The Paikin Podcast - 10 Wars, 1 Man: Brian Stewart on Four Decades Covering the World’s Crises

Episode Date: September 23, 2025

For decades Brian Stewart was Canada’s eyes on the world – from Nicaragua and the Gulf War to his reporting on the Ethiopian famine which led to international action and the creation of the Live Aid concerts. He joins Steve to discuss his four decades of reporting in warzones, why he “thrived on working in an endless vortex of crises,” the personal costs of bearing witness to history, and the state of the world today. Follow The Paikin Podcast: YOUTUBEhttps://www.youtube.com/@ThePaikinPodcastTWITTERx.com/ThePaikinPodINSTAGRAMinstagram.com/thepaikinpodcastBLUESKYbsky.app/profile/thepaikinpodcast.bsky.social

It was like seeing an apocalyptic world after a nuclear holocaust. You could boil all the worst disasters you can imagine in one. Politics are always involved in a famine. You don't find famines and democracies. Hi, everybody, and thanks for joining us again on the Paken podcast. Well, if Canada's had a better foreign correspondent in the history of broadcast journalism than Brian Stewart, I'm not sure who it could be. He's worked in 10 war zones.

He's interviewed some of the most important historical. historical figures from Nelson Mandela and Margaret Thatcher to Salman Rushdie and Henry Kissinger. So, Brian Stewart, coming up next on the Paken one-on-ones. I am delighted to welcome Brian Stewart, author of a new memoir called On The Paken Podcast, One-on-Wons, presented by Beer Canada. I am delighted to welcome Brian Stewart, author of a new memoir called On the Ground, My Life as a Foreign Correspondent. Brian, so good to see you again. How the heck are you these days anyway? I'm fine and great to see you again, Steve. Really great. Pleasure to have you on the podcast. Before we dive into the actual book itself, I want to start with this. You know, for more than half a century, you have been taught essentially not to put

yourself in the center of any story that you have covered, but of course you can't do that when you're writing a memoir. So I wonder how tough it was to break the habit of essentially leaving your own thoughts aside that you may not have shared during the course of your more formal career and focusing on you? Well, you know, it was really tough at first. I mean, it was really cringe-making. Like, why did I, you know, I didn't plan to say I wanted to write it. Simon Schuster came to me and suggested I do it, and they flattered me into it, which took about two minutes. A bit of flattery and it goes a long way. But, you know, it was very hard at first, but the more I opened doors of recall, the more I began to see the long arc of my life, the

more kind of open and honest I began, then I reminded myself, you know, at 83, you put the old ego away in the drawer and forget about it. So just go for the truth as you remember it. And it got easier and easier. So in the end, it felt quite comfortable being open about just about everything, except my daughter wanted to know all about romances in my past. I drew a line in that. Well, you mentioned one former relationship in the book, the one name. And then, of course, you talked about the courtship of your wife, Tina Sorbotniak. She wanted more than that? Yes.

And she's got a big no. There wasn't much else to tell. There wasn't much else to tell. Well, okay, I won't probe that too much more. But suffice to say, I do remember when David Halton, your CBC foreign correspondent colleague, wrote a book about his dad. And he did include in the memoir about his dad, a lot about his father's extracurricular activities,

if you know what I mean. Now, what do you think about being that open in a memoir? About myself? I think, you know, you have to hit your own comfort level. And I was certainly quite comfortable talking about some of my mental strains doing the job. And then bad decisions I made in life, really stupid decisions. And then foolish moments I had. That didn't bother me the slightest.

Okay, you're going to be delighted to know we're going to get to all that stuff throughout the course of our conversation. All the dumb decisions and things you wish you had back. But I do want to start with, start rather, with the story that I think for so many Canadians really put you on the map, even though you had been reporting before this. And that was the events of 41 years ago. You, in effect, broke the story to the world of the famine in Ethiopia, which was killing so many people.

And here's what you wrote, Brian. You wrote, death was everywhere. The stench overwhelming. A common sight was mothers still carry. carrying a dead child in their arms, reluctant to leave it behind to such horrors. You talk about the stench of death, which I think fortunately, very few people watching or listening to this will know of, certainly not on that scale. Can you help us understand a little better what that's like on that kind of scale? Well, I thought it had been prepared for it. I really

thought, you know, I'd seen a lot in life. I had to prepare and read a lot about famines and other done my research, nothing prepared me for what we saw, which seemed to me when I, the first few days, when we got to the north of Ethiopia, which was the epicenter of the famine, it was like seeing an apocalyptic world after a nuclear holocaust. You could boil all the worst disasters you can imagine in one. Across the landscape, the dust swept, dry dust from the drought. Along these dusty roads, you'd see families trying to walk two, three, four days. to a feeding camp when they'd only had one meal in the last two days. They knew many that weren't going to make it. There weren't enough vehicles to transport them. They had to walk.

