I mentioned earlier that some of you might feel something inside as you read my letter. If you did, that’s trauma reaching through time and space, from my office where I wrote this in the past to you where you read it now. Trauma can be passed on, even to those who don’t have direct contact. As I said, I believe it’s a physical force in our world. I know it is in mine.
Today, as governments struggle to cope with PTSD among soldiers and first responders, Janice Landry is giving us a better understanding of that complex issue. The Legacy Letters throws the doors on trauma wide open. Reading it will help you develop empathy for the people who suffer traumatic injuries such as PTSD, and give you context for the debate over how to help them.
The Birth and Evolution of the Letters
The Legacy Letters examines stories of the families of crime victims, as well as stories of firefighters, police and RCMP members, emergency dispatchers and managers, EHS/EMS workers, 911 operators, parole officers and corrections employees, airport managers and staff, photojournalists and reporters, public relations and communications professionals, and Canadian medical and military personnel.
The concept for this book originated from a conversation with the mother of a young, female British Columbia murder victim. We met when I was a television news reporter in Nova Scotia during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s and covered the tragic story. We had not spoken in nearly two decades, until this project.
When we reconnected, Ann King still lived thousands of kilometres away from where her daughter, Andrea King, went missing and where her remains were found, in Nova Scotia woods.
Ann told me she wished she had thanked the public for the help, support, and comfort shown to her family during the exhaustive search for Andrea and following the horrific discovery that her daughter had been murdered. Andrea’s homicide remains unsolved.
This book marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Andrea’s disappearance and murder. It is my way of reinforcing to her family, and the loved ones of other victims of murder, abduction, rape, torture, and other heinous and unsolved crimes, that, despite the passage of time, we still care about them and their loved ones.
We still seek answers.
We still seek justice.
We have not forgotten.
I suggested to Ann King, during one of several frank interviews in 2016, without any planning or forethought, that she could write an open letter to express exactly what she wanted to say to the people of Nova Scotia, and that I would ensure her letter and message be printed, verbatim, in this book.
Open letters appear frequently in newspapers and on various social media platforms as a way for the author to communicate specific messages to the wider public. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines an open letter as “a published letter of protest or appeal usually addressed to an individual but intended for the general public.”
The fifteen letters in this book are not letters of protest. There are appeals within them. A few are addressed to specific individuals. All are intended for a wide audience.
My rationale for the offer of writing one, given to each person, underlines the fact that people impacted by, working near, or associated with some form of trauma, have typically lost control over a circumstance or horrible situation which alters the course of their lives. This book is my way of attempting to give a voice and power back to Ann King and the other letter writers; they have had complete control over their words. The Legacy Letters is meant to be empowering – for them and for you.
The letters are written by a wide assortment of people of varying ages, cultural backgrounds, and professions. They are from six Canadian provinces: Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia.
The letters are addressed to different groups of people, or specific members of the public, for reasons that become apparent after you read the interviews that precede them. All the letters appear separately in their own chapters. They stand alone and receive the respect and attention they deserve. They have only been slightly edited, mostly for spelling and grammar. Otherwise, they appear verbatim as the contributors have created them. There are powerful messages within both the letters and the interviews. It is my honour to share these letters with you and to introduce the extraordinary people who have so eloquently and bravely written them.
The Legacy Letters is also intended to educate the public about mental health, laud the professionals who work around emergencies, and finally, to support family members and loved ones of victims of crime and trauma. The incidents described take the reader across Canada, including Canada’s far north in Alert, and internationally to Haiti and Bosnia.
The discussion includes family members who have also been affected or traumatized, either because of their loved one’s work or by a crime that has occurred within their family.
PTSD and critical incident stress (CIS) are not the only results/diagnoses of working around trauma. Vicarious trauma, cumulative stress, and compassion fatigue are three other terms that will be discussed; they affect many people.
To be clear, no correlation should be drawn concluding all people who work around trauma will eventually be diagnosed with something. That is simply untrue. Every person is different. Every occupation, work history, and support system is unique.
So is mine.
Many people have asked me why I left television and if I will return. I started my own company, Groundhog Productions, in 2001, two years after I decided to leave the television news business. I wanted more control over my hours and the nature of my work. I was also a new mother at that time and I craved flexibility.
For the record, after twelve years, I no longer wanted to cover crime and stories about trauma in a daily spot news format. I believe it negatively impacted me for a period during the late 1990s. I remember sitting in the newsroom and physically dreading being assigned to cover another murder or criminal case near the end of my television career. There were many sleepless nights while covering harrowing stories. I witnessed numerous traumatic events and listened to painful conversations as a reporter in my youth.
