Remembering the weekend of Diana’s death

How best to mark the world shattering news? Spec published a rare holiday edition The news anchor was speaking but my attention was rivetted to the headshot of Diana and the dates 1961-1997.

Years before online journalism, the death in 1997 of Diana, Princess of Wales, on an August long weekend posed a dilemma for The Hamilton Spectator. Like most Canadian dailies it does not publish on a holiday Monday due primarily to a lack of ad revenue. But sometimes delivering the news overrides financial prudence.

Just as people can recall where they were when they heard of the assassinations of John Kennedy and John Lennon, people remember where they were when they heard that Princess Diana had died in a car accident in the early morning hours of Sunday, Aug. 31, 1997.

I was with my daughter watching a movie about a young woman who, feeling unsupported by those closest to her, runs away from home to find a new life. The ending is ultimately a happy one for Dorothy Gale from Kansas; not so for Diana Spencer from London.

Dorothy was stumbling across a field of blood-red poppies when the phone rang that evening. A friend was asking: “Are you following the news?” No, I replied, I’m watching The Wizard of Oz

“Diana’s been in a car accident,” she said.

I blurted (regretfully): “Good; now I have something for my front page.” As production editor of The Spectator, my job was to decide which stories and photos would make the front page. On a long weekend, stories of a thrilling nature were slim and usually stale by Tuesday, the Spec’s next day of publication. However, a story about the Princess of Wales in a fender-bender (as I assumed it was) would merit at least a photo on Page One.

My friend on the phone was quick to correct my assumption: “It sounds pretty bad.”

Returning to my daughter and the movie I put Diana’s car accident aside: It was probably nothing; she’d be OK; she was a born survivor.

At 3 a.m. I awoke with an ineffable sense that something was amiss. The world felt strangely altered, as if the population had collectively gasped and was struggling to exhale. I slipped out of bed, went downstairs and turned on the TV. The news anchor was speaking but my attention was rivetted to the headshot of Diana and the dates 1961-1997. Eventually I turned off the television. Long weekend or not, it struck me as unconscionable that The Spec would not be at the front of such a big story. It had to publish on Monday! So I sat in my kitchen with a mug of tea and waited until 6 a.m., which seemed a respectable enough time to phone the editor-in-chief Kirk LaPointe.

Jolted from sleep, Kirk was unaware of the news. He was perplexed as to why a car accident involving a princess necessitated a special edition until I said: “Because Diana died in that car accident.” We talked about how this would be an unprecedented move by the paper: money was tight, there were union protocols to observe, and the edition would be without ad revenue. I countered that the biggest news story of our century would matter to readers. After conferring with publisher Pat Collins, Kirk gave his blessing — as long as I could rally sufficient staff (and what were the odds of that on a hot, August long weekend?)

Within an hour I had a team of news and photo editors; two hours later we were in the newsroom sifting through reams of stories, reactions, and photos from around the world. Journalists have a tendency for gallows humour but there was none that day. Rather, there was disbelief among us: It felt wrong, out of step with the universe, to be writing Diana’s obituary.

At 6 p.m. the last page went to press. It was a tasteful, elegant package chronicling the tragic sequence of events, the global grief that was engulfing London, and the heated backlash against paparazzi and (wincingly) the media in general. The edition hit the stands Monday morning: all 40,000 copies sold. The Spectator was perhaps the only Canadian paper to run a holiday Monday edition. The following weekend it broke with tradition again when it published a funeral edition on Sunday.

Britain, where I now live, is witness to a revival of Di-mania abetted by a deluge of documentaries, news specials, and magazines, newspapers, and books analyzing every angle of Diana’s life. Prince William and Harry are active participants: In one documentary they reminisce about their late mother, in another they discuss mental health issues, ironically a cause Diana championed as her own struggles went unsupported. They are determined that people never forget her, but that seems unlikely: Her face still sells; her image still captivates.

Jane Christmas is a former Spectator editor now living in England.