. Now, her coverage focuses on more than just the accused. She’s particularly passionate about the victims, sometimes preferring to write about them rather than the accused. In reporting on the Staples case, she uncovered that his sister, Rhonda Borelli, had a son whom she gave up after the boy’s father died. She tracked him down and wrote an article introducing readers to a sweet 21-year-old named William Swayze, whose biological parents were both dead by the time he was four.

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On the west coast, Kim Bolan has spent more than 30 years on the job. During that time, she has covered murders, gangs and terrorism in B.C. Crime had always sparked her interest, but her reporting on the bombing of Air India Flight 182 solidified her status as a crime-reporting legend. For three years after the explosion that killed 329 people, she followed three men accused of being involved in the bombing. Years later, she still speaks to families of victims and attends memorial services, writing about them to help the community remember those who were lost. She reported the story despite the assassination of fellow journalist Tara Singh Hayer and the harassment of witnesses, newspaper publishers and reporters. While chasing the story, she travelled to Punjab, India, five times in 20 years, meeting with high-ranking Sikh extremists, along with victims of their violence. She also followed one of the accused men to Pakistan before he was slain in India and tracked down other suspects across the country and in England.

In 1998, Bolan received information that a group she was covering held a meeting to discuss “knocking people off.” Police warned her that she was a target and to exercise caution. In July, while her family was asleep, the sound of a gunshot resonated outside her home. She was awake to hear the shot and a car speeding away. She ran to her bathroom and called 911. Police suspected that people close to the Air India bombers were behind the warning shot. Sikh fundamentalist groups had previously sent her death threats. She investigated terrorist groups in B.C. and was later placed under police protection. The bullet, she says, was meant as both a retaliation and a warning to silence her.

Bolan is gruff and intimidating. She worked with police informant Micheal Plante, who infiltrated the Vancouver chapter of Hells Angels and became a part of the Angels’ drug enterprise. She eventually wrote a six-part series about his time with the gang. The Vancouver Sun exclusive detailed how Plante’s undercover work led to the arrest and conviction of a dozen members and associates of the gang. The investigative series about Plante’s time undercover came largely from Bolan’s experience interviewing him directly, rather than from information provided by the authorities. If she can’t get what she needs from the police, she says, she’ll get it straight from those with firsthand experience.

In the early 2000s, Bolan helped investigate the disappearances of 45 Vancouver-area women, mostly sex workers from the Downtown Eastside. As the list of missing women grew, Bolan and Sun colleague Lindsay Kines kept the story on the front page.

Bolan was on the driveway of Robert Pickton’s Port Coquitlam, B.C., pig farm the night the police executed their first warrant. Her reportage recognized the tragedy of what she witnessed, but was clear and informative. After speaking to an RCMP constable, she wrote: “The excavation and search for human remains at the [farm] resembles the massive undertaking at Ground Zero after the World Trade Center disaster.” Her writing often shows great empathy. She interviewed Pickton’s sister, Linda, who had pleaded with journalists to leave her and her family alone. After Linda reluctantly agreed to speak publicly, Bolan wrote an article discussing the family’s lives after Robert was charged, mixing facts about the family’s finances with clear sympathy for their emotional trauma.

In both 2011 and 2012, Bolan won the Canadian Association of Journalists prize for Daily Excellence. The Vancouver Sun’s editor-in-chief Harold Munro praised her work: “Kim is the best crime reporter in Canada because of her passion for storytelling and relentless pursuit of the truth. She courageously takes on difficult stories—even in the face of tremendous risk to her personal safety.” More than a decade after Pickton’s arrest, Bolan wrote a follow-up about several missing sex workers in a post-Pickton B.C.

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A new generation is continuing the crime-reporting tradition in its own way, leaving a mark on a beat that always draws attention. Before Robyn Doolittle became known as the Toronto Star reporter who exposed Rob Ford’s crack use, she got her start working the crime beat and making important connections in the police force.

She wasn’t the only one. Tamara Cherry moved from writing about crime in The Toronto Sun to reporting crime on television for CTV, covering many high-profile cases in and around Toronto. Cherry has occasionally felt uncomfortable—when canvassing high-crime areas, for instance—but she says she’s never found herself in a position that “my mother would worry about.”

At 30, Cherry’s passion for the crime beat is clear. “I once wanted to go work in Detroit because the crime rate was so high and I thought it would be an exciting place to be a crime reporter,” she says. She decided against the move because she read a local newspaper and noticed most murders did not receive much attention. “I’m happy to live in a country where every murder is a big deal, where we haven’t become complacent when it comes to crime even though our numbers are drastically lower than those south of the border.”

Last May, shortly after Dellen Millard was arrested for the murder of Tim Bosma, Cherry revealed that Millard had exchanged 13 phone calls with another missing person, 23-year-old Laura Babcock. Police had access to the phone records, but it was Cherry’s investigative work that connected these two cases.

Journalists who deliver the best crime coverage recognize their duty to uncover a story, write about it and capture the reader’s attention. And more and more, in Canada at least, if the question is “Whodunit?” women are increasingly the ones answering.

Photos by Megan Matsuda