Mark Bulgutch - Thats Why Im a Journalist: Top Canadian Reporters Tell Their Most Unforgettable Stories

Ask a child today where milk comes from and the answer might be, From the supermarket. But if you had asked me when I was a kid, Id have said, From the milkman.

I loved watching that guy at work. I loved that he drove around in a truck. I loved that he could probably drink all the chocolate milk that he wanted. I loved that he arranged bottles of milk in a carrier that became so heavy that he would have to counterbalance the load by leaning far to the other side. I loved that everyone in the neighbourhood looked forward to his arrival.

Theres no doubt about it. When I was five or six years old I knew that I wanted to be a milkman when I grew up.

But just a few years later I was even more certain that I wanted to be a journalist.

When I look back at how I came to that conclusion, I cant put my finger on one pivotal moment. I think a few things just fell into place.

First, I saw my father bring home the newspaper every night. He would pick up the Montreal Star on his way from work. If the picture in your mind is of a man wearing a nice suit, carrying a briefcase and stopping at a newsstand after a day at the office, wipe that away. My father worked in a factory. He lugged heavy bags of sugar up and down the Redpath Sugar Refinery eight hours a day, five days a week, for more than thirty-five years. He left school in Grade 3. He could barely read. Im sure he never read a novel. But he bought a newspaper every day. And after dinner he would sit down and read it. My mother read it too. And she wasnt much more literate than my father.

I thought there must be something quite magical in that newspaper. So I started reading it too. And it was magical. The entire world was suddenly in my hands. In my handsa boy who had never left Montreal from the day I was born, except for a short trip to New York City by train to see some relatives who lived there. In fact, I now realize I hadnt even seen all of Montreal. I had never been east of St. Lawrence Blvd., the legendary Main that pretty much divides the city in half.

I couldnt wait for my father to come home with the paper every night. Then I discovered there was a way to get it even before he came home. There was a kid in my class who delivered the newspaper after school, with his older brothers. Right on my street. He could put it right at the door of our apartment.

I talked my parents into signing up. After that, when I got home after school I would listen for the thump of the papers arrival, run to open the door and settle down on the floor of the living room to begin inhaling information. I didnt read the business section, Ill admit, but everything else was fantastic. Nothing about the newspaper struck me as routine or ordinary.

A couple of years later, my friend and his brothers decided to give up their paper route and they agreed to recommend me to the lady who organized about a dozen routes from her garage.

If there has ever been a paper boy who took his work more seriously, Im sure hes still in therapy. The Star used to impress upon its carriers that we were the last link between reporters, photographers, editors, printers, driversall the people whose labour produced the paperand the reader at home. I bought that without a seconds hesitation. Without me, people on my street wouldnt know the news. It wasnt a paper route, it was a sacred duty. I was a soldier in the service of a free press, a pillar of democracy.

I delivered in pouring rain, snow up to my hips, blazing heat and freeze-your-face-in-one-minute cold. And I didnt toss the paper from far off and hope for the best. I treated my newspapers as precious cargo. Their safe and dry arrival was a standard I would not compromise.

My only flaw as a delivery boy was a lack of urgency. I didnt run down the street. I didnt take stairs two at a time as I made my way through apartment buildings. No, I walked. Slowly. How else could I read the paper as I delivered it?

The money I made from my paper route opened another window on journalism for me. We couldnt afford cable TV at my house. My fathers hard work and my mothers ability to stretch every dollar meant my two sisters and I never worried about having a roof over our heads or food on the table. But cable TV was a luxury for other people, not us. We had a television, of course. Black and white. And we could see American channels from Burlington, Vermont and Plattsburgh, New York, with the help of the rabbit ears on the TV set. But the picture was fuzzy and snowyon a good day.

I longed to see Walter Cronkite more clearly. So I used my paper route money to pay for cable TV . Now my future literally came into focus. I could watch ABC News with Howard K. Smith at 6 PM . Chet Huntley and David Brinkley were on NBC at 6:30. And then Cronkites CBS Evening News was at 7:00. There has never been a richer trifecta.

Lest you think I ignored Canadian news, fear not. The National was on my agenda too. But it came on at 11 PM in those days. My mother didnt like me staying up so late. And to tell you the truth, on some days I couldnt keep my eyes open even as I fought with her to let me watch.

I didnt just read the newspaper and watch TV newscasts. I got my hands on every journalists biography, memoir and autobiography that I could. I lapped up tales of beating the opposition to stories, racing to deadlines, travelling the world to cover historic events. Sign me up! I thought.

Like most kids, I read