Irish nuns said to me, you know, we see the same pattern over and over. A family will come. The father will die first, and then the children will start to die. And finally, it will be the mother trying to keep everybody alive, who may be the last fall by the wayside. And yet it's true. One of the tragedies that many people didn't even want to report on was that the hyenas of the North, having basically run out of cattle to eat because of the drug famine, were attacking the human beings. I saw the corpse of a woman who had been half eaten by a hyena. So they would carry their dead babies along until they got such a point where they had someone had strength to bury them possibly, or they didn't know the child was really dead, where it was dying, but they didn't know

how long they could go. And then we get to these camps that were overflowing. You'd get 80,000 people in one camp that was basically able to half feed 8,000, 10% of the total. And the rest were left out at night, no sanitation whatsoever. Dead bodies were waiting to be collected. And it was freezing. I mean, I didn't think of Ethiopia as a cold place. I don't say freezing, but it was very, very cold. I mean, one of my stand-ups I did, I knelt down to the crowd and refugees and said, I'm wearing three layers of clothing here at the moment,

and I'm very cold all around me. People just dressed in rags trying to get through the night. So all the visual horrors you could possibly imagine and actually beyond what you can imagine, we're what we ran into at that stage. The BBC was there as well, and they actually broke the first story, but they were only allowed in for a day and a half.

For some reason, we've never quite figured out Canada got a visa for weeks on end, and we could go back in. So we were the one network there for many, many days, and we stayed there the longest of any. As you think about it four decades later, are you able to come to any definitive conclusions as to how much of this famine was a failure of agriculture, was an act of God, or was a political act?

Politics are always involved. in the famine. You don't find famines and democracies. It doesn't happen. People will respond, governments will respond to where they have to. You almost always, famine is, follows a series of long agricultural overworking droughts that haven't been properly met with serious irrigation. Often there's a war in the countryside as well. And you have a loof, distant authority authoritative government that basically doesn't care about the people and isn't looking after them that well.

And Ethiopia had all of those. It was a perfect storm of everything. There was a civil war up in the north. It's funny. There was a civil war going on. We hardly even were aware of it because the famine was so much of the story, the fact that they were fighting in the mountains

and hills around us, hardly, you know, we weren't even concerned about it. So they were concerned that we'd be kidnapped, but we actually weren't. I'm going to ask a bit of an uncomfortable question here, but I know there will be some people watching and listening who think it ought to be asked, and so I'm going to ask it. Do you think it was the West's responsibility to solve a problem that either the country itself or the other surrounding African countries were not prepared to solve? It's a very proper question to ask. And at that stage, at that moment of time, it absolutely was the responsibility of the West, because the West knew full well,

given all the other circumstances you've mentioned, that up to six to seven million people were going to die. That was the warning that came out of the United Nations. So the West could have said, okay, other people made this mess. Other people should be looking after it. So we're not going to do anything. And frankly, my opinion was, yeah, we have to step in because anywhere in the world where six or seven million people,

utterly, utterly innocent people are going to die of starvation. You have a responsibility to do it. But at the same time, we needed to come down very hard with a hard lesson to other African countries. You know, you can't go on like that. You have to cooperate more into the regime that, you know, you're not handling this properly. And to others who had made, you know, basically done nothing to do anything. We had to lecture hard and fast with them. And fortunately, Canada led in that lecturing.

We were really the ones that were lobbying the hardest out there. But that's a good question. People are quite right to ask it. But ask yourself then, okay, you hear today that six or seven million people may die, utterly innocent women, children, fathers. If you don't act as a country and as a group, or we can just, because other people should be doing it and not us. Well, I want to pick up on the Canadian angle because you had happened to you what I think everybody who goes into journalism, hopes for, which is to say you put a story on the news and people in decision-making positions

saw that story and then took action based on your work. And, you know, Brian Mulroney was the Prime Minister of the country at the time. He watched your reports and as a result got Canada involved and it begat the Bob Geldof concert, live aid, it begat feed the world in Britain, it begat tears are not enough in Canada. We are the world in the United States. People may remember these efforts by musical artists, there was a genuine international reaction which ultimately saved millions of lives as a result of your reporting. How do you feel about all that? Well, I've said just recently because I thought of this fairly recent. I never in my life felt smaller than I was doing the biggest story of my life. Because at the time, I was so

wrapped up in my own guilt feelings. Like, I must be able to do some more myself here. but I couldn't. I couldn't figure out what to do. I had no talent to do. And I wasn't in Canada to see this. So we were completely isolated. Tony Berman, my producer, my wonderful crew, we were in the northern Ethiopia, where we were out of touch for long periods of the time. When I saw the reaction, I was filled with such a pride for Canada. And I've often thought Canadians have never really had a full account of the brilliance of their action. And the Maroonie government at that time. And of the people of Canada. It wasn't just the government, but it wasn't just the people. It was this remarkable partnership they put together. Joe Clark very much at the

helm of a good part of it, too. Our foreign minister at the time. And these wonderful Canadians, David McDonald and Lewis and others were involved. It was just a remarkable moment. Canada was ahead of Britain. It was ahead of the others. And, you know, I don't know how many people Canada alone survived. I read Cross official and I tried to work at Oatwoman, late night, went very tired, both of us, just counting the amount of aid that had gone in and the numbers who died and were saved. And he figured out probably around 700,000. And this was fairly early on. So, I mean, the fact that Canada, at that time, often was referred to by other countries as the Samarasan nation that always wants to run in and help. That was the moment, I think,

of the highest moment of Canada's reaction. It hasn't been equaled. It wasn't equaled before and it hasn't been equaled since, but frankly. There's a remarkable moment. And it went on for two years. Other countries dropped out after year. But Polster Alan Gregg was doing polls showing two years later that foreign aid was still very high on Canadian priorities because of that. There was a young girl named Birhan, whom you saw when you first got to Ethiopia, you were told that she was so weak, dying of famine, that she would be dead within 15 minutes of your having laid eyes on her. Whatever happened to her? Well, I did a story on what happened to her is we went away from her deathbed because we wanted to give her dignity.

