tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71185657074155692862024-03-06T01:30:39.601-08:00Claude Adams, Freelance JournalistThis site is rated as one of the "Top 50 Freelance Writing Blogs" by the Journalism Journeyman.Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.comBlogger76125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-29685799205943095002018-10-21T10:25:00.000-07:002018-11-14T10:56:31.182-08:00A Family in Flight
In May 2017, I flew to a city in Northwestern Iran for a one-month stay with Saren Azer and his four children. I was researching what I hoped would become a book, the story of a father who kidnapped his four Canadian children in the wake of a marital breakdown. While there, I kept a detailed journal of my immersion in a story (and a culture) that intrigued me, and still does. The book has Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-43024754432802692902016-10-05T11:52:00.001-07:002016-10-08T19:50:06.879-07:00Alone at World's End
NEAR MASSET, B.C.—The other day, at twilight, I took this
photograph on the beach outside my cabin on Haida Gwaii. You’ll have to forgive
my Woody Allenesque self-absorption when I tell you it’s a pretty good snapshot
of my interior life: Menacing clouds, a landscape bounded by grey, swaths of
shadow, nearly void of humanity. On the plus side, I suppose, is the unbroken horizon
and some holy Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-68546547206198176092016-08-29T09:23:00.001-07:002016-09-08T12:14:33.969-07:00The Azer abduction story: a journalist's dilemmaBy Claude Adams
Surrey, B.C.—Is Saren Azer a criminal? Or a
protective father with a just cause? Or is he an aggregate of both, a kind of benign kidnapper?
And until a judge or jury decide,
should we even be telling his story?
In nearly five decades of working
as a journalist, this is the most difficult story I’ve ever covered. I can’t
answer the first three, and question four takes us Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-41655770163804297512016-08-07T10:48:00.001-07:002016-09-01T09:09:33.486-07:00Kidnapping or Rescue? The story behind the Azer abductionIt's been a year since Saren Azer, a Kurdish-Canadian doctor, secretly put his four children on a plane to Northern Iraq, and became a fugitive in a case that electrified social media. He is being sought by the RCMP and Interpol on abduction charges. This is a backgrounder on a dosmetic relationship that went terribly wrong, and an update.
By Claude Adams
In Alison Azer's words, the Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-23612602580515629502016-07-23T21:16:00.002-07:002016-08-01T09:21:41.728-07:00A Death in Solitary
By Claude Adams
(Published in The Tyee on Aug. 1, 2016)
Burnaby, BC—Christopher
Roy hanged himself with a strip of bedsheet in a room measuring seven feet by 10 feet
in a prison in Abbotsford, B.C.
He’d just spent 60 days alone, in what we in Canada call “administrative
segregation” because we live in a liberal society and we don’t like the word “solitary.”
Chris’s father has another Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-74579275824693922252016-07-01T11:56:00.000-07:002016-07-01T12:14:50.229-07:00The Collapse of the Berlin Wall
By Claude Adams
About 70,000 people walk through the city centre of Leipzig on Oct. 9, 1989, during one of the so-called Monday demonstrations against the East German Communist regime. Former CBC correspondent Claude Adams and his cameraman, Philippe Billard, clandestinely filmed one such protest about a week before the Berlin Wall fell. They transported the footage back to the West Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-72382965382104542062016-06-19T14:20:00.004-07:002016-06-19T14:45:36.577-07:00Slow Justice: The Adam Anhang Murder Mystery
I've produced a lot of crime stories, but few have the sensational elements of what I called "A Father's Justice," reported and narrated by 16x9 chief correspondent Carolyn Jarvis.
YOU CAN WATCH THE FULL 16X9 STORY HERE.
At the heart of the story is Aurea Vazquez-Rijos--blonde, irresistible and relentless. And by all accounts, ruthless. While a fugitive in Italy, she was known as the "VedovaClaude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-11789011028150551482016-06-17T23:27:00.000-07:002016-06-19T10:43:08.679-07:00The Pain of Unexplained Loss: the Legacy of MH370
By Claude Adams
On the evening of March 7, 2014, Steve Wang turned on his smartphone and found a voice message from his mother, who was vacationing in Nepal. “I’ll be landing in Beijing at around 6:30 tomorrow morning,” she told him. “Please come and get me. And bring a coat. I don’t have one with me.”
