Canada Unscripted: Conversations With Canadian Media Icons

Excerpt from Brian Stewart Interview

VIC: But did you ever struggle with the role of journalist versus witness?

BRIAN: Absolutely. I mean, I’ve done a few things that felt helpful, but there was always guilt. I’d be standing there with my camera, then going back to my hotel. What am I really doing? Am I just a voyeur? I remember Bangladesh during the famine. I didn’t go on assignment, I went on my own—I wanted to understand what starvation felt like. I found a family I could shadow, try to grasp what they were living through. But by the end of the first day, I couldn’t do it. The guilt was overwhelming. I could go back to my Hilton. Was I just exploiting this? The emotional weight became stronger as the years went on.

Eventually, that helplessness evolved into what I now know as?moral injury. It stayed with me. I’d think back to families we passed by the side of the road—people who had to walk for two days to reach help. And I’d wonder: couldn’t we have put a few people in our van? We always had a few U.S. bills in our pockets. Couldn’t we have done more? But then the questions haunt you—am I playing God, choosing one family over another? That line of thinking sticks with you. Sometimes it hits harder?years later?than in the moment. I still think about what we could have done for those people.

VIC: Any particular story you’d want to share from that time?

BRIAN: Well, maybe I’ll come back to that, but just to cover how I got into television—originally, I was in print. My first love. I worked for the?Montreal Gazette in the ’60s—an incredible time for journalism. The Expo year, Centennial, 1967. I’d just come back from two years working in London in print. Joined the Gazette, and it was fantastic—nightlife, politics, culture. I wasn’t married, life was fabulous. I was the first reporter, I believe, to use the term “Trudeaumania” in a news story. Then came the FLQ, the October Crisis—all of it unfolding around us.

Near the end of the ’60s, I was offered a chance to work in?local TV. It was never in my plan. I figured I’d try it for a year—see what it was like—and I stayed. That was around ’69. I joined a show in Montreal called “Hourglass” as a studio host. Then, in ’73, I became the CBC’s first investigative reporter on television, based in Ottawa. I spent about six or seven years doing investigations and foreign affairs reporting, and that led to my first overseas assignments. Eventually, I was posted to London.

But through it all, I still felt like a?newspaper man working in TV, not the other way around. And I think that newspaper discipline—structuring stories, writing clearly—it served me well. Even so, I knew nothing about television at first. I was terrible. But later, based in London with my producer, Tony Berman, we caught wind of a?famine?in Ethiopia.

This was 1984. We’d already come through Beirut and other war zones that had left their mark. But in ’84, we were one of the first crews, along with the BBC, to get into?northern Ethiopia, into Tigray—ground zero of the famine. On November 1st, 1984, we aired our story. And I think it shook Canada. The response was unprecedented—an outpouring of compassion, support, donations. But for me, it was just the beginning of a series of devastating assignments. I returned to Ethiopia several times, also to Sudan, where we covered child slavery, refugee crises—it just kept getting darker.

I don’t want to sound dramatic, but at times it felt like descending into a?vortex of horrors. Each story pulled us deeper—across barren, drought-stricken lands, into camps filled with tens of thousands of people slowly dying. It felt like the aftermath of a nuclear war. And we were just trying to make sense of it, document it—witness it.

I remember a couple of times people said to me, “We know you Canadians are just Americans in disguise. You come in here trying to act all special, like the Swiss or something. But we know what you are.” That really got my heart pounding, because I knew what that kind of suspicion could lead to. It became something I worried about. But aside from a few tense moments, I didn’t encounter much suspicion. During the Cold War, when I went to East Germany or Poland for CBC, we were just seen as another NATO member. We got the same level of scrutiny as the rest—watched carefully, but nothing out of the ordinary.

VIC: And didn’t North Korea at one point use maple leaf insignias to confuse the enemy?

BRIAN: Yes, exactly! They’d put maple leaves on their equipment—trying to pass as Canadian peacekeepers. There was so much confusion about who was who, and so we always tried to be very clear: “We’re not Americans.” We leaned into Canada’s reputation for neutrality. It helped us feel more human, less politically threatening.

Looking back, that was one of our strengths. Being from Canada gave us confidence. We knew that most places we went, we’d be met with goodwill. People were usually helpful. Rarely did we find real animosity toward Canada. There were exceptions, of course—like South Africa. During the Mulroney years, with his vocal opposition to apartheid and support for Mandela, there was definitely suspicion from some white South Africans. They saw Canada as playing a mischief-making role. But that was rare.

Most of the time, I felt this strong sense of:?we’re the good guys in the story. We’re Canadian television. We’re not exactly peacekeepers, but we’re close. CBC News had this reputation—calm, neutral, peace-loving. That gave us a moral footing. And then there was the freedom we had. The CBC gave us extraordinary independence. Other journalists would say to us over drinks, “You guys are so lucky.” Their networks needed to know their exact location every hour of the day. We could vanish for two or three days to chase a story.

VIC: You could write what you wanted?

