Calgary Herald journalist Michelle Lang never took the easy way out, whether it was holding government to account or travelling to a busy African AIDS clinic to chronicle the downside of recruiting foreign doctors.
Assigned to cover Canadian military efforts in Afghanistan for the Herald and Canwest News Service, the 34-year-old Vancouver native could have remained in the relatively safe confines of the base.
But Lang wasn’t wired that way. Days after arriving in early December, she couldn’t wait to get “out of the wire” — off the main military base — and on the ground with the troops.
This week, she ventured out with a provincial reconstruction team, soldiers and social workers working with ordinary Afghans to help repair the damage done by decades of war.
“Hopefully this will produce some interesting stories on the civilian-reconstruction side, as well as some military ones,” Lang wrote in an e-mail two days before her death.
Travelling Wednesday afternoon with a Canadian convoy, their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb four kilometres south of Kandahar city, killing Lang and four soldiers: Sgt. George Miok, 28, Sgt. Kirk Taylor, Cpl. Zachery McCormack, 21, and Pte. Garrett William Chidley, 21.
Four other soldiers and a Canadian civilian were injured.
Lang’s death, the first of a Canadian journalist in Afghanistan, was felt at home and in newsrooms across the country.
“It’s a devastating day. I’m totally heartbroken. I feel for her family, her fiance, her friends and I feel for the newsroom,” said Herald editor-in-chief Lorne Motley.
“It creates this hole, not only for the Herald, obviously, but also for Canwest and any other news organization because we’re a pretty tight-knit group as journalists. We’re family and when we lose one of our own, that’s difficult for all of us to accept.”