Christie Blatchford

Career

Blatchford began working part-time for The Globe and Mail in 1972, while still studying journalism at Ryerson, where she graduated at the top of her class. She was hired full-time by the Globe in 1973, working as a general assignment reporter and then as a sports columnist at the paper from 1975 until 1977; she was billed as Canada's first female sports columnist and was at the time one of only six female sports reporters in North America. In it, she said: "It's the only game in the world we play as good as anyone else. But if we aren't careful, the people who make the decisions are going to take the guts and hardness out of hockey and they will do it because they think it is what we want."

Displeased when a Globe column was edited against her wishes, Blatchford then abruptly jumped to the competing Toronto Star, where she worked as a feature writer from 1977 to 1982, and began covering criminal trials in 1978, a beat she would return to throughout her career. She left the Post to return to The Globe and Mail in 2003, working as a columnist there for eight years. Blatchford reported on the experiences of Canadian soldiers. Based on these experiences, she wrote the book Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army. The book went on to garner the 2008 Governor General's Literary Award in Non-fiction. She was also a frequent panelist, commentator, contributor and guest on CFRB radio for several decades.

In an article in the National Post online on August 22, 2011, Blatchford criticized the outpouring of support resulting from the death of federal NDP Leader and the Parliament of Canada's Leader of the Opposition Jack Layton, calling it "a public spectacle", and referring to Layton's "canonization". This caused an outcry toward Blatchford herself. Blatchford's commentary on the 2013 suicide of Rehtaeh Parsons also led to Parsons' father accusing Blatchford of victim blaming.

In June 2018, Blatchford said of a press subsidy: "God forbid Ottawa should start to subsidize newspapers too. As a journalist, the thought gives me the shudders."

Illness and death After having to cut short her assignment covering the 2019 federal election campaign due to nagging muscle pain, Blatchford was diagnosed in November 2019 with lung cancer which was found to have metastasized to bones in the spine and hip by the time it was detected. Blatchford was inducted into the Canadian News Hall of Fame the same month, but was unable to attend the ceremony. She died in Toronto on February 12, 2020.