‘War correspondent. The ultimate test of a journalist’s courage and resolve under the most trying circumstances’
The following is an excerpt from an unpublished book manuscript about Michelle Lang, the only Canadian reporter killed in Afghanistan, written by former Calgary Herald columnist Robert Remington and with files from Michelle’s aunt Catherine Lang. Michelle Lang was an award-winning Herald journalist on a six-week assignment to Afghanistan, when the armoured military vehicle she was riding in struck a roadside bomb on Dec. 30, 2009. She and four Canadian soldiers were killed in the blast.
Lang’s going-away event was subdued. She didn’t want a huge turnout. Just a handful of us were there, having a quiet drink and talking softly. Lang sat close to her fiancé, Michael Louie, so tightly that it almost seemed like the rest of us were intruding on a moment. I was glad I never bought the gag gift. I stayed maybe an hour, gave her hug, wished her well, and left. She was not a gung-ho adrenalin junkie like some reporters I knew who had gone to Afghanistan.
Lang had been in Afghanistan just two weeks and had already managed to get “outside the wire” — off the relatively safe confines of Kandahar Air Field — filing earlier in the week from a Canadian military forward-operating base near the village of Sherwin Ghar in the Panjwaii district. Her story, on a married Canadian military couple’s rare opportunity to spend time together at Christmas in a remote corner of Afghanistan, was heartwarming.
I had no idea that the entire newsroom was in a collective state of anxiety. Animated discussions had been taking place inside the glass office of Editor-in-Chief Lorne Motley with various assistant editors who would normally be off during the Christmas holidays — the Holy Grail of vacation time. Insulated in my office down the hall, I had spent the last hour in a bubble, unaware of the commotion. “I haven’t heard a thing,” I said to Jason. “If I do I’ll let you know.” The atmosphere was tense.
Around 10:30 a.m., assignment editor Michele Jarvie got a phone call from the Edmonton Journal checking a rumour that a journalist had been killed. Lang was the reporter on rotation in Afghanistan for all Canwest papers and it wasn’t clear if The Journal had heard something we had not. A few minutes later, McGinnis got a call from a military source, asking for the name of the Herald reporter in Afghanistan. “For me, that was chilling,” McGinnis recalls.
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