Today, after years of interviews and research for my books, I know leaving spot news, primarily as a crime and court reporter, was absolutely the right choice for my family life and my own mental health.
While I continue to discuss crime, trauma, and violence in detail in non-fiction books, how, when, and why I create these projects is controlled – by me – with specific messages aimed at educating and helping people.
I will not return to spot news. I respect the people who are out there right now working to inform us. Many of them are my friends and peers. Theirs is an important and difficult job, which I highly respect and value. I often caution them to take care while they are working on difficult stories and cases.
There are important lessons I have learned from researching and writing my books, and after thirty years as a seasoned journalist, about the impact, on me and others, of how I previously did my job. I hope discussing my early work, which has been difficult material to share, may help educate those either working within, alongside of, or considering joining the media.
This book includes the stories of Canadians who have wide-ranging backgrounds, yet who are connected by their empathy and willingness to try and help the public. The trauma they have encountered and experienced does not define them. You will read, in their words, what, and who, has shaped their lives.
The legacy letters are raw, honest and poignant.
The lessons within each are priceless.
I felt I owed this work, and my own frankness, to a significant number of people, from many professions and backgrounds, and from across Canada, who continue to reach out to me, both publicly and privately, about their own trauma, struggles, mental health challenges, and journey to wellness.
As stated, my previous crime reporting work had impacted me. I am happier and healthier today. After writing this book, I am more at peace. The people in these pages will never leave me. Tryin
g to forget them or what happened would be a disservice to the victims and their families.
I had to start this book by making the fact public that years of crime reporting had eventually taken their toll. Eighteen years after leaving television, I can see that more clearly. I was mentally and physically exhausted at the end of 1999 when my daughter was born. Laura’s birth came at the perfect time in my life, for so many reasons.
Fair and ethical means full disclosure. Working on the first part of this project, about the unsolved crimes, has been extraordinarily difficult. Full disclosure means I had to do it.
It has been cathartic.
The crime reporting was traumatic for me right up until the end of my television career. The very last story I did, right before I went on maternity leave, to never return, was in November 1999. It discussed a young woman from Nova Scotia, who went missing and was later found to be working underage in a strip club outside of Atlantic Canada. She was rescued and returned to her family. How do I know this was my very last story? I kept the notepad from it for some reason.
Maybe I knew I would have to revisit it, and some of the other traumatic stories, some day, for some reason.
That reason is this book.
I owe it to these families to try, again, to help motivate someone, anyone, to come forward with a lead or a tip. There is a contact phone number for Crime Stoppers at the end of the book. If you can, please call.
The people who stand on the other side of the police tape are professionals like me. There are more of us – across varying careers. What about the people who you literally call for help – the emergency communicators and dispatchers? What about the person driving the ambulance who responds? The list of trauma-related professions is long.
I have tried to represent some of them, in order that readers will start to better understand and think more broadly about the ripple effects of crime, trauma, and emergency, as well as the importance of mental health for those who work around challenging and dangerous circumstances.
This book underlines a variety of jobs and roles: people who are on the sidelines and the periphery of incidents, and those who face danger full-on, in varying first responder roles. You will also meet some of Canada’s first, first responders.
In the end, we are all in this together.
Prologue:
The Power of Eight
We forget the power of our words, spoken or written.
On the very last day of 2015, eight words became a symbolic tipping point; they helped me weigh the pros and cons while determining whether to proceed with this writing project.
The message arrived on my computer at 11:42 a.m. on December 31, 2015, twelve hours and eighteen minutes before people rang in 2016 and a New Year. Revellers made plans to celebrate with loved ones. They dreamed and made resolutions for a better year ahead. They officially shut the door on the 365 days that were about to end.
For the person who sent me the message, 2015 had been a significant year. I had worried about the impact that year would have on him, a concern that began in 2014.
The messenger was Halifax Regional Police (HRP) Chief Jean-Michel Blais.
His message to me from his Twitter account @JMBlais1 read: “Thanks for asking the question Janice and listening.”
What did he mean by that, exactly?
The question I had initially asked him at the start of our June 2014 interview was about how the chief had been personally affected by his work and most recently, at that time, by the deaths of three New Brunswick RCMP officers who had been killed by a gunman on June 4, 2014.
During a frank and in-depth interview for my book The Price We Pay, Chief Blais revealed to me, and publicly for the first time, he has been diagnosed with PTSD. For more than two decades, he had experienced a significant amount of trauma on the job, as a high-ranking RCMP officer. He has worked across Canada and assisted in the 2010 earthquake aftermath in Haiti.
