Friends, colleagues and others who knew Jody Porter have shared memories and messages of love, gratitude and admiration for the CBC journalist.
The messages remembering Porter touch on his life, friendship and commitment to telling hard and necessary truths about residential schools and colonialism in Canada, and their ongoing impacts on Indigenous people in northern Ontario.
Porter, 50, died Tuesday after living with ovarian cancer for several years.
Michelle Derosier, an Anishinaabe filmmaker and close friend of Porter’s, said she was drawn to him not only by the stories she told through her journalism, but also by the way she owned and shared those stories.
“It became a safe place in the community early on for me as a member of the community, as an Indigenous woman,” Derosier said.
Michelle Derosier, left, says her friend Porter, right, held and told stories with “grace, integrity and love.” In this May 2022 photo, the two work on an upcoming Derosier claymation film titled A Boy and His Loss, narrated by Porter. (Submitted by Michelle Derosier)
“As a storyteller, I often went to her in the early days of our relationship with stories, whether they were something that would become part of a story, or if there was just a story I wanted her to have . would do it, and do it with such grace and integrity and love.”
His early career
Raised in southern Ontario, Porter graduated from Centennial College with a journalism degree. He spent a short stint as a journalist in the Northwest Territories before moving to Sioux Lookout, Ontario in 1998.
In Sioux Lookout, she was the editor of the Wawatay Native Communications Society, an independent, self-sustaining media organization dedicated to telling the stories of the 49 First Nations that make up the Nishnawbe Aski Nation in northern Ontario.
Garnet Angeconeb, an Anishinaabe elder and former journalist, was the interim executive director at the time. Angeconeb recalls hiring Porter for the position “within hours, maybe even minutes” of his interview.
In a 2020 essay he wrote for Maisonneuve magazine, Porter said it was during this time that he began visiting First Nations in the region and “got the education I was missing.”
“I started covering stories from those communities: about houses without clean water, overcrowded houses full of disease and mold and pain. About reservations without proper schools. About residential schools, the last of which had recently closed “. he wrote in his essay.
Porter’s friends remember her as someone who was fun to be around and had a great sense of humor and an infectious laugh. Wearing his biker jacket in this photo, Porter loved his motorcycle, being outdoors and spending time with friends and family. (Jody Porter/Facebook)
It was a time when Wawatay News was facing many challenges just trying to stay afloat, but Porter’s work helped make things better, Angeconeb said.
“She was a gifted storyteller. She was a professional journalist in every way: tough, determined, wholehearted, honest and sincere. She believed in what she was doing,” Angeconeb said in an email to CBC News.
He started with CBC in 2000
Porter moved to Thunder Bay in 2000 to continue this work for CBC.
“He had a remarkable ability as a seer,” Derosier said, adding that he told stories that forced Canadians to confront their own history and the oppression of Indigenous people at a time when others weren’t looking or had afraid to do it
“As a settler and as a white woman in our communities, I was not afraid of her. She went into this with courage, long before anyone else really did. I know that I and many others have a deep gratitude, respect and love for her to go to these places.”
While out of work due to cancer, Porter, right, participated in events and interviews, and wrote essays and academic articles to address racism in Thunder Bay, Ont., and improve the quality of journalism. She is pictured, right, with First Nations cookums Tina Munroe, Michelle Derosier and Ma-Nee Chacaby after the four spoke at a 2021 event in Thunder Bay on policing and safety in public spaces. (Submitted by Michelle Derosier)
Throughout his career, Porter won numerous awards and recognitions for his work on Indigenous issues and social justice in Northern Ontario.
In 2011, she won the Radio Television Digital News Association’s (RTDNA) Adrienne Clarkson Award for Diversity for her series “Common Ground Café” which brought together strangers to have a meal and discuss race relations in Thunder Bay. It was one of his many RTDNA honors.
In 2013, the Anishinabek Nation awarded Porter the Debwewin Citation, one of the few non-Indigenous journalists to receive the honor for excellence in reporting on First Nations issues. In the same year, he received a prestigious scholarship to Massey College.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has also cited their reports and two reports: the Independent Police Review Office’s Broken Trust report and Murray Sinclair’s report to the Thunder Police Service Board Bay, who found and documented detailed evidence of systemic systems. racism within the Thunder Bay police force and board of supervisors.
A statement from Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) Grand Chief Derek Fox added: “His exemplary reporting was highlighted during the 2015 investigation into the deaths of seven NAN youth, which was followed throughout Canada. She presented complex and painful issues with truth and precision. and compassion. Her unflinching work presented the tragic circumstances surrounding these deaths and illuminated the challenges facing First Nations youth Nations while pursuing their education.”
Michael D’Souza worked closely with Porter as national assignments editor at CBC before his retirement in 2016. They also became close friends.
“His sources were impeccable,” D’Souza said. “Jody had a way of getting people to talk to her, like she was open and listening. She didn’t tell them what to say, she listened very closely and empathetically.
“When people talk to you as a journalist, they’re entrusting you with their life story and a lot of what he wrote was not nice. Frankly, it was downright bad. And yet people were telling him all the pain and the pain they were in. There were happy things he would write about, too, but he always listened to it and then he took what he was given, this precious commodity, and wove a story.”
When it came to her journalism, D’Souza said, “she didn’t preach. She showed how it’s done, and in the end, she just showed how to do it better.”
Shared stories from their own lives
Porter also used his journalistic toolkit to share parts of his own life and his own story. In 2004, he produced the award-winning radio documentary Between Friends, about his own experience as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse by his father.
Neil Sandell co-produced the piece with Porter, whom he called “the bravest journalist” he’s ever met in a recent memoir published on Medium, for her willingness to be vulnerable and go to dark places others wouldn’t.
In his 2004 Third Coast Award acceptance speech, Porter shared what it was like to be on the other side of the microphone, Sandell said.
“She says, ‘It’s the humanity you bring to the process in the beginning, and the middle and the end that counts.'”
Porter also spoke to the so-called Ryerson Review of Journalism about her own internal conversation, between mind and body, as she came to terms with a cancer diagnosis in 2017 that put her work on pause.
While focused on healing and being with family and friends, Porter told the press review, “I think this, in a weird way, has given me an incredible opportunity that a lot of people in our business don’t have. , and this is the pause. . The pause to reflect on what it is we do. If it makes sense. If it has value. If it’s a healthy thing to do.”
In recent interviews, essays, and scholarly articles, Porter has been critical of her own reporting as she probes questions about the purpose of journalism, how it has changed, and how it can be better.
Canada owes a great debt to the former journalist https://t.co/9ct2DLL7Mq
— @TanyaTalaga
Porter returned to work for CBC in July 2020 before learning just months later that her cancer had returned.
During this time, in an interview with Canadaland, Porter spoke about the limitations of journalism. Speaking about his decades-long coverage of the lack of drinking water in First Nations, he called for journalism to go beyond simply raising awareness about the issues.
“I don’t see that awareness can be what we’re looking for here. It doesn’t work,” he said.
“The act of telling stories and writing stories is a kind of magic, and I think because they’re so powerful and have the potential to heal, we need to enhance that.”
Porter died on his 50th birthday, July 19.
In his final months, Jody Porter worked on one last radio documentary. Listen to it here:
Superior Morning28:52 Tribute to Jody Porter PART 2: “What you believe will follow you”
The second part of our tribute to CBC Thunder Bay reporter Jody Porter, who died this week at age 50. Listen to his latest documentary ‘What You Believe In, Will Carry You Through’.