dignity and death. And I went away and we came back to basically film her funeral later that afternoon. And instead of the funeral, we see a group of people standing around smiling and you don't see smiles in Ethiopia at that time. And there was the girl in the arms of a nurse. They'd given her one last needle and she survived. And I did the story saying, if she can survive, maybe Ethiopia can survive. Her face seemed to sum up the struggle of a nation. And then we went back to visit her a bit later and did a report on her how she symbolized the famine. I didn't realize it, but our wonderful editor, brilliant editor for CBC, Colin Dean, put together a long strip of videos from the stuff we had shot in the fields.

And in live a concert in July of next year, 85, David Bowie came out and said, we want to show you what really was this is all about. And they played the CBC tape with Burhan's face at the end of it. That's the time Geldof says, the bones melted, and the world just, the hearts were broken, and the money poured in. Years later, I said, you know, we can't just leave that girl out there back, you had country not knowing anything. So I went back to find her, not thinking, frankly, we would find her, but we found her within

four days. And we've been in touch ever since, you know, I did a documentary on her, life after death. and we were on basically she later got thrown to light aid two or she danced on the stage with Madonna both of us were on the Oprah show and basically she's doing now what she dreamt of when I knew her as a young child she wants to help her people she's started a charity for disabled children in the midst of the often war-torn and very impoverished northern Ethiopia And you can imagine the lot of disabled children in that area without help. And that's what she's trying to do now. Wonderful.

We now Zoom. Our families go back and forth together on weekends and have a little Zoom chess. That's wonderful. Okay. Let me take you back. How old were you when you decided I think I want to be a foreign correspondent for the rest of my life? I have 14. How did you know?

I'm going to school. We're in England for four years in the mid-50s. And I was going to school when I was a day born. I watched television. at night. And I saw the Suez invasion of 1956, the Hungarian uprising, which happened actually the same week. So I was watching these two amazing crises history. And then I noticed these guys standing around with notebooks or cameras or making a report into a microphone and thought, you know, good heavens, people get paid to see history in the making. So I went in and a week later,

I wrote in a school essay. When I grow up, I want to be a foreign correspondent. Of course, the teachers off I was nuts. My fellow students had never heard of the term. And my parents were sort of saying, well, you'll get over it. Don't worry. But that's my guiding ambition from that period on. I wanted really, an old expression of forgive it cliche, but I wanted to see the ringside seed of history, just see it made. And sometimes I was a little too close to the ring. But I did get to see a good swack of a good long, of history being made. Well, we are going to talk in the moments ahead about some of those times you got a little too close to the ring. But there's a line in the book that really stayed with me.

So I wrote it down here. You wrote, for me personally, I thrived on working in an endless vortex of crises and historic moments. Brian, do you know, why? I don't know. I was born in the middle of the Second World War, which I see myself as a post-war baby. But I grew up at a time when war was, all the adults talked about, the kids played war games, we listened to the news. The first news of the story I ever heard, I think, was about a grenade being thrown into a place called Gaza.

And I was about four or five or six and I asked, remember asking my mom, what's this Gaza thing? What's this grenade, which goes to show history turns. And I just grew up with good history classes in school, very interested in history, I listened to news because my parents read newspapers a lot and often loud. And so when I was in school, I loved military stories and war stories and history, history, history. And that's basically, I think, what turned me on to that life, but also kind of my generation of reporters. We've grown up in that cycle. And we saw as the world changed and went from film to video and then to satellites.

and we were into this continuous speeding up world of giant events, giant events, good events, bad events, crises. It just seemed natural and very invigorating. I look at it now, and of course, it's a very emotional deal. Well, one of the kids you went to school with back in the day was a guy named Conrad Black. What was he like back then? And he was controversial even then, as Conrad Will Wright himself. He had stolen exam papers at Upper Canada College, started to bowl.

black market and got kicked out with some other kids. And he was a, he was sort of a celebrity even then when he was 16. So we ran into each other going to school. And he seemed kind of a lonely guy, so he went up to chat. And the next thing, you know, we were talking wildly and enthusiastically, but a French army going in to break up a rebellion of white settlers in Algeria and Algerian war. I realize this guy knows more history than I do. And he's actually more, he's strategically quite a doubt. So Conrad Black at 1617 was saying, you know, the, really the French marshals under Napoleon, you know, there's 15 of them should have moved here, should have moved there. And he was, we still have those same conversations to this day. It's funny because

we've been great friends. We traveled a lot when we were young. We had the same politics, believe it or not, for a long time when we were young. Now when I, we refer to our friendship, I say our political views are a galactic space between us. It's like mercury and zenism. You go further than that, Brian. You say that there are some topics that you simply cannot discuss with him anymore because, you know, it would start World War III if you did. Do I assume that President Trump is one of those subjects? Yes.