Chief Blais’ PTSD admission has been significant. He is the chief of the largest police force in Atlantic Canada. He is, to my knowledge, the only chief in Canada to have ever made such an admission, while in office. Since speaking out, the chief has been widely congratulated for his leadership. He has spoken nationally about the mental health of first responders at various public events.
Despite the toll the emergency work has taken on Blais, and countless others, his actions have clearly underlined three key elements. A person diagnosed with PTSD can function at a high level within society. Management and brass at the top echelons of agencies and departments are starting to better support their members. By talking about it, our conversations are helping to break down the significant stigma and barriers surrounding mental health issues, across all occupations.
How did I feel reading Chief Blais’ tweet? I felt hopeful. Those eight words brought me a huge sense of relief. I had frequently wondered if he had regretted telling me about his PTSD diagnosis. During the months between his June 2014 admission and the debut of my book in November 2015, I had experienced a significant amount of stress and worry about the impact his statements would have on the chief, his loved ones, and his fellow officers.
People talk about their fear of writing. I still have it. But the anxiety and fear I felt after the book’s publication stemmed from a deep concern over hurting the people involved, letting them or their families down, or revictimizing a person after they had already been hurt.
When you work as a journalist, writer, or storyteller, you frequently take people back to a time and place, to personal experiences they have kept to themselves or have only shared among their inner circle. In speaking out, they, and you, as the messenger, do not know how the wider public will receive what they have to say.
That eight-word tweet told me a lot.
Blais’ message spurred me on to begin this book in the way I have, after some soul-searching. The words also revealed, despite the significant stress involved, all the work and worry thus far had been worth it.
His message underlined the importance of continuing the conversation about mental health, across mediums, relationships, and professions. It was with that mindset, and following his message, that I cautiously, and with some trepidation, began working on The Legacy Letters.
This project began with me purposely staring into the looking glass.
1
The Looking Glass
January 22, 2016, was a Friday.
This book began that day, when I went back to where I had started my first full-time job as a journalist in May 1987. I was twenty-two years old. It was the same month I had graduated from four years of study in Honours Journalism at the University of King’s College, Halifax.
I had originally been hired to fill in during the summer of ’87 for Yvonne Colbert, a seasoned and respected journalist who was scheduled to start maternity leave with her first son, Gregory, in late June of 1987. She is now one of my best friends, a confidante and mentor. There was a transitional, on-the-job training period before Yvonne took her maternity leave.
The first story I ever covered was bizarre and challenging. It was a feature for Live at 5, now called CTV News at 5, about a funeral director’s conference at the Halifax World Trade and Convention Centre. It was unsettling to be walking and videotaping among dozens of caskets and other death paraphernalia at that novice stage of my career. I was less than thrilled with the subject matter as a first-ever assignment, especially with an inaugural deadline looming – five o’clock the same day. I was not used to daily deadlines. They terrified me for a long time.
Death as a business is a challenging subject.
Death as a subject is unnerving.
Death as a subject, on day one, was an omen.
CTV cameraman Al Eastman worked with me that day. I feared missing my deadline and was unsure of what to say on-camera. It was Al’s guidance, support, and professionalism that ensured my job, besides his, got done. I could not have completed my first story without him. We worked together countless
times over my tenure, shooting stories and later editing them. I will never forget Al’s kindness and support. Despite that first unusual assignment, I had not experienced a lot of death. That would quickly change.
After paying my dues as the maternity leave fill-in for Yvonne, a permanent full-time reporting job opened. I was asked if I would move to New Brunswick to replace a staffer who had been given the chance to relocate to headquarters in Halifax. I accepted and had told my parents. I was young and willing to go wherever the work took me. At the last minute, the more senior journalist changed his mind and declined to uproot his family. He stayed home and so did I.
January 22, 2016, was kind of like coming home for me. More accurately, it was coming back to where I had first started covering trauma. I began the research for this book at CTV Atlantic. I wanted to watch many of the stories I had done over the course of my twelve years with the broadcaster. People think they accurately remember tiny details, but our memories fade. I wanted exact words and images.
Andy Leblanc, who was then CTV Atlantic News Director and a long-time friend, granted me permission to visit. I had told him outright it was research for my new writing project.
Producer, writer, and director Leo Carter, another long-time colleague and friend, arranged the date and time, and retrieved a stack of now outdated three-quarter-inch videotapes that house my old stories.
The technology videographers and camera operators use now to record digital images is vastly different than three-quarter-inch videotape from the 1980s and ’90s. The video viewing area, which Leo had set up for me, was located on the lower floor of the television station. It was one of the few playback machines of its era left in the building. Leo assured me no one would need it the day of my visit because the old library tapes were rarely required. The whole process felt a little like digging around in your grandparents’ attic or basement while uncovering old treasures.
The Legacy Letters Page 2
