That Wasn’t the Plan. Reg Sherren
had bought land near the tiny village of Hayden Lake and set up his own training compound. He registered it as a non-profit church, calling it the Church of Jesus Christ Christian, and began inviting like-minded people to the area. They came first by the dozens and soon the hundreds to listen to the vitriol delivered from his pulpit, with its swastika pierced by a sword on the front—the Aryan Nations symbol.
I was never sure why, but Ryckman passed himself off as one of them—a damn gutsy move—and managed to infiltrate this camp, camera in hand. He got shots of angry-looking young skinheads covered in racist tattoos, snarling at the camera. They were armed with rifles, standing outside barbed-wire compounds with signs reading Whites Only. In an interview one of these people actually said, “To me, killing a black man is no different than killing a dog or a chicken.” These were seriously dangerous people, but they looked nothing like Terry Long, the man people were talking about near Caroline, Alberta.
Ryckman allowed me to screen his tape, and you will never guess what he had captured during a ritual cross-burning inside that compound. People were standing around in the firelight dressed in what you might call traditional Ku Klux Klan attire: white sheets with pointy hoods. But not all of them were dressed that way.
There, in the inner circle, bathed in the golden light of the burning crosses, dressed in a suit and tie, no less, was Terry Long. He was standing next to his Aryan kin as they all gave a Nazi salute. Now I could make a direct visual connection between Long and what was already happening south of the border in Idaho. I had my story.
After the feature aired, two things happened.
Number one: I received my first threatening phone call, suggesting strongly that it might not be good for my health to continue pursuing this coverage.
Number two: the people in the Caroline area called an emergency public meeting to discuss what to do about this presence in their community. It was held in a school gymnasium in nearby Sundre, Alberta, where over five hundred upset people showed up. They now had a clear idea of what they were dealing with. But in the middle of the meeting something very strange happened.
A man jumped to his feet to say he was the imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in Canada, and he too was upset with Terry Long and the Aryan Nations. The problem, it seemed, was that without permission, the Aryan Nations group was using symbols the KKK claimed it had copyright over. It was a dramatic and disturbing turn of events. Afterward, some local fellows tried to punch the Klansman’s lights out while he fought to get away.
Terry Long did not get to establish his compound, but he didn’t go away either. Long eventually went underground, moving to British Columbia, but as recently as a few years ago he crawled back into the light to support those who agreed with his views.
René Lévesque
Later that summer one of the more controversial political figures of my generation, René Lévesque, was to appear on the CBC Calgary program Crossfire. Just beforehand, he was autographing books at a store downtown. I bought a copy and stood in line. After he signed it, I said to him, “Mr. Lévesque, I know you’re going to CBC after this and I would be happy to give you a ride.” A big fellow suddenly appeared, stepped between us, and declared, “Monsieur Lévesque will take a cab!” I realized the man was his bodyguard. Lévesque shrugged, turning his hands up in exasperation.
I returned to the CBC building and waited behind reception. When they arrived, I stretched out my hand and said, “I am so glad you managed to make it here safely!” He laughed and rolled his eyes. We chatted for a few minutes, and then he was off to makeup.
Shaking Things Up
By now I was getting regular face time on the network, hunting down stories that had national appeal. One of the places I could always count on was the world-class Banff Springs Hotel. It was a storyteller’s gold mine.
I told stories about ghosts and other interesting characters. There was the bride who broke her neck falling down the back stairwell on her wedding night and still haunted the stairs, and the piano in a back dining room that played the song “Canadian Sunset” all by itself. There was the reunion of former employees, some dating back to those heady days when the rich families would show up for the summer with a couple dozen steamer trunks in tow. I remember a still somewhat embarrassed former employee blurting out on camera, fifty years after the fact, that she used to try on the women’s beautiful ball gowns when nobody was around. There was the story of Marilyn Monroe injuring herself while filming River of No Return, and famous baseball player Joe DiMaggio, who was wooing Monroe, showing up at the hotel with dozens of red roses to console her.
The manager of this beautiful, majestic castle at the time was Ivor Petrak. He knew the value of my national exposure, and we developed a great relationship. When they were building their super-luxury suite in the mid-1980s, complete with lap pool and private elevator to accommodate the ultra-rich, I got a call to come and take an exclusive look. The going rate was over $2,000 a night.
As the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary approached, I covered celebrity ski weekends that included Robin Leach from Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, Brooke Shields and Arnold Schwarzenegger. One night the rock group America played at dinner. These were amazing times for a young fellow from Labrador. I could get used to this.
Deadly Licence
Early in 1987, I told one of my last stories for CBC Calgary, and it was a blockbuster.
It happened because I answered the phone. The call had been transferred from the main switchboard to the newsroom, and I was the one who pushed the glowing plastic button at the bottom of the phone and answered.
George (not his real name) spoke in a hesitant, soft voice, saying perhaps calling wasn’t such a good idea after all. I suggested that he must be concerned about something important, and maybe I could help. Then he admitted he had been worried about it for some time and needed to clear his conscience. What he said next floored me.
George had been working as a bisexual prostitute in the Calgary escort business for several years. Now he was dying of AIDS, but he was still seeing clients—as many as a dozen a day—and having unprotected sex. George’s employers knew some clients did not like condoms, so they frowned on it. He also knew of several others in the same situation.
Immediately I knew this story was huge, perhaps the biggest scoop of my career, but it would have to be handled carefully.
I asked for an interview with the chief of police to discuss the issue of the escort business in Calgary, without mentioning George. During the interview, he as much as admitted that as far as the police were concerned, escort agencies were doing nothing more than legalized prostitution behind closed doors. In Calgary at the time, the city licensed escort agencies. It was as if they were licensing prostitution and now it was making people sick, potentially infecting them with a deadly virus.
When I asked George to grant me an interview, he declined, saying his life wouldn’t be worth five cents. I offered to shoot a silhouette interview and alter his voice. He could look at it afterward to reassure himself that he would not be identified. He agreed.
While chain-smoking cigarettes, he told the whole sordid tale. He talked about how he’d struggled in the business, how his bosses only cared about money, about how he’d become sicker and about the others he knew.
It was Monday morning. I knew the licensing committee at city hall was meeting at one o’clock; after that it would be a week before they met again. That was the dilemma of the scoop. Should I let that meeting pass without telling anyone what I knew so I could deliver an exclusive story during the big 6:00 p.m. newscast, the one with the highest audience? If I waited until six to reveal George’s