General MacArthur was the other one, the American General, which I think was overrated under the door to it. We decided after our debates about Trump, he was very admiring at Trump, who he knew personally, and was friendly with, and I thought he was loyal to a fault. We're so strong, and we couldn't have dinner together without basically falling into a pro-and-com Trump thing, that we declared a DMZ, a demilitarized zone, with the word, the T-word was not permitted to be used. We still have dinner trying to adhere to the DMZ.

Once or twice, there's a mortar shot from him that comes down, an expression about Trump, and then I'd call it before a little international, board of inquiry, going to pin the blame. So we still have, we just again said we can't discuss Trump, but we don't. That's how our friendship can continue in this day and age. Well, okay, let me throw a high tight fastball at you right here. Do you think Conrad Black should have taken a pardon from Donald Trump? Yes. Well, you know, I'm talking him as a friend now. That's a good hard bow one. That's a zinger right by my ear. What do I think?

It meant a lot to him. I think it wouldn't have meant as much to other people, but to him with so many friends in the United States and so many contacts have been a lot. So the other thing is Conrad absolutely is convinced. He was innocent. And, you know, he does have judge friends who are judges and legal experts who believe that he was basically railroaded.

You know, I think part of his animosity towards the Democrats and fierce liking of Trump is almost the kind of revenge on America. He had a Democratic prosecutor in Chicago. He thinks that sort of Democrats railroad. I won't take a stand on that, but certainly he thinks he's innocent. And he has some strong legal advice that also believes that. So, yes, he took a pardon as a man who believed he should never have been convicted in the first place. He, of course, famously went to jail.

and you visited him in jail. Was that awkward? I thought it would be, but the first time he walked in his visiting room was kind of like a 1950s high school, the cafeteria, those tables and chairs, and he led out of the special door that he comes through. He's wearing this prison jumpsuit, which I immediately thought, it looked pretty uncomfortable, actually. I wouldn't mind having one in some kind of army boots. He had this wry smile on his face because only some years earlier, a few years earlier,

we had dined in the House of Lords dining room, the greatest splendor. Here we were in the Coleman Federal Penitentiary in Florida. Within 10 minutes, it was exactly like old time. We were walking down burgers and what's from a machine and talking about old Franklin Roosevelt era, Kennedy Nixon or wars and campaigns of the past. And I think we went on for about four or five hours, a very, very lax visiting hours. And, yeah, so I went back two more times

and would have made it more, but the wife was visiting, sorry, or Ariel was visiting all frequently. You can only get so many visits per week on this month. But we had fun, we had laughs. And, you know, I was very struck by how comfortable he seemed in prison. He said, you know, I get to write a lot. I get to read a lot.

I have some very good friends here. He's studying the piano. He taught classes in prison. Yeah, he taught. And he schooled a lot of kids in their high school passing whatever it is in the United States. He was very, very popular with a lot of the inmates there. And I think some of the staff as well. And he gave lectures on, you know, the history of the American War of Independence.

And the guards would show up as well as the prisoners. It was very, very popular. He gave a lecture to the black inmates on the civil rights movement because he was so knowledgeable about it. They were very appreciative. One of the nice things about your writing a memoir is that I get to ask you some questions that when you were a reporter on CBC News, you never would have answered, but now you have to.

So here we go. I take you back to 1968. The phenomenon known as Trudeau Mania bursts onto the system. scene. You cover it. Pierre Trudeau becomes prime minister in 68. And I wonder whether you will fess up to being as smitten with him at the time as so many other Canadians were. I really wasn't. I had been told just before the liberal convention when I was a young reporter to keep an eye on this rising minister. And the Gazette was not fond of him. All the editors are always talking, well, he's a terribly pompous. Not very colorless, too. And then he'd be

coast explodes into this Trudeau phenomena. And I thought, well, I was pretty interesting, but I kind of thought he found a bit arrogant, actually, to tell you the truth. Other people seem to think he was wildly wonderful. And so I was put on the plane with him. So I crossed Canada at the very moment that Trudeau mania, such as was, was being formed. And I got to see the good side of Trudeau. I thought he was very studious, very polite to people around him. And a real gentlemen at times, very cold at other times. And a little bit weary of all the fan. That was really struck me. He got quite tired of hero worships in that after a while. And, you know, I covered him during his biggest rally of always in Toronto Square, down by city all. When I think they

had something over 100,000 there. And I wrote a piece saying the day was not filled with Trudeau Mania. And when I got back to my Gazette newspaper, this grumpy old editor, one of the worst grumps of all the grumps there, came out. So why did you have to use that awful word? Now everybody's starting to use it. And it's just going to make this guy more popular. There was a black mark on me. So I've always had a little bit of a shame. I've seen other people credited with using the word.