BRIAN: Exactly. We’d decide what the real story was. We’d talk it through with head office, but they trusted us. They believed we were capable. And that kind of trust fuels you. It makes you want to do your very best. We’d say to ourselves, “We can’t let them down.” The last thing we wanted was to send home something weak—something subpar. The standards back home were high. You felt them behind you. And I think that’s why we worked so hard. You didn’t want to disappoint the team that believed in you.

BRIAN: I remember being on a trip with Bill Cunningham. We’d be sitting in a bar and I’d feel this guilt—like, “They brought me here. They’re backing me. I’d better find something worthwhile.” So I’d go back out and chase more leads, even when I was dead tired. It’s a kind of reverse psychology. They didn’t pressure us directly. They didn’t micromanage. But precisely because they didn’t, we pushed ourselves harder.

VIC: Because they believed in you.

BRIAN: Exactly. That belief made you anxious—not in a bad way, but in a way that kept you striving. The worst feeling would be to return with nothing. Nothing strong. Nothing original. You wanted to prove that CBC had made the right choice in sending you.

There was something else: a real?pride of nationality. We didn’t talk about it often, but we felt it. In the ’80s, we felt like Canadian television news was entering a golden age. We were competing with the BBC, with the Americans—and they noticed us. At feed points, they’d see our material, and they’d compliment us. They knew we were doing excellent work.

To me, it felt like: Good. Canada’s on the podium now. Not just in sports, but in journalism too. By that period, CBC had really become a top contender. It was known for its strong work. We took genuine national pride in doing stories with more context and nuance than what the Americans—or even sometimes the BBC—were feeding that night. That pushed us forward too. There was always this expectation that we’d perform well, and a real desire to show that Canadians were as good as anyone at this game. We were motivated—not just to do the job, but to excel. To not let our energy drop, to never go slack. We all bring our own background, values, and upbringing to the work. So the question becomes—how important is honesty when you’re reporting a story?

Because you’re inevitably looking through your own lens. And what’s reality for you may be completely different for someone else. But how you feel—how you deliver it—goes into people’s homes and can shape how they see the world.

VIC: There’s that famous image—the photo of the colonel shooting the prisoner in Vietnam. It changed public perception instantly.

BRIAN: Absolutely. One picture can change everything. And that’s a huge part of the responsibility. Sometimes, the visuals are so powerful, they overwhelm the story—and maybe that’s okay. Take Ethiopia, for instance. Video was still relatively new, especially satellite video. So Canadian audiences saw the footage almost the same day. And we were showing them brutal, horrifying, gut-wrenching images of famine—images they hadn’t seen before.

And I knew: yes, the visuals will carry this story. But I still had a job to do. Because it wasn’t just about food and emergency relief. The deeper story was about systemic failure. That famine wasn’t a one-off—it kept returning every ten years. So the real message was: we need long-term development solutions, not just aid. In those cases, we had to fight the visuals—to insist there was more to say. At CBC, we took that balance seriously. I would do tons of prep before a story—going beyond news feeds. I reached out to activist groups, think tanks, academic studies—what some might call the dry stuff. But that’s what gave the story depth. That’s what let me say, “Yes, here’s what’s happening—but here’s?why.”

I was lucky, being based in London and Ottawa, to have access to those resources. That’s how I avoided letting visuals dominate. I wanted nuance and substance to come through too. It’s not easy. Covering a refugee crisis or famine, it’s impossible not to be biased. When people are starving behind you, of course you’re biased. You’re standing there thinking: are we going to help, or are we just going to watch this get worse? But then, if you’re covering political stories—South Africa, for example—you have to be more cautious. You can’t be a mouthpiece for either side.

VIC: You did a lot of work in Africa.

BRIAN: Yes, I did. Partly because I was genuinely interested, and partly because the London bureau was responsible for much of Africa. We didn’t have a CBC bureau in Johannesburg at the time—that fell to us in London. So I was in and out of the continent regularly. I liked working there. I found the people and the stories incredibly compelling. One story that’s stayed with me for years was from Sudan. Around 1985, during the civil war in the south, we covered child slavery. It was horrifying. I remember going to see the International Anti-Slavery Society in London. I couldn’t believe it still existed—but it does. Started in 1809, and they told me: there’s more slavery today than in the Victorian era. That story haunted us. We wanted to raise global awareness. I think we did break some ground there.

And then, of course, there was meeting Mandela. Covering the anti-apartheid movement. That was a rare story with a hopeful ending. When we arrived, apartheid was crumbling, and we got to see the change happen. Mandela walked out of prison. Apartheid, this monstrous system, effectively dissolved before our eyes. Canada played a strong international role, and it felt like—for once—we were part of a genuinely good story. And that doesn’t happen often in journalism.

I was also there when the Berlin Wall fell. I stood in Berlin that night. I watched the Cold War dissolve across Eastern Europe. For a kid who grew up thinking that divide was permanent, it was staggering to see it fall. That night, the joy was palpable—people celebrating freedom and imagining better futures for their families. It was unforgettable. As a journalist, you don’t often get to witness that kind of light. But every once in a while, you do—and it reminds you why the work matters.

VIC: Exactly. We know from the moment of conception that we’re headed toward the end. So the journey we take—this life—it’s important to give people something for tomorrow. Hope.