Journalist covered global hot spots
FROM COPY BOY TO RENOWNED REPORTER
Ben Tierney worked his way up from a copy boy at the Calgary Herald to become one of Canada’s most distinguished foreign correspondents.
He manned bureaus in Paris, Washington, Hong Kong, Ottawa and Vancouver for Southam News, informing Canadians about many historic events — the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown, and the recurring “troubles” in Ireland.
But his daughter Robin said the story that sticks out in her mind was a feature on the horrifying conditions faced by the “carpet boys” in India, children as young as seven who were forced to work up to 18 hours a day.
“They worked in ill-lit and airless mud huts, breathing carpet lint, in temperatures ranging from near freezing in winter to more than 40 C in summer,” Tierney wrote in 1991. “They were beaten and given one bowl of rice and salt a day. And at night, after the owner locked the doors, they slept on the hard dirt floor by their looms.”
His daughter said it was classic Ben Tierney.
“The thread often crops up in his stories — he was writing about the people nobody else cared about,” she said.
Tierney died Feb. 14 in Victoria after a battle with throat cancer. He was 81.
His death touched off a flurry of condolences from his former colleagues.
“A fine journalist, a staunch colleague and the best of company,” said Jonathan Manthorpe, who succeeded Tierney at Southam’s Hong Kong bureau.
“He was a major voice for Southam,” said Gordon Fisher, executive vice-president of Postmedia.
“Just a fine reporter who could also write. When I first knew him, he was covering Edmonton politics, and the great story at the time was all around a crooked mayor named (William) Hawrelak. He was a rogue but he kept getting re-elected despite some terrific reporting by people like Ben.
“I learned so much from him (about) the values of curiosity, the relentless pursuit of truth, and — maybe most importantly — being impervious to the position and power of the wrongdoer.”
Bernard Tierney was born in Ayr, Scotland, near Glasgow.
“He was always very driven,” said Robin Tierney. “He got himself over to the United States at the age of 17 by doing garden work for people in his town.”
His first stop was Cleveland, but within a year he was in Toronto. He attended the Ontario School of Art, where he met his wife Joan. In 1957 he moved to Calgary to work at the Herald, starting off as a copy runner, taking typewritten stories from reporters to editors. But he wanted to write, and kept asking the editors to give him a shot.
“I think he just pestered the editor, that’s how he started,” said Robin Tierney. “Finally they let him write little bits. And then they were like ‘Oh, you’re actually pretty good.’ ”
He moved to the Edmonton Journal and, in 1966, got a Southam fellowship at Massey College in Toronto. From there his career took off.
It was a golden age for a foreign correspondent, when newspaper chains would dispatch writers virtually anywhere. Tierney covered the gruesome civil war in El Salvador, the AIDs crisis in San Francisco and the plight of impoverished Amerasian children in Ho Chi Minh City that were a byproduct of the Vietnam War.
Tierney retired in 1994 and initially returned to Scotland.
“As many people discover, you can’t go back sometimes to the same small town,” said Robin Tierney. “He didn’t stay very long.”
He bounced around before settling in Victoria and took up fiction writing.
“He wrote 12 or 13 novels, which he published as ebooks and flogged on Amazon, earning enough some months to subsidize an extra trip or two to the pub,” said his grandson J.J.
He is survived by his former wife Joan, his daughters Danalyn and Robin and six grandchildren. A celebration of his life will be held in Victoria in April.