They're welcome to it. I never meant it to become symbolic of an age. It was just for one little news story. well a couple of years later you found yourself in montreal as a city hall reporter covering what i suspect has still been one of the truly awful crises of canadian history namely the f lq crisis i wonder how scary it was for you to be living in montreal and watching in effect martial law take over the streets of your city i didn't actually find it scary at all i found it wildly exciting and uh you know the stories you've got a bit in your mouth that i didn't really fear of the

the FLQ were going to blow me up, though they set off an awful lot more bombs and Canadians are aware of. And I was covering, because it was covering City Hall, when the British trade minister was, the consul was kidnapped, and the Labor Minister of Quebec was kidnapped, and the military were about to be called in. I was right at Ground Zero because it was the Quebec government, City Hall and Ottawa were making the decision. And I've always felt, because I was getting quite quite close to Mayor Jean-Drapeau at the time, this wonderful strong man, mayor of Montreal. I thought, because a year earlier, the Montreal police had gone on strike if you can believe the whole city had the military come in then. No, it was, I thought, I think they were going to

call on it again. So I kept trying to ask him if the military were coming. And he wouldn't let me, he kept saying, you're going to, you won't believe what you're going to see in the next few hours, Mr. Stewart, you're going to see something that's going to surprise you. I say, well, black feminism, you wouldn't tell me. But my theory then was, if I can just interject this, I think one of the unknown reasons or undiscussed reasons why the military were called as the mayor of Montreal, Jean-Dropos, was fearful the police might go on strike again, or at least hold the potential for a strike in the midst of this crisis over its heads put yet another pay demand because there were very, sort of a very vigorous police union, let's call it that.

And I think that led Drapo to talk to the others to some extent, and the chaos is possible in Montreal. But, you know, Steve, to your question, when you're doing these stories, you get so wrapped up in them. You know, you're just living morning, noon, and night. It's all you can think of and dream of it. and whether I need to is this thought of the story, the story, the story, the story, what's your break? What can you break? That I found a sort of euphoric period of the great. Brian, one of the interesting things about doing a podcast these days is that you need support to keep them going. And so I have to do an ad read right now. And the ad read is about beer. And after I finish this ad read,

I'm going to ask you a question related to beer. But in the meantime, get comfortable for a second, as I tell folks about a message coming to them from beer Canada. Here we go. Canada, as we all know, is in the midst of an ongoing affordability crisis, and it no doubt affects many of the people listening and watching this. Canadians have the right to know whether their governments are making life more or less affordable. The organization representing Canada's brewers wonders if you knew that in Canada, 46% of the price of beer is government taxation. 46%. Canada imposes higher tax.

taxes on beer than any other great beer nation, higher than Germany, Belgium, Mexico, the U.S., the UK, Brazil, Denmark, and Ireland. At 46% it's higher than any other country in the G7. And Canada's already, very high beer taxes go up annually and automatically. And Beer Canada says that the powers that be hope that you won't notice that. They call it sneaky, and they also think automatic is not democratic. Now that you know, you can do something about it, Beer Canada would like to help stop this practice. of automatic beer tax hikes, and they encourage you to go to this website, hereforbeer.ca. That's hereforbore.ca. And ask yourself, why does the best beer nation

have the worst beer taxation? And that's a message in the interest of fairness and transparency from our friends at Beer, Canada. Now, that's something I never used to do, and you've never had to do, but welcome to the world of podcasting. And now that we're on the subject, you've met so many politicians and political leaders and important people over the years. Who's the one you'd really love to sit down and have a beer with tonight? That's a very interesting question, indeed. Not like for Wences, a bit of a grump. We're a leaders, not Fatscher, that's for sure.

We're going to get to her. We'll get to her. I think Brian Mulroney would be actually an awfully interesting person. to sit down to have a pair with. I got a little respect for him. He was always so human. He was the funniest of them all. You know, he could tell a story better than them all.

And the ones I met, that would be probably my boat right there. Gotcha. Now, I learned in this book that you started as a newspaper man. I didn't know anything about your career before CBC. Why the move to television in the first place? I was so happy in print. I just loved everything about print. I love the Montreal Gazette, and I would hear it to this day.

They came to me and wondered if I'd like to do the evening supper time during a fair show. And I thought, well, I'm terrified of TV. I didn't like it when I took one couple days of it at Ryerson University when I was going through journalism. They took it into a studio, and I thought, this is awful. I was frightened, but I thought, you know, but I want to be a foreign correspondent. And CBC is the place to go because the print profession didn't have that many at the time. The CBC was just getting more bureaus overseas. So that was really the thing I went into.

I thought I'd do it for a couple of years. I thought I'd say, well, I wouldn't mind being a little micro celebrity for a year. It might be kind of fun to be recognized in the street. Well, those kind of ignoble things as well were praying on my mind. But basically it was a fast way to become a foreign correspondent. It took me seven or eight years in television in Ottawa, working with him Ottawa, CBC's first investigative reporter, breaking stories and having time of my life, just loving it, before I got the nod to go overseas to London and become foreign correspondent.

The dream was fulfilled. Well, let me ask you about, sure, let me ask you about Central America, where you did a lot of reporting and Nicaragua in particular. The Somoza dictatorship was terrible, and much of the world cheered when the Sandinistas won a civil war and took over. But then they started to imprison their political enemies, and they co-zied up to the Soviet Union. So my question is, at the end of the day, were they any better under the Sandinistas than they were under the Somacistas? Possibly less corrupt, possibly a bit debatable that, maybe less of a bully boy. And I think they were, they were less murderous, let's put it that way.

