Times Colonist reporter Louise Dickson was honoured as a nominee at the National Newspaper Awards on Friday.
Dickson was nominated in the short feature category for her story on Hugh Robert Nisbet, known as Biker Bob. It told the rollicking tale of the final journey of Nisbet’s ashes, which were tossed into the ocean but kept washing ashore.
The award went to Caroline Alphonso of the Globe and Mail for taking readers inside a school where educators do their best to make the learning environment supportive for children battling debilitating illnesses.
Also nominated was Josh Rubin of the Toronto Star for the story of a Canadian food truck whose owners found themselves unexpectedly caught in the middle of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.
Dickson’s colourful tale begins with an anecdote about Biker Bob’s request to have his ashes floated away in a canoe — along with a twenty-sixer of Crown Royal — in Kootenay Lake.
His ashes ended up going on a wild ride that stretched all the way to the East Coast, before the story came to a conclusion three years later.
Dave Obee, editor and publisher of the Times Colonist, called the nomination an honour.
“We consistently punch above our weight class,” he said. “This nomination places us among the best in the country.”
Sixty-three finalists representing 19 organizations vied for awards in 21 categories. The awards were handed out Friday via a webcast in place of the usual gala because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Globe and Mail won a leading eight awards, including prizes for breaking news and project of the year.
Other top winners were La Presse and the Ottawa Citizen, which each nabbed three awards.
The Toronto Star and Le Devoir won two apiece.
And the subscription-based website the Athletic was a first-time winner, taking home the Sports award long-form features by Dan Robson.
This year, Serge Chapleau of La Presse and Stephanie Nolen both took home their eighth lifetime NNAs — Chapleau for editorial cartoons, and Nolen for reporting in the Globe and Mail with two colleagues.
Their wins match a record that had been held by Jacquie McNish, who won eight times between 1992 and 2015.
Among other awards handed out out Friday, Marsha Lederman of the Globe and Mail won in the Arts and Entertainment category for a meditation on art and climate change, and a feature about Margaret Atwood’s frenzied activity after the death of her life partner.
Beat Reporting (E. Cora Hind Award): Kelly Grant, Globe and Mail, for reporting she did on pharmacare and medically assisted dying as part of her health beat coverage.
Breaking News: Renata D’Aliesio, Melissa Tait, Ian Bailey and Andrea Woo, Globe and Mail, for coverage of the sudden end to a weeks-long search for two teenagers suspected of killing three individuals in British Columbia.
Breaking News Photo: Wayne Cuddington, Ottawa Citizen, for a photo of a distraught woman being attended to by a police officer after a man was gunned down in the city’s Byward Market.
Business: Geoffrey York, Matthew McClearn and Stephanie Nolen, Globe and Mail, for an in-depth investigation into the lending practices and other activities of Export Development Canada.
Columns: Melissa Martin, Winnipeg Free Press, for two columns related to missing and murdered Indigenous women, and a deeply personal reflection that emerged from a horrifying experience of turbulence while flying home from Japan.
Editorial Cartooning (portfolio of five cartoons): Serge Chapleau, La Presse.
Editorials (Claude Ryan Award): Marie-Andree Chouinard, Le Devoir, for editorials about the Ecole Polytechnique tragedy, a massacre in Christchurch, N.Z., and an author who openly advocated pedophilia.
Explanatory Work: Daphne Cameron and Martin Tremblay, La Presse, for revealing how science, policy and agricultural practice work together to boost pesticides to dangerous levels, and why regulations about this aren’t enforced.
Feature Photo: Julie Oliver, Ottawa Citizen, for a photo of three campers braving chilly summer weather to take a dip at a nudist colony.
General News Photo: Jacques Nadeau, Le Devoir, for his photo of a man being apprehended during a climate protest.
International (Norman Webster Award): Geoffrey York, Globe and Mail, for stories exposing the realities of Sudan, a heavily militarized dictatorship and one of the world’s most difficult countries to penetrate and understand.
Investigations (George Brown Award): Team, La Presse, for a shocking expose of medical errors that caused the deaths of 200 elderly or vulnerable Quebecers.
Local Reporting: Randy Richmond, London Free Press, for a series exposing how a police officer punched, kicked, stomped and choked a woman, how his fellow officers failed to stop the abuse, and how police spun it all into a misleading story about a dangerous suspect who had assaulted an officer.
Long Feature (William Southam Award): Andrew Duffy, Ottawa Citizen, for “Six on a Bus,” a gripping narrative about the harrowing experience of passengers on a city bus that smashed into an awning in a crash that left three people dead and 23 injured.
Politics (John Wesley Dafoe Award): Robert Fife, Steven Chase, Sean Fine and Daniel Leblanc, Globe and Mail, for breaking the news that the Prime Minister’s Office had pressured the justice minister to abandon prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, and a series of follow-up reports as the ensuing scandal grew.
Presentation/Design: Cameron Tulk, Nathan Pilla, McKenna Deighton, Andres Plana and Tania Pereira, Toronto Star, for a presentation that helped readers experience the significant, sometimes terrifying effects of a changing climate.
Project of the Year: Globe and Mail for a year-long project to identify key gaps in the way data are gathered and analyzed in Canada, and to investigate why the data-collection system is so fragmented and inaccessible.
Sports: Dan Robson, the Athletic, for long-form features about the sudden death of former hockey star Ray Emery, the sometimes-troubled journey of the only Inuk to make it to the NHL, and the possibility that head-related injuries from their hockey careers had contributed to the deaths of two retired players.
Sports Photo: Rick Madonik, Toronto Star, for a photo of the Toronto Raptors’ Kyle Lowry, surrounded by the hands of teammates and opponents.
