“George Garrett is one of the most remarkable reporters of news that I have ever known. George has always had the ability to smell a good story and to report on it honestly and accurately. George is well respected for his work and also for his knowledge of the subjects or activities that he reported on.”— Jim Pattison“Some reporters are excellent to deal with and over the years may form professional and personal relationships with officers. I know a well-respected reporter by the name of George Garrett who worked in the Vancouver area for many years. He was so well liked and respected by police officers that he is still invited to many police functions in spite of the fact he is retired. George Garrett always did his job and reported the good with the bad. If a police officer or department made a mistake, he reported it fairly and accurately without personal bias. I think that is what garnered him the respect. He was a professional and reported all of the facts and all of the story.”— Constable Wayne Ryan, author of Souls Behind the Badge“During my tenure with Vancouver’s Major Crime Squad, the floor was strictly off-limits to civilian personnel. The only exception to the rule was a crime reporter named George Garrett who was given full access to the Homicide Unit. (Personally … I think he had his own key.) Garrett reported with insight, colour and accuracy and could be trusted with information that was ‘off the record.’ He acted as an invaluable liaison between the police and the media.”— Wayne Cope, author of Vancouver Blue“A must-read for anyone interested in BC history. [George is] one of the most significant figures in the history of BC journalism.”—Harold Munro, Vancouver Sun editor
George Garrett
Intrepid Reporter
George Garrett
Copyright © 2019 George Garrett
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca, 1-800-893-5777, [email protected].
Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.
P.O. Box 219, Madeira Park, BC, V0N 2H0
All photos are from the author’s collection except where otherwise noted
Edited by Arlene Prunkl
Cover design by Anna Comfort O’Keeffe
Text design by Shed Simas / Onça Design
Printed and bound in Canada
Printed on 30% recycled paper
Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd. acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.
Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.
We also gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Government of Canada and from the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Garrett, George, 1934-, author
George Garrett : intrepid reporter / George Garrett.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-55017-866-1 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-55017-867-8 (HTML)
1. Garrett, George, 1934–. 2. Radio journalists—British Columbia—Biography. 3. Reporters and reporting—British Columbia—Biography. 4. CKNW (Radio station : New Westminster, B.C.)—Employees—Biography. 5. Investigative reporting. 6. Autobiographies. I. Title.
PN4913.G364A3 2019 070.4’3092 C2018-905970-2
C2018-905971-0
For Warren Barker, long-time CKNW News Director, my boss, mentor and friend.
At age eighty-three I returned to what had been my grandmother’s farm, where I spent my summers as a kid. All that’s left is Grandma’s old cook stove, rusting on the range. Photo by Darwin Glass
Gary Hanney (left) and I were covering a serious story, one of many logging protests by environmentalists, this one on King Island, but it’s obvious from our smiles we loved our work. Photo courtesy the Hanney collection
As a young reporter I covered everything, including the armed robbery of two ladies at the now-defunct Pines Café on the Fraser Highway in Surrey in the 1950s. Note my dark hair and the cheap little microphone that was connected to my wind-up tape recorder (not shown). Photo courtesy Top Dog! A History of CKNW. Canada Wide Magazines Ltd.
Foreword
I remember George Garrett’s last day in the newsroom. I was scheduled for the evening shift and was in my car on the way to work when Trevor Pancoust opened the 2 p.m. newscast with “Well, what would George Garrett’s last day at CKNW be without a scoop.”
George actually broke the story three hours previous on the 11 a.m. newscast with Terry Schintz—when he shocked the public (and many members of his newsroom) by revealing Gordon Wilson was leaving the political party he founded to cross the floor, and become the NDP minister responsible for the troubled BC Ferries, then mired in the so-called fast ferries fiasco.
The Trevor Pancoust quote is based only on my memory, but you can find a piece of amazing video on YouTube documenting George’s last day, and specifically the minutes leading up to his 11 a.m. scoop.
The video shows George at his best. Relentlessly—but politely—working a source to confirm information he received as a tip. People loved giving George a tip. Why? Because they could trust him to be discreet and dogged in his pursuit of a story. And because they liked him. George finally got the confirmation he required by telling his contact he was going to broadcast the details in less than ten minutes, and then saying “as a friend, I wouldn’t be making a fool of myself, would I?” George had earned the right to ask that question because of forty-three years of breaking stories without burning contacts, and he got his answer, and his last big scoop.
In the video you also see brief glimpses of George’s beloved Casio electronic day-timer. This was George’s bible. A treasure of home numbers, addresses and private cell phones of the province’s most influential people. This was long before social media made finding people much easier for journalists. These numbers were earned. And they weren’t shared with just anyone.
I’ll never forget getting a tip about Indigenous grandparents devastated by the death of their young granddaughter. They were traumatized upon learning the little girl’s eyes had been removed during an autopsy—against their wishes and cultural practice. The chief coroner at the time (now Senator Larry Campbell)