I think they were less bodies found. But no, they became an awful dictatorship of themselves. That's one of the heartbreaking things when you see. What seems to be a popular revolution take power, and everybody has this wonderful euphoria. Now everything's going to be different. And they did some good things, Sandinistas. You know, the schooling system got much, much better.

Farm kids got a chance to go to school. But basically the same old series of boys. bully boys got back in the power somehow or the same kind of types. And it was a very, very disappointing experiment. But, you know, I had come from the next door, El Salvador, which was an absolutely hair-raisingly terrifying place to be at that stage. And so I thought, this is good, this is good, it's going to be a good revolution that will serve the people well.

And it was disappointing, very disappointed. You do talk in the book about how many of the people that you knew, and reported on over the years, were killed while doing their jobs. You talked earlier in our discussion here about getting a little too close to the ring in boxing. How worried were you when you were doing your job that you could be killed at any moment? I was certainly worried in El Salvador because the regime, which was an extreme right-wing regime, fighting the guerrilla force of the left, saw the media, the world media,

is an absolute no enemy. So a journalist would be shot at, kidnapped, threatened all the time. And while I was there, I was nervous every single moment I was outside the hotel. And in fact, I even had to have a shower in my room. In the morning, I was nervous. Somebody would walk in and plug me there. So that was scary, scary. In Beirut, we had a lot of very frightening moments.

So I think that what affected me more were not the single moments of real, almost terror. They were the grinding morning, noon, and night feeling in your stomach that something awful could happen at any moment to you or your friends. You just had to live with that. And you try to party yourself through it a lot, you know, as part of the camaraderie. But, you know, that can be very wary after a while. You're under more stress than you think you are often because there's fear of something happening, sudden bombs, sudden kidnapping. It's always there. In your view, was there any story you covered that was worth dying for?

I would say Ethiopia was. Certainly, Beirut was not. Lebanon was not. The wars I covered were not because they went on long after you, happened to you. But it went long after you were there. And little you could have done would have made much of an impact. But I do think Ethiopia was one that I was worth dying for. That was certainly was one.

And I guess in a bigger sense of the way, although it wasn't threatened, the fall of communism was one. You could see the freedom gained by tens upon tens upon tens of millions of people who finally broke and free of the bonds of bullying and abysmal leadership was really a great issue. Human rights issues were stories I love to do. I love to feature the rights workers and the rest of it. But of all the stories, to die for, I would say, you know, for it. Well, I've got to ask the obvious follow-up, which is if some of those other stories,

where you could have been killed, were not worth dying for, why the hell did you go? I didn't really think I would die. You know, I thought I might be wounded. I thought I just had this silly idea in my head that I would be very careful, very good at what I was doing, and I would not get myself killed.

Of course, things happen. like a flight in an airplane or two, but I thought, oh, the end is coming. I could tell that. I just felt that was risk and reward to get the reward that I wanted, which was to see this history made before me, to be fascinated to be part of the 20th century of the 21st century, was worth the risk of running, even getting killed. The pursuit itself was, you had to take a risk. ice car driving or something like that. You didn't risk your life when you sat down with former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for seven minutes, but you did certainly risk getting your ears wrapped by her,

which she was famous for doing. How entertaining were those seven minutes for you? They were not entertaining in this latest. That was a moment of real fear. First of all, we were invited to interview. We never asked for an interview with Margaret Thatcher. We're sitting on desk the day before, and they said, be there at the number 10 Down East Street at 10 tomorrow for your interview with Margaret Thatcher.

And my producer, Berman, looks at me and says, our interview. And I said, we didn't ask for any interview. I think they mistook is for CDB, which had a morning show. Because the first thing they ask is when you get to number 10 is, when's your commercial break in your morning show? And Berman and I looked at each other, morning show. And they obviously saw, they had made some terrible goof. So I kind of said, we're going to be fine.

We'll have a commercial break or something that looks like a commercial break. were led out and sit down opposite Margaret Thatcher, in a way I very much respected as a very courageous leader and a talented leader in many ways, but very frightening person because she loved the title of Iron Lady. And she absolutely loved slicing and dicing reporters who slipped up and all. My fear during the interview was that she would find out, she would ask me, and how long have you been with CTV? I was going to say, Prime Minister, you've got the wrong person sitting here. I mean, what would it happen to me then in my career?

So I got through it. But the funny thing was, when I later got back to the office, I couldn't find a show on CBC that actually wanted an interview with the doctor because you know, you have to make space for these things. You have to be planned. Nobody actually wanted it. So Berman and I had to get on the call saying, come on, you got to run the British Prime Minister.

They finally ran it, and I watched it. It was a terribly boring interview. I was obviously so nervous. I didn't do a good job. Well, let me suggest you fared a little better than your friend Peter Mansbridge did when she really did attack him in the midst of his interview with her. Did you two ever compare notes over your respective interviews? Well, he actually got the slice and dice treatment.

I didn't. I came out walking home. He came out of his interview. When Fatsy did her classic prick, she doesn't like a question, and if she was promoting her book, because she turns up, you obviously didn't read that book. You didn't read this book at all, did you? And she said that several times ago.

