A plane crash at Toronto Pearson International Airport. A scandal at Hockey Canada. Sasquatch sightings in British Columbia. And, now, a newly elected American president.
For about two decades, Ian Austen, an Ottawa-based reporter for The New York Times, has covered the stories, people and events shaping Canada, much of which is included and analyzed in the Canada Letter, a weekly newsletter he created in 2016.
Lately, his coverage has included news of Justin Trudeau’s decision to step down as prime minister, the simmering trade war between Canada and the United States and President Trump’s repeated statement that he wants to annex Canada and make it the 51st state.
“We’ve never had a situation in which the president of the country that is Canada’s closest ally — its biggest economic trading partner — is going around denigrating Canada’s right to exist,” said Mr. Austen, one of four Times reporters who covers news in Canada.
In a conversation last week, Mr. Austen reflected on his beat and two-decade career at The Times. These are edited excerpts.
It’s been quite a few months in the news. How do you decide what to cover?
There are two parts to that question. There’s news, and then there’s “enterprise,” or profiles, features and other kinds of in-depth writing. News, generally speaking, is pretty obvious. When Mr. Trump announced a 25 percent tariff, that’s news.
Enterprise is sometimes tied to news and sometimes it’s not. We had a story conference in December in Toronto with editors coming from New York. We have these long lists of enterprise stories. For example, I started photographing the remaining pay phones in Canada on a whim, and it’s about to become a “visual story.” I made my way into journalism through photography. I still do a lot of photography, so I always have a couple of film cameras with me when I go on assignment.
Is there something unique about covering Canada that readers might not expect?
In 2016, The Times decided it was going to make a big push to cover Canada, partly because Canada is one of the largest sources of subscribers outside of the United States. Part of that push involved me creating a newsletter, the Canada Letter, a summary of Canada-related articles from the week.
Because the Canada Letter is intended for Canadians, I don’t have to explain how Parliament works to a global audience. We also alter The Times’s style rules for the newsletter so that they match the way the Canadian media does things, though a few readers still complain that we don’t use Canadian spellings.
What are some of your biggest challenges in covering the country?
Geography. With limited flights, it can take two days to get to some places. Then you usually have to drive, for hours.
Another challenge is that, in Canada, information is not open and readily available from institutions. In the United States, there is a presumption that public information belongs to the public. Here, federal public servants are bound by something called the Security of Information Act, and Canada has various privacy laws. As a result, public servants are very, very reluctant to divulge information and are often uncooperative. Judges do not like it when the police or prosecutors discuss cases before trials begin. So it’s very frustrating getting information from the police about crimes as they’re happening.
What’s been your proudest moment at The Times?
What I’m most proud of was telling the story of Indigenous residential schools in Canada. I think it’s an extremely important story, not just for Canadians but for the world. These schools were run mostly by the Catholic church. There was sexual abuse; there was physical abuse. There were lots of deaths from malnutrition, from starvation, from children running away from the sheer abuse. In 2021, Canadians were shocked when Indigenous communities began reporting that ground penetrating radar data suggested that large numbers of human remains, most of them children, were buried in the grounds around many of the schools.
What’s the one story that you’ve always wanted to write?
There are so many stories I want to write. I’d like to do more stories in the Arctic. I would like to drive across the country, and do something on that. I’d also like to take the train from Toronto to Vancouver at a non-touristy time of year. Remote communities use the train to travel into cities for medical care, shipping and other needs.
A train across the country takes more than a week and it’s just as expensive as driving. And driving across the country, if you’re stopping, is probably a monthlong proposition.
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