Walking through the sterile hallways of St. Joseph’s Hospital in London, Ont., you would never think you are sharing the space with dogs. This is an environment where you expect heart attacks to be cured, not caused.
What we discovered in our investigation into the use of dogs in cardiac arrest studies at the hospital revealed how a strict code of silence among researchers concealed practices including induced heart attacks in animals lasting up to three hours.
Our story shook many Canadians, making headlines across the country and sparking a debate over the use of dogs in scientific research that continues today.
On my first day at the IJB, I was warned that I shouldn’t expect to publish during my four-month summer term. There’s a well-known rhetoric amongst investigative reporters that big investigations aren’t published over the summer. Sources are on vacation, the government is on hiatus and readers don’t pay much attention. Investigative work is slow, tedious and often frustrating; everything we do at the IJB takes months or even years of work before it’s published. So releasing a potentially policy-changing investigation in just two months was astounding.
But this story had more surprises in store. Just four days after our story was released, I received an email from St. Joseph, confirming it was suddenly shutting down the research program we had revealed for the first time.
Our newsroom was in disbelief. IJB Founder Rob Cribb, who’s been an investigative reporter for 25 years, said he’d never seen such a swift policy response to a story. Soon after the hospital’s announcement, Ontario Premier Doug Ford posted about the investigation on social media, saying he was “