He hadn't read the book. But, you know, you know, but, you know, you're stunned. How do you reply to that? You know, he was tempted to say, I may not have read it, but did you actually write it? That would have been a good comeback. But, you know, that would. I want to ask you about the Middle East, which, unfortunately, still, decades and decades and decades and decades on, is still in the news for all the wrong

reasons. You reported in the early 1980s from Lebanon during its war with Israel. And here, you know, here we are four decades later and the region is still in flames. Can you imagine it ever not being this way? Almost not. I have a sense in my mind, okay, there's going to be a breaking point for everybody here. And they realize, look, this is madness. We simply cannot go on like this. And you're going to have the Arab countries coming together, as they've started to do already in state of Lamas, this is that no more of this kind of war.

And there's going to be pressure on these proxy armies to stop their eternal war against liquidating Israel, you know, which is they're not going to guess. I mean, it's a mind-numbing campaign that never ends. And you're going to get Israel being listened to you. having to listen to a great deal of international pressure and say, this has got to end. We have got to get some formation of a Palestinian state. And we all want it to work. So we're all going to contribute to this area.

We're all going to help rebuild Gaza. We're all going to try and make a Palestinian state that will be peaceful. And it'll be peace that will also guarantee that Israel won't have to keep going through this endless cycle of combat. and they're sending off their young reservists and the rest of it, into wars that only cause it now more and more of its reputation. So maybe there's a breaking point in this, because I must say the images coming out of that war, the facts, the world condemnation, the rest of it, and the pressure on all politicians to what's your stance, take a stance, is such now that if there's ever going to be a breaking point, this probably should be it, will be it. I want to ask you about some of the differences you encountered between doing journalism for a Canadian channel versus an American one, because in 1986, you went to NBC and did something that a number of Canadian journalists have done over the years, and that has worked for a big American network. What's the biggest difference between the two? The biggest difference is when you're working with the American network, the overwhelming story at all times is how does this affect the White House or the Pentagon or the voters back open in the United States?

States. And if you try and get into questions I sometimes do, say, well, you know, how does this affect, too, the allies like Canada and get a response, but Brian, you have to realize nobody here cares about Canada. They were quite humorous in the way they would put it, but that's the way they would put it. And that was the real difference. There's one other difference that was quite striking. And then as they're so competitive on the American networks, they live, they live in terror that they're going to have a better story on the opposite networks. the next day, careers might be thrown into ruin. In Canada, that's not the case.

I mean, CBC actually never had a very strong, competitive feeling with CPD. We got along well in the field. We all liked each other, and we're basically doing our own thing, public broadcaster and private. But in the United States, it's much more of the, you know, feed the monster jungle out there. So, you know, I loved NBC. It was a very nice network to work for back then. I like the people there. But I ended up in the end saying, this is not for me.

I mean, a competitive world to see it trying at one minute and 30 seconds on, unless some story that's going to affect what Democrat might run for a president or not is not for me. And I decided I'd drop out of the news industry, which is my plan at the time. Well, the conventional wisdom has always been that America has just infinitely more resources for its national networks to cover news than Canadians do, but that we do it better. At least that's what we like to think. Do you think that's actually true?

Yes, in some ways we do. By the way, they had more resources than a lot more resources. I thought there were times of ludicrous resources. But I think there's a more serious cast to a lot of the Canadian networks when we were at least in the game with sort of comprehensive. competitive internationally, you know, I think we do have a more worldly view and a Canadian view that's very important. This is not to put the Americans down so much, though.

I mean, they have some wonderful correspondence that do remarkable work out there. I'm taking grave risks. It's just that, you know, it always comes back to the same two or three issues, it seems. In the late 1990s, your health took a real turn for the worse. And you talk about this in some detail in your book. You got depressed. Your body started to ache. Your knees were shot.

What was happening then? I was having a nervous breakdown, as we used to call it, in the old days. And it came onto me, but it's quite a surprise. So I had noticed myself getting more stressed out in weeks fast. And I was rushed because I thought I had a stroke to Sunnybrook Emergency Ward. And I overnighted there. and I came out of one cycle of nervous breakdown and left and a few weeks later, I had the same cycles of tingling in arms and inability to speak and horror in the eyes.

And very fortunately, while I was there, I ran into this remarkable psychiatrist, Anthony Feinstein, who was revered amongst journalists basically around the world as a guy who was pioneered studies in the way PTSD has affected reporters and other emotional impacts. And he used me as kind of the beginning of a whole study of international reporters around the world who have these terrible nervous reactions to what they've seen and what they've experienced. In some cases, it's reactions to extreme danger. In other cases, it's reactions to the horrors they've witnessed. The term witness is what you're doing all the time. You're being a witness. Well, at some point, witness carries with it that sense of guilt that you're not

doing enough. So I didn't have PDSD. I was tested for him. I didn't have it, which was a bit of a mystery. Had good therapy, got well, went back to work and I good solid back into my career. But as time went on, we went back more to this theory of moral injury. I think I was suffering for moral injury, which is that feeling that you're there seeing these horrible things happen the people and you're not doing enough to help. You're not being as good a person as you might be. And it is devastating a lot of journalists now, but not just journalists. People work in the aid field, soldiers who see things they wish they could have stopped or would have stopped. Politicians even who work in these areas feel they didn't do enough. And that's a heart

with the treat. It's a wound on the soul. It's a kind of spiritual damage that's done. And that's how you've just got to work your way through the therapy and come back to the realization that you couldn't have helped as much as you wanted to. And if you help more, you would still have not needed to help. You've still felt the desire that need to help even more than that. It doesn't end to be a cycle of your own vortex in a way of guilt feelings. So I'm out of that now. But I'm very interested in seeing that cause of understanding moral injury, understood more in the world because I know it's devastated so many reporters out there.

