The Port Moody Public Library White Pines Local Author collection highlights local authors, poets, and illustrators in our community. Every month, we will interview and feature one of the authors from the collection on the Library website.
The featured author of this month is Curt Petrovich.
Curt is an investigative journalist with over three decades of experience reporting on national and international stories for the CBC. He graduated from Ryerson in 1983 with a degree in Radio and Television Arts. Since then, Curt has worked on stories in Ottawa, Baffin Island, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. His investigative work has been recognized by the Jack Webster Foundation, the Radio and Television News Directors Association, the Canadian Association of Journalists, and the New York Festivals.
Blamed and Broken: The Mounties and the Death of Robert Dziekanski
Images of Robert Dziekanski convulsing after being shocked by a Mountie's Taser went viral in 2007. International outrage and domestic shame followed the release of that painful video. It had taken just twenty-six seconds for four Mounties to surround and stun the Polish would-be immigrant at Vancouver International Airport.
Published more than a decade later, Blamed and Broken outlines the millions of dollars spent on an inquiry, the bungled prosecutions laden with bias and interference, and the tragic impact of those fleeting seconds on the people involved -- Dziekanski's mother and the four Mounties.
Curt was working as a National Reporter based in Vancouver when he got a call from his assignment editor. There had been a death at the Vancouver International Airport the night before and they wanted Curt to file something on the incident. Curt wrote what he thought was a straightforward story, figuring that within a week, everyone would have moved onto something else. It ended up turning into a much bigger story.
Over the next year, Curt started to ask questions about what happened, and found some of the answers unsatisfactory. He noticed that the accounts from the four Mounties directly involved in the incident were missing from the reports. Curt wasn’t satisfied with this, and so continued to pursue these officers and their story. He soon realized that in order to tell it right and help people see how everything was linked together, he needed the larger canvas of a book.
Before the book could be published, it had to be vetted by a lawyer to identify any sections that could potentially lead to a defamation lawsuit. The lawyer came back with 150 instances. Curt looked at each one to decide if it needed to be removed. In the end, he did not take anything out of the book, knowing that if there was a lawsuit, he could say that everything he wrote was the truth.
EMAFilms has recently acquired the media rights for Blamed and Broken with the intention of making the book into a feature film.
Getting people to talk. Not everyone was open to speaking about what happened, as Curt's questions made some negative implications about the organizations and people involved. In some cases, Curt was also asking people to relive a very traumatic time in their lives. He knew that he had to approach these cases with skill, compassion, and humanity.
Another challenge came from the number of sources Curt was using, and the difficulty in keeping them all straight. Curt's writing space was full of banker’s boxes piled chest high with every document he could get his hands on. When he needed one of the documents, he had to stop writing, and hunt through the boxes to find the right source. It would sometimes take an hour for him to find the right file before he was able to continue writing.
Curt was worried about how the four Mounties and the widow of Sgt Pierre Lemaitre, Sheila, would react to the book since it was digging up a lot that had been left to rest. Two weeks before publication, Curt sent them all copies and nervously awaited their responses. He was surprised that each one of them gave the book a thumbs-up.
Curt was also surprised that he was able to get writers and journalists, Linden MacIntyre and Julian Sher, whom he respected and admired, to write endorsements for the book.
Curt is motivated by an innate sense of right and wrong. This motivation led him to investigative journalism in the aftermath of the 1995 Manitoba election. At the time, Curt was working as a National Reporter for the Province of Manitoba. He began to question a story that had come out during the election about the Conservative campaign manager, and a small independent party that he had been giving advice to. While the story had initially blown over, Curt felt there was more to it. Through his investigation, Curt discovered that the Conservatives had created a fake party in an attempt to draw votes away from the opposition. Curt's story led to a public enquiry in Manitoba, and made him realize how important it is to continue digging and asking questions.
Curt splits his journalistic time between investigative work and international assignments revolving around catastrophes, natural disasters, and human suffering. He finds that the puzzle of investigative journalism helps to counteract the stress that comes from interacting with these tragedies.
That as a result of his story, someone is moved and, ideally, something changes.
Curt takes his responsibility to be scrupulously factual very seriously. This results in a lot of second-guessing and self-doubt.
Curt’s job often requires him to talk to someone on the worst day of their life, or to revisit a traumatic event. While Curt recognizes the importance of speaking with people about their experiences and providing them with a voice for their story, he also says this is one of the most difficult parts of his job.
He is not sure. Since a book is such a large amount of work, it would have to be something that he is very passionate about.
"Don't give up. Keep at it. When people tell you that there's nothing there, but the little voice inside of you asks 'is that true?' keep at it until you're satisfied with the answers. The world needs more good journalists and more people who will keep asking questions."
The Port Moody Public Library created the White Pines Local Author Collection to highlight and support local authors, poets, and illustrators from our community. We launched the collection in May 2019 with 12 inaugural authors. Learn more about this collection and how you can become a White Pines Local Author.