At my request, Kent State graduate and former Beacon Journal staffer Jeff Sallot sent me this email about his life since the BJ:
Hi John,
Sorry to be so slow responding. I've been in Italy most of May with my partner, Rosemarie Boyle. We're celebrating 35 years of marriage this year and we weren't doing a lot of email during the trip.
That said, I was delighted to hear from you after all these years. I have very fond memories of the State Desk crew from my time at the Beacon-Journal (1969-71).
I'm going to make this "My Life So Far" piece brief, because you already have the lead.
My marriage with Rosemarie is the most important thing that has happened to me. We live in Ottawa, Rosemarie's hometown, and have two wonderful grown children. Mike, our eldest, is two hours away in Montreal. Kate lives here in Ottawa.
My son from my first marriage, Ken, is happily married to a wonderful woman. They live in Gainesville, Florida.
I joined the reporting staff at The Toronto Star after leaving the Beacon Journal in June, 1971. I was transferred to their Parliamentary bureau in Ottawa in 1972.
I met Rosemarie at the Star. She's a journalist, too.
By 1974 Rosemarie and I were both back in Toronto, working for The Globe and Mail, a remarkable national newspaper. I stayed at the Globe for 32 years.
Most of those years were in foreign or national bureaus. At various times I was the bureau chief in Moscow, Ottawa and Edmonton. I figured once that I have covered stories in more than 30 countries and every province and territory in Canada.
There were a couple of timeouts from daily journalism to do fellowships at the Canadian Centre for Arms Control and, in China and Japan, with the Asia Pacific Foundation.
I'm an academic now. Three years ago I retired from the Globe to join the faculty at the Carleton University School of Journalism and Communication. I teach multimedia reporting - you can check out my website at
Reporting lab
- and am involved in several projects with our Centre for Media in Transitional Societies.
The past couple of summers I taught journalism at the National University of Rwanda, a country I first visited in 1992 to cover the horrible genocide.
I still keep my hand in, writing for an online publication about human rights and national security, and doing talking head gigs at CBC, CTV etc.
But my biggest professional kick now is seeing my students doing journalism. One of my grad students was on CBC radio just this morning with a piece about military weapons sales. Nine of my undergrads have multimedia pieces on the web site of The Ottawa Citizen.
Rosemarie is now in public service as a senior official with an agency that promotes foreign trade. She's off to Zambia this summer and then repacks for another trip to Singapore, Hong Kong and Vietnam.
Well, I guess I wasn't as brief as I intended. But the long and short of it is I've been very lucky, and life is good.
Any chance you and Paula might ever be in this part of the world? I haven't been back to Ohio in several years, but I'm thinking of a possible road trip next year.
Now, your turn, John. Fill me in on what you've been up to.
All the best,
Jeff Sallot
Kent State University graduate Jeff didn't mention that he played a major reporting role in covering the May 4, 1970 Kent State shootings by the Ohio National Guard -- four dead in Ohio and nine wounded -- and the followup coverage under the command of the late, amazing Patrick T. Englehart. That brought the BJ one of its four Pulitzer Prizes.
Or that his coverage of Royal Canadian Mounted Police security service scandals in Quebec for the Globe resulted in the publication of his book on police corruption, "Nobody Said No." Which brings the book authors among BJ alums to more than 40 -- see previous BJ Alums articles on that category.
He’s covered wars and other violent conflicts in Afghanistan, Armenia, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lithuania, Russia and Rwanda (his multimedia report on his return to that small African nation is posted at the Rwanda Initiative website).
In 2008 Jeff was unanimously elected a Life Member of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery.
Jeff blogs at Wordpress.
His photos are at Jeff's photos
Click on the headline to see photos of Jeff in Canada and abroad.
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