Wang was tired, so he asked his father if he would pick her up. Then he went to Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-3700224857950201282016-06-17T12:20:00.000-07:002016-06-17T22:33:16.360-07:00The Myth of the "Vegetative" Brain
Of all the stories I've produced for Global 16x9, one of my special favourites is a piece we first broadcast in the spring of 2013, called "Waking the Brain."
YOU CAN SEE THE FULL STORY HERE
It's the story of three individuals--Leonard Rodrigues, Rohan Pais and Kate Bainbridge--who were all diagnosed as vegetative or "brain dead" after a catastrophic accident or illness. But the doctors Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-22055873163711884172016-06-08T09:51:00.002-07:002016-06-08T09:55:41.657-07:00In Muhammad Ali's OrbitA Letter to the Editor, Globe and Mail, June 8, 2016
I grew up in awe of Muhammad Ali as a fighter and quipster, but the memory I will cherish the most is when Ali arrived in Baghdad 26 years ago to negotiate with Saddam Hussein for the release of a group of American hostages.
I was a CBC reporter staying at the Al Rasheed hotel when Ali’s convoy arrived on a blistering hot November day. The Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-60046541916174888932016-05-18T21:18:00.001-07:002016-05-21T09:18:55.466-07:00Man who abducted his 4 kids, brought them to Iran, says he was escaping ‘Canadian nightmare’ | Globalnews.ca
By Claude Adams
Saren Azer’s story is one that has blazed through social media in Canada for nine months—a bitter marriage breakdown, a fight over four young children, and finally, a dramatic abduction and flight to a Middle East war zone by a father who says he and his kids were escaping a “nightmare.”
Now, for the first time since fleeing Canada with the kids last August, the father Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-8222197168260337722016-05-02T15:49:00.000-07:002016-05-03T12:56:38.845-07:00Avalanche Rescue: Greg Hill's Story
By Claude Adams
Even among extreme skiers, Greg Hill is
a phenomenon. The BC man has spent most of his adult life climbing and skiing
at high altitude, up where the air is thin and risk is ever-present. It’s been
a life of high adventure, and a lot of fun . . . But then, on a recent morning,
Greg Hill came upon a scene he can never forget—a snowfield of death in the
mountains of Nepal.
Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-12261287925400634232016-04-29T12:42:00.002-07:002016-05-02T13:14:09.924-07:00Second Sight: How Brian Borowski and Daniel Kish "see" with sound
By Claude Adams
- A A +
You can watch the full extraordinary 16x9 story HERE
I was walking with Brian Borowski down a residential street in London, Ontario, when he told me: “We’re coming up to a park.”
Brian is 59, and he’s been blind since birth. So I had to ask: “How do you know it’s a park?”
Easy, he explained. It sounded like a park.
“So what does a Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-84062339964926378242016-04-25T13:53:00.000-07:002016-04-26T10:02:17.728-07:00Disappeared
BY CLAUDE ADAMS
The last sighting of Canadian Diego Hernandez came at precisely 5:34 p.m. on the afternoon of May 8. We know the time because a surveillance camera from a government building across the street in the city of Puerto Vallarta captured the moment.
A municipal police car is seen pulling up to a black 2003 Chevy Trailblazer. Hernandez, 22, was a passenger. The driver was an Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-31828819235003761912016-04-13T15:30:00.000-07:002016-04-15T12:49:07.164-07:00HEROIN FOR ADDICTS
“HEROIN FOR ADDICTS”
PRODUCER/WRITER: CLAUDE ADAMS
REPORTER: CAROLYN JARVIS
AIRED: NOV. 22, 2014
ON THE STREET, IT’S KNOWN AS SMACK, SKAG OR SIMPLY JUNK-- BUT MOST
JUST KNOW IT AS ‘HEROIN’ – A DRUG THAT’S SO ADDICTIVE – ONCE YOU’RE HOOKED
- GETTING OFF CAN BE NEAR IMPOSSIBLE. THAT’S WHY SOME DOCTORS SAY – WHEN
NOTHING ELSE WORKS – WE SHOULD BE PRESCRIBING Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-81126489859986522662016-04-12T11:19:00.000-07:002016-04-14T11:31:52.262-07:00Paige's Story: Animating a troubled life, and deathBy Claude Adams
Early in the production of our story about the life and death of Paige Gauchier, I knew we had a problem.
We had no visuals, no personal videos, no home movies; nothing but a handful of grainy photographs of the aboriginal girl at various ages of her life, along with street scenes of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, where she was found dead in 2013.
