A life of wandering the world: The legacy of Joe Schlesinger's journalism
Joe Schlesinger, one of Canada's most respected and beloved journalists, died this week at the age of 90. He led what he called "a little boy's dream" of a life, "wandering around the world, watching the universe unfold and actually getting paid for it."
And he left behind a rich legacy of that work, including a series of columns he wrote for CBC News over the past decade, on everything from China's Ping Pong diplomacy to the 2014 Olympic Winter Games to the man who saved so many children from Adolf Hitler, including Schlesinger himself.
You can revisit them all here:
September 2016: U.S. presidents and their hidden health issues
Some critics have questioned Hillary Clinton's fitness to be president of the U.S. because she came down with pneumonia. You gotta be kidding! If a common illness like pneumonia made a person unfit to be president, then many American leaders would have never taken office.
December 2015: How refugees make Canada a better place
If I were to offer advice to those about to arrive, I would say: Just be patient. Canadians eventually come around. Yesterday's outsiders become part of the mainstream.
March 2015: The debt we owe thalidomide survivors
The shortfall in Canada's treatment of its thalidomide sufferers is nothing new; it's been there right from the beginning in the late 1950s.
February 2015: History shows Germany is a bigger deadbeat than Greece
What the Germans are conveniently ignoring is their own record as one of history's biggest deadbeats.
October 2014: Why the ISIS mission was Obama's real red line
The world took notice of America's reticence to use its vast power. And countries everywhere reacted by taking advantage of Washington's inertia.
August 2014: The fearful history of tunnel warfare, from Vietnam to Gaza
The Romans tunnelled and so did their enemies, be they Germanic tribes or Jewish rebels in Judea. As a military technique, tunnelling is among the oldest methods of warfare still in use.
June 2014: Nicholas Winton: The man who saved children from Hitler
For 50 years, we didn't know who had saved our lives. Winton himself was so modest he didn't even tell his wife what he had done. He felt he had done many things since then that were more meaningful to him.
March 2014: The problem with Ukraine, according the Russia
There is an unusual twist in this crisis, however, because, as Putin put it, Ukrainians and Russians are brothers. (And there is no falling out more bitter than a family feud.)
February 2014: Part roller derby, part ballet. Joe's ode to the Winter Games.
The breakneck speeds make these winter sports more dangerous, particularly, it seems, for women who must contend with courses largely designed for men.
February 2014: Is Europe's past Asia's future?
It isn't that either Japan or China wants war necessarily — though both are arming noticeably. What's more likely going on in the East China Sea is that two of the world's largest economies — China is No. 2 and Japan No. 3 — have ramped up their bullhorn rivalry as a means of deflecting attention from their own domestic problems.
October 2011: Dear Greece: There is life after default
Please, don't cry for Argentina. The Argentine economy is doing well these days. It grew by a blistering 9.2 per cent last year. Today, it is you who have much to cry about.
April 2011: What China's Ping Pong diplomacy taught us
The Chinese were the best Ping-Pong players in the world. But it quickly became evident that they had matters other than winning on their minds.
April 2011: De-clogging the veins of democracy
Our current first-past-the-post system is far from equitable and is quickly becoming ever more so.
July 2008: From Ping Pong to powerhouse: China's evolution
Where, before, the town was full of so-called honey wagons collecting the night's organic fertilizer harvest from outhouses, squat toilets and chamber pots, this time around, the toilet in my hotel room has a heated seat and push buttons that control a jet of cleansing water that can be adjusted in direction, intensity and temperature.
Watch: In an excerpt from the documentary, Joe Schlesinger: Through These Eyes, he describes how the rescue of a boy became his main focus while covering an earthquake in Italy:
