Tough-Skinned and Big-Hearted Christie Blatchford, 1951-2020

Steyn Online ^ | 17 Feb 2020 | Mark Steyn

[Rummyfan]

As I wrote a few weeks ago, since the dawn of 2020 I have felt suffused in death. The latest is hard to take for any reader of first-rate reporting and analysis. Christie Blatchford, an indispensable colleague of mine from the glory days of The National Post, died last Wednesday at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto after a very short battle with lung cancer.

In 1998, to launch the Post, Conrad Black and Ken Whyte put together the best team ever assembled for any Canadian newspaper. It was my last great journalistic adventure, and, although it was only twenty years ago, it already belongs to a lost time: an era when individual writers sold papers, when people still made a point of swinging by the corner newsstand in the morning and coughing up their 75 cents because there was a big trial on - a serial killer or sex fiend, an honor killing - and the only courtroom observer they wanted to read was Blatch. It is easy (as I can attest) to be a star columnist, but far rarer to be, as Christie was, a star reporter - the one who made heads turn when she entered a courtroom because her presence signified that the trial was a big deal. That world is dead: the big press conglomerates bungled their transition to the Internet, and made the same mistake as all those railroad companies at the dawn of manned flight who failed to grasp they were in the transit business rather than the train business.

[Rummyfan]

Christie Blatchford (center) in Afghanistan with the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry

RIP.

[Rummyfan]

Last year, she became the second recipient of the George Jonas Award. I was privileged to be the first, and I can't confidently say they got the order right. But I was honored to share the Post's pages with her, and I am sad that I shall never again read a new column by Christie Blatchford. She was the best at what she did, and a great bawdy, ribald and principled presence in the Canadian press for half a century.

[Gay State Conservative]

Never heard of her but if Mark Steyn admires her she'd probably be OK in my book.

[McGavin999]

I miss the days when great writers for the papers. Look at them now, unprincipled, illiterates pumping out propaganda for owners who have money and no ethics.

[null and void]

Ditto

[Rummyfan]

Look at them now, unprincipled, illiterates pumping out propaganda for owners who have money and no ethics.

They're all J-school graduates who know nothing, educated only in identity politics and Marxism. And they fancy themselves as SJWs with bylines. What did Ben Rhodes say about them? They don't know anything.

[Gay State Conservative]

Yikes!....it’s 5:30AM in Nevada...why are you awake??? ;-)

[OttawaFreeper]

I recall not long after the Post was launched, their headquarters in the York Mills area of Toronto were vandalized, seemingly by persons acting in the name of openness and tolerance and diversity but only for themselves.

[null and void]

Mom has Alzheimer’s, same principle as a new parent’s sleep schedule. When she goes to sleep I go to sleep...

I got almost 8 hours, that’s very rare for me!

[WayneM]

My morning shock of sad news, as I was unaware of her passing.

I lived in downtown Toronto for 9 years, walking or taking public transportation to work.

She wrote for the Toronto Sun at the time, and became, for me, THE reason to stop and buy my morning Sun... Christie and The Sunshine Girl.

Christie Blatchford wrote with a level of personal honesty and authenticity unmatched by anyone else, and I’m certain she will be greatly missed.

Our media here in the USA could certainly use a few Christies scattered amongst them.

RIP, Christie.

[Kriggerel]

I had kind of a love-loathe relationship with Christie’s writing, dating all the way back to when she wrote for the Toronto Sun. (before that, she wrote for the Toronto Star (aka the “Red Star”). On the plus side, she was very principled, and never wavered from those principles, but sometimes I found the the downright purple prose that she came up with more than a little hard to stomach. When she was with the Sun, she was probably the single biggest reason why the standing joke was that if you tipped The Toronto Sun on its side, the blood would drip out. Very, VERY much sensationalist, tabloid-styled writing. Probably the peak of that phase of her career was her coverage of the Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka trial.

Still, when The Sun fired her, and she wound up at the Post, and subsequently ended up having to tone down some of her editorial style, I’ll admit I felt a little bad for her that Lord Black seemed to have put a leash on her.

I also agreed with her on many things, such as her disdain for Third and Fourth Wave Feminists. She opined (with regards to an exhibition of ‘radical feminist-themed artworks’ (and this quote may not be exact, as it’s to the best of my memory, but I’ll try my best)): “Sometimes it seems as if the piece of art that would most appeal to this group would depict a nude, recently-castrated white male, blindfolded, gagged and in chains, and with excrement smeared all over his face.”

Needless to say, all the usual suspects amongst the Campus “Progressive” groups utterly *despised* her, and would stage protests every time she was invited to speak on campus.

[Deplorable American1776]

In high school, I was on the newspaper staff. The teacher told us that when we write our story remember to use the 5 W's, who what when where and why. Now, newspapers are crap.

That said, prayers to her family.

[fieldmarshaldj]

RIP.

[BunnySlippers]

My thoughts exactly.

[libertylover]

Never heard of her but if Mark Steyn admires her she'd probably be OK in my book.

That's what I was thinking too.

[Gay State Conservative]

Sorry about that..hope you know I was only joking.

[null and void]

Thank you. I figured you was just funnin’ me...