Jan Wong, ex-Globe reporter making waves with new book on workplace depression

Reporter Jan Wong made her journalistic reputation by stirring things up and after years off the radar, she's doing it again.

Wong's book, Out of the Blue: A Memoir of Workplace Depression, Recovery, Redemption and Yes, Happiness, chronicles her bizarre fight with and ultimate dismissal by the Globe and Mail, where she'd worked for more than 20 years.

The book, self-published after a deal with her regular publisher was mysteriously cancelled, has raised eyebrows for its unvarnished look at Wong's battle with depression and the apparent shabby treatment she received from her longtime employer.

(Video from janwong.ca)

It began with a contentious analysis she wrote in 2006 about the Dawson College shooting rampage in Montreal by Kimveer Gill, who killed one student and wounded 19.

The 3,000-word piece included a couple of paragraphs noting the immigrant background of Gill and two previous Montreal school shooters and suggesting the attackers felt marginalized by Quebec society, which valued "pur laine" (racially pure) French roots.

In the ensuing backlash, the Globe distanced itself from the story, even though Wong insists then-editor Edward Greenspon had read and approved it. He would write later that the offending paragraphs should have been edited out.

"I wrote a feature story that sparked a political backlash, my employers failed to support me and later silenced me, and after I became clinically depressed, they fired me," Wong writes in the book.

Wong, celebrated for her work as the Globe's China correspondent and her revealing "lunch with ..." features, told the Ottawa Citizen she was consumed by a sense of betrayal.

"That's what started my depression," she told the Citizen.

She went on sick leave but said the Globe hounded her to return to work, despite being diagnosed with clinical depression, including by a company-appointed psychiatrist.

The Globe even hired a private security firm to shadow her, Wong relates, filming her to see if she was faking her illness.

A year later, Wong was fired, though she negotiated a termination settlement with the paper.

Wong, who now freelances and also teaches journalism at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, said she was forced to self-publish the book after Doubleday, which published her four previous books, withdrew. She hints at libel chill over her accounts of the Globe's "corporate bullying," the Citizen reported.

But Wong apparently doesn't spare herself in this book either, relating among other things her compulsive shopping and hysterical crying jags in front of her teenage sons.

"I began screaming," according to one passage reported by CTV News. "I banged on the door, bruising my knuckles.

"The blue-painted steel, insulated against Canadian winters, muffled the sound of my pounding. I was crying now, tears of pure terror. Did no one care if I died? I became convinced the killer was now standing right behind me. I still believed if I didn't turn around, I had a chance."

Wong said she's always believed her personal vanity is secondary to giving a reader the best understanding of the story she's trying to tell.

"I made a decision from the beginning that my personal problem, my personal embarrassment and humiliation were completely secondary to the importance of the story, to tell people what it's really like," she told CBC News.

Twitter has spread the word about the book, including a tweet by Globe health policy reporter Andre Picard, who links to the CBC's story without comment.

The Globe's book review should be fascinating.