She covered the genocide in Rwanda, the Taliban in Afghanistan, the civil war in Syria. Tuesday evening, Michèle Ouimet also received top honors for her body of work, with the Coronation of Career award from the Canadian Journalism Foundation.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
This national recognition, underlined during an evening at the Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto, adds to the prize list of the intrepid journalist in the field, who spent 29 years The Press before signing his last column, in 2018. “It’s really fun that English Canada recognizes a French-speaking journalist”, reacts immediately the main interested party, met a few days before the ceremony.
“It’s an honor, but it’s still a bit surreal…why me?” “, adds in all humility Michèle Ouimet, whose nominations for the Canadian Journalism Competition are countless, sacred knight of the National Order of Quebec in 2020 and winner of the Judith-Jasmin tribute award in 2019. “There are plenty others who work hard. Maybe because I went to dangerous ground? »
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Michèle Ouimet, “A woman in the land of the Taliban”, January 12, 1997
The jury was led by Michel Cormier, former Director General, News and Current Affairs, Radio-Canada. Michèle Ouimet joins the prestigious circle of laureates here, including Peter Mansbridge and Michel Auger.
“It’s a prize that is not given regularly to Quebec journalists, but the fact that Michèle Ouimet succeeded in attracting the attention of the jury says a lot,” said Jean-François Bégin, senior director of the information to The Press, who also began her career with Michèle Ouimet as internship supervisor! He made a point of emphasizing her tenacity (a “hard head!”), her courage, her righteousness, whether as an education reporter, columnist, boss, columnist, great reporter abroad or “great reporter short “.
This award is the crowning achievement of a rich career, the kind of career we all wish we had!
Jean-François Bégin, Chief Information Officer at The Press
The “great lady of field journalism”, as columnist Isabelle Hachey also calls her, has also published several novels (The cat man, The promise and purple hour). She began her career as a researcher for journalist Pierre Nadeau at Télé-Québec, then Radio-Canada, before making the leap to rue Saint-Jacques in 1989. Barely a few years after her arrival (1994), she left to cover the genocide in Rwanda (“But what got into me!”). There followed a number of reports as dangerous as they were striking, from the four corners of the world: from Pakistan to Mali via Iran, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria. Without forgetting Afghanistan, where she went, with notebook and bulletproof vest, no less than eight times.
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An article by Michèle Ouimet then dispatched to Rwanda, May 4, 1994
It is moreover of her report in a prison of Kandahar, in 2007, that she is most proud. “In Afghanistan, in Kandahar, I went to prison to talk to tortured Taliban,” she recalls. The story also earned him the prestigious Michener Prize (“with Graeme Smith, du Globe and Mail “, she takes the trouble to specify).
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Michèle Ouimet’s investigation which earned her the prestigious Michener Prize.
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Michèle Ouimet’s investigation which earned her the prestigious Michener Prize.
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IMAGE ARCHIVES THE PRESS
Michèle Ouimet’s investigation which earned her the prestigious Michener Prize.
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As for the topos of which she is perhaps less proud, Michèle Ouimet cites without hesitation her coverage of the scandals at City Hall, under the administration of Gérald Tremblay. “I’ve written so much. May be too much. Too fast. I didn’t make any mistakes, but maybe sometimes I pressed too hard. I could have been more subtle…”
If we tend to quote the great reports of Michèle Ouimet abroad, the journalist has also done a lot of ground here. “I’m remembered above all for my international reports, she confirms, but I also lived for two weeks in a slum in the Centre-Sud district! She still remembers it. A “journey to the end of misery” from which she came out… with scabies. “It was so dirty, I scratched my blood…” Among other more local immersions, Michèle Ouimet was also an erotic telephonist as well as a card drawer.
” The Press always said yes to my ideas. Even if, sometimes, it didn’t look good, people trusted me. […] I’m really grateful. And I was also given time to do my reporting. It is a huge chance. »
Its price says a lot about the importance of the land, she believes. “There is nothing better than the test of facts. […] Between reading a refugee report and going to a refugee camp […]it is completely another universe. […] The basis of the job is the field. In Montreal, or elsewhere…”