We see them before the camera and say, oh, there's an awful risk they run. I get killed him. I get kidnapped. You don't quite understand the inner struggles that goes on that kind of work, kind of job. So it can be very, very telling, draining. Brian, the next question I have for you, you actually don't discuss in your book, but as a guy who has written the first draft of history for so many different stories

over so many years, I'm kind of interested in your take on what you think is happening right now in our broader society where there, I think it's fair to say, has been a bit of a movement over the last decade or so to reevaluate, for example, the kind of people who were prime ministers or premiers in the past of this country and whether they ought to be judged by the standards of 21st century Canada based on what they did back in the 1860s or 70s or whatever. Where do you come down on all that? Well, I come down on the feeling very strongly that you cannot judge somebody who was, you know, in government in 1840s or 1850s by the standards of the day. They wouldn't know what we were talking about half the time. Any more than

politicians and us, us doing all these judgments will understand that, you know, 120 years from now, people would say, how could people be so damn dumb in that era? I mean, how can we possibly Obama must be blamed for something. He didn't stop factory farming of chickens or something. Standards will change and people will be judged differently. And to judge these people, some people who even did a lot of good in their lives, are judged for one element that they did badly. And I think there's a time when you've got to say, you know,

things were so different than we don't have time machines, unfortunately. It'd be wonderful to be able to go back before the American Civil War and tell people how to avoid a civil war. But we don't have that ability. People who stumble into it were probably often trying their best to avoid it, but they couldn't. And we don't have a time machine to go forward 150 years and say, okay, you guys back there in 2025. This is a stupid thing you're doing. Stop it, you know. What you think you're doing is good, is not going to turn out to be too good from now. So we don't have the time machine that permits us to be judgmental in all these cases. Some cases, sure. Now I want to find out if I can push the guy who tried to keep his

opinions out of all of his news stories to offer some opinions on things that you probably never did during your journalistic career. And I want to start with this. Who during your lifetime was the best prime minister of Canada? My lifetime, I'd say Pierre Trudeau. And, I'd say, and But it would be neck and neck, I think, with Brian LaRoney. But I'd say, I have to come down for one, so I'd say Pietre, though. Because? Because he did have a sense of moving this country forward. He handled the Quebec situation, you know, which was the most dangerous situation I've seen in Canada in my lifetime until perhaps recently.

He did handle that. And, you know, he made his proud in the world for a long period of time. And he gave a kind of panache to Canadian politics that really wasn't there before. And, you know, in the end, when he left power, he was friends with a lot of conservatives and a lot of conservatives were friends with him. It was a civilized government in those days. Best president of the United States in your lifetime? In many ways, I won't even hesitate here in my lifetime.

Well, of course, remember, I was the latter in FDR in 1942, so I'm not going to claim, really, the FDR. I say Lyndon Johnson, frankly. I think that Lyndon Johnson saved America at a time, though he got terrible mistakes in Vietnam. I remember that civil rights war, really, almost a civil war going on the United States. And the difficult job he had of convincing the southern states to come in or the southern politician to support a civil rights bill that basically made America possible in future. I don't know how it would have spun. His beginnings of the war of poverty and the rest of the raise the social consciousness of America. He was a tragic figure.

He was a great politician. He had great vision. He did wonderful things for America, yet he stumbled horrifically in Vietnam, and that's what you'll always be remembered for, probably, is Vietnam. Just finally, as you pointed out, you're 83 now, which I find kind of shocking, because you're still pretty, you're pretty bloody vigorous for 83, I got to say. But having now completed this memoir, what's next for you? You know, I'm very anxious to put my feet up, grab some books, and get a little bit as far away

It's today's spinning vortex as I can for a while. So I've actually gone back to reading my Homer. I've decided that go back to ancient Greece and get into the Iliad again and the Odyssey. It's just a wonderful way to get back to another era. I'm doing a lot of that now. Going back to history, which was really in school, my first love, that's when I'm going to spend a lot of time. I don't plan to write any more.

I don't think Tina after 36 years of marriage would add a 37th year. that telling if I was to say, darling, I'd like to start an espionage novel. I think that would be the end. Well, you know, next year is going to be the 70th anniversary of your wanting to be a foreign correspondent, so you better start planning for something exciting for that. I just thought I hadn't had. Thank you. I shall start doing that. It's all yours. Brian, we are happy to recommend for people's reading enjoyment on the ground. My life is a foreign correspondent, and we're delighted that it's brought you to the Paken podcast today. All good wishes. Peace and love to you and yours.

Thanks, Steve. Thanks a lot. Nice to join you.