Canada Letter: 5 Times Journalists on Covering the Toronto Van Attack

The Times’s recent Canada-related coverage with back stories and analysis from our reporters along with opinions from our readers. View in [Browser]( | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. [The New York Times]( [The New York Times]( Friday, April 27, 2018 [NYTimes.com/Canada »]( [5 Times Journalists on Covering the Toronto Van Attack]( By IAN AUSTEN On Monday afternoon I was taking a long bike ride in the country. It was a chance to clear my head after covering the [Humboldt Broncos tragedy]( in Saskatchewan. Then, about 25 kilometers from my home in Ottawa, the phone in my jersey pocket began vibrating. I quickly turned around, rode at race pace back to town and headed to the airport to cover Canada’s latest tragedy: the [van rampage on Yonge Street]( in Toronto that killed 10 people and injured 14 others. [Hours after Monday’s rampage by a van driver that killed 10 people in Toronto, people gathered at a memorial across Yonge Street from the first deaths.] Hours after Monday’s rampage by a van driver that killed 10 people in Toronto, people gathered at a memorial across Yonge Street from the first deaths. Ian Austen/The New York Times The next hours were a flurry of motion by nearly a dozen Times editors and reporters. Before hopping on a plane to Toronto, I picked up some quotes from live television interviews and some information by email and sent it off to Liam Stack, who was already writing the first online version of the story. Liam is a member of the Times’s Express Team, a department in New York that jumps on breaking news. Dan Bilefsky, our correspondent based in Montreal, flew in to help with the reporting. Megan Specia in New York sorted through the social media torrent. Catherine Porter, our Toronto bureau chief, who was on assignment in Calgary, explored the actions of the Toronto police officer who got the suspect to surrender without force. Also in New York, Rick Gladstone melded the reporting from me, much of it typed on my phone, and Dan into a single cohesive piece. And, as always, we were all indebted to the editors on the International Desk. Below are thoughts about covering the tragedy from members of the team. [Workers cleaning up where victims fell during the van attack in Toronto.] Workers cleaning up where victims fell during the van attack in Toronto. Carlo Allegri/Reuters Dan Bilfesky: I recently returned home to Montreal after 28 years abroad, where I had covered more than a half-dozen terrorist attacks in London, Manchester, Paris, Brussels and elsewhere. When I came back I had imagined that the most perilous subject I would face would be the bone-chilling weather. Instead, this week I found myself at the sentencing hearing of the Quebec mosque shooter, [Alexandre Bissonnette]( interrupted by an urgent call to get to Toronto to report on another heinous crime. While the Canadian authorities have all but ruled out terrorism, I noticed a striking parallel between the aftermath of the Toronto attack and others I have covered: people getting on with their lives, unbowed by fear. Within hours of the attack, Torontonians were huddled in bars, cheering at hockey matches, jogging near the scene, commuting to work. This week was a potent reminder that even in a humanistic liberal country that tends to shy away from global conflicts, we are not immune to violence. In some ways, Toronto, long seen as a cleaner and far gentler version of New York, lost part of its innocence this week. But the response to the tragedy — epitomized by the courageous police officer, [Constable Ken Lam]( refusing to shoot the attacker, even after he claimed to be armed — also reinforced the city’s oft-repeated motto: “Toronto, The Good.” Catherine Porter: I went to high school four subway stops from the scene of the attack. While I moved away from Toronto for a time, I settled back there. It is my hometown. But I wasn’t there when one of the city’s worst mass murders was unfolding. I was on a plane headed for Calgary. I learned the news like most readers, when I finally turned my phone back on and was overwhelmed by news alerts. On the cab to my hotel, I worked my phone to report. If I couldn’t be in Toronto, at least I would contribute to the unfolding story from afar. When I returned, the city already seemed to be healing. The radio newscast mentioned the victims, and moved on to local parking regulations. The world’s interest moved on, too. But I’m on my way to the memorial sites — not just as a journalist, but as a Torontonian. Megan Specia: As soon as we heard the news about Toronto, eyewitness videos began pouring in on social media. Hundreds of miles away in our New York office, we watched the harrowing scenes play out in real time. Despite the physical distance, they demanded our attention. [Ontario’s premier and Toronto’s mayor vanished into a crush of cameras when they visited the informal