How do we Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-31067308610099242602016-04-12T11:07:00.000-07:002016-04-12T11:07:57.610-07:00John Sopko's War: The Watchdog of WasteBy Claude Adams
History will note that Afghanistan was the longest, and one of the most expensive, wars in modern history. Also, arguably, one of the most futile, since the Taliban seems fully intact and the Islamic State group are making important inroads, now that the West has handed the fight over to the Afghan military.
Fourteen years of fighting, thousands of military casualties, civilianClaude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-76937929988968172942016-04-11T16:06:00.000-07:002016-05-02T15:22:56.438-07:00The lost men of Prince George
By Claude Adams
Watch the full remarkable 16x9 story HERE
Joe speaks in broken sentences. He’s so nervous that he has to read from notes he prepared before this meeting. Like the four other guys in Bruce Germyn’s Prince George, B.C. living room, Joe gets emotional and teary-eyed very quickly.
“A lot of people think I look good, but on the inside it’s a whole different story.”
Men Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-47764285024711869192016-04-11T15:53:00.000-07:002016-05-02T13:23:35.012-07:00Fatigue on the Rails: A Trainman's Nightmare
By Claude Adams
(YOU CAN FIND THE FULL VIDEO 16X9 STORY HERE)
Chuck, a locomotive engineer, says he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in more than 20 years. Chuck isn’t his real name, and the 20 years is probably an exaggeration. But his fatigue is very real. I can hear it in his voice. He’s tired, angry, impatient, and very anxious to talk about his chronic fatigue — something he blames on the Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-48344922100646926812011-08-08T21:37:00.000-07:002011-08-10T11:01:02.053-07:00Stayin' Alive in Wartime
By Claude Adams
In the early 90s, while covering the Yugoslav civil war for Christian Science Monitor TV, my crew and I decided to pose for a snapshot with a group of Croatian soldiers near the front line. As you can see from the photo above, we were disturbed by sniper fire overhead just as the photographer snapped the shutter. You might say it was our Robert Capa moment, except we survivedClaude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-72157408638302757782011-07-29T12:32:00.000-07:002011-07-31T12:28:33.821-07:00What happened to the children?--A collaborative project Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission is overseeing something called the Missing Children Project--a bold attempt to track and record the fate of every indigenous child who passed through the notorious residential school system. It's a kind of census of calamity. What follows is the framework of one story. I'd like to collect many more. If you have personal knowledge of a child who Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-30236875909602716742011-07-11T13:45:00.001-07:002011-08-22T10:13:45.959-07:00BULLETIN: "Dog Kills Local TV News Writer!"
See a version of this story in Vancouver magazine
By Claude Adams
July 11, 2011
This is a story about a dog who died and then came back to life and ended my career in local television news. When I put it that way, it’s funny. People can’t help giggling when they hear it. And I often end up laughing too, that edgy scratchy laughter that comes at one’s own expense and leaves little welts on theClaude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com89tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-8749179240285255312011-06-25T12:58:00.000-07:002016-04-12T11:38:12.558-07:00Killed by the Taliban
By Claude Adams
February 4, 2009. At his home in West Vancouver, Glen Cooper is fast sleep. The phone rings. “Hello?” It’s a bad connection from the other side of the world. “Hello?” It takes a few seconds, but then Cooper hears the broken English, the sharp hectoring voice. “Damn it,” he snarls, “it’s the middle of the night”—but the caller has launched into the familiar harangue: Where’s Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-28397783041487697062011-06-18T02:43:00.000-07:002011-07-04T10:19:40.999-07:00The shame of the bystanders By Claude AdamsThe Nathan Kotylaks of the world I can understand. It’s the bystanders I have trouble with. Nathan is a 17-year-old Maple Ridge kid who tried to blow up a police car in Vancouver’s Stanley Cup riot, and blew up a promising life instead. Son of a prosperous family, a prospective future Olympian, he was caught on camera trying to set fire to the car in front of hundreds of Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7118565707415569286.post-43435683908105482182011-05-15T17:00:00.000-07:002011-05-15T17:03:13.922-07:00War in the Mind: a film about traumaBy Claude AdamsJudy Jackson is a veteran documentary filmmaker on Salt Spring Island who knows as much about war-related trauma as anyone working in journalism. While she was making War in the Mind, her new film about combat trauma, she was also deeply engaged in the rehabilitation of a Somali photojournalist, Salah Abdulle. Abdulle was severely traumatized when the car he was driving in was Claude Adamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10210250669027184898noreply@blogger.com4