Yonge Street memorial on Tuesday.] Ontario’s premier and Toronto’s mayor vanished into a crush of cameras when they visited the informal Yonge Street memorial on Tuesday. Ian Austen/The New York Times Part of my job as an editor on the International Desk is to help weed fact from fiction in the deluge of graphic imagery and to determine what we can, and cannot, say about an attack like this as seen through social media. A day after, I was struck by the response of Constable Lam. [Bystander video]( put the viewer in his shoes as he de-escalated the situation and arrested the suspect without firing his gun. I worked with Catherine and the video team in our New York headquarters to break down his response moment by moment and show the concrete steps he took. It was a lesson in how police are trained to turn down a heated situation. Rick Gladstone: I knew coming into work on Tuesday that my assignment would be stitching together material provided by our reporters in Toronto. I was ready for a day of chilling details from the police, witnesses and experts about a terrorist conspiracy, in which we explained how a radicalized suspect named Alek Minassian had replicated the mayhem we had seen in vehicular attacks by Islamic State disciples in Europe and New York. Instead, we learned that the suspect appeared to be a sexually frustrated, woman-hating loner who had paid homage to a misogyny netherworld in a Facebook post, either before or during the attack. I never had anticipated Canada would be the country that led me to become familiar with misogynistic code words like [incels, Chads and Stacys](. So what began in the morning as a news story about Mr. Minassian’s appearance in court, where he was charged with 10 murders, soon morphed into a profile of him. We also used the expertise of our social media reporters in New York, who helped us connect the dots between Mr. Minassian’s last Facebook posting and a 2014 killing rampage by a 22-year-old man in California that had become a perverse beacon of inspiration for misogynists. Writing the story became an exercise in filling in the blanks without going beyond what we knew. It took a barrage of email exchanges, phone calls and text messages to nail down Facebook’s confirmation that the misogynistic posting was Mr. Minassian’s. It took at least three phone calls and reporting in Toronto to specify what we could say about the genders of the victims. It was only after the adrenaline and tension began to ease toward the end of the day that I realized we had assembled a real-life horror story. Read: [Toronto Van Attack Suspect Expressed Anger at Women]( Read: [Toronto Van Driver Kills at Least 10 People in ‘Pure Carnage’]( Read: [‘Get Down or You’ll Be Shot!’: Videos of Van Driver’s Arrest Captivate Social Media]( Read: [When Toronto Suspect Said ‘Kill Me,’ an Officer Put Away His Gun]( Read: [What Is an Incel? A Term Used by the Toronto Van Attack Suspect, Explained]( Read In Opinion: [Is This Toronto?]( Centre Ice [A Gay Referee Tries to Find His Place in Hockey]( Andrea Barone, who is originally from Montreal, is someone rare in hockey: an openly gay man. But as Jason Buckland writes in a finely detailed profile, Mr. Barone, a minor league referee, has found that being a hockey man and a gay man is a formula for pain. Trans Canada [He Wanted to Escape His Childhood. Now, It Fuels His Art.]( Xavier Dolan is an actor, a model, the voice of Ron Weasley in the French Canadian versions of the “Harry Potter” and, to top things off, he has directed seven films. He is 29. [A Pope Given to Apologies Has Nothing for Indigenous Canada]( The answer to why Pope Francis will not apologize to Indigrneous people for the church’s involvement in the notorious residential schools system may lie with Canada’s bishops. [The Biggest Nafta Hurdle Now May Be Congress]( President Trump’s administration is pushing to quickly conclude a new Nafta deal. But the United States Congress may have other ideas. HOW ARE WE DOING? We’re eager to have your thoughts about this newsletter and events in Canada in general. Please send them to [nytcanada@nytimes.com](mailto:nytcanada@nytimes.com? subject=Canada%20Letter%20Newsletter%20Feedback). A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has reported about Canada for The New York Times for over a decade. Follow him on Twitter at @ianrausten. LIKE THIS EMAIL? Forward it to your friends, and let them know they can sign up [here](. ADVERTISEMENT FOLLOW NYTIMES [Facebook] [FACEBOOK]( [Twitter] [@nytimes]( Get more [NYTimes.com newsletters »]( | Get unlimited access to NYTimes.com and our NYTimes apps. [Subscribe »]( ABOUT THIS EMAIL You received this message because you signed up for NYTimes.com's Canada Letter newsletter. [Unsubscribe]( | [Manage Subscriptions]( | [Change Your Email]( | [Privacy Policy]( | [Contact]( | [Advertise]( Copyright 2018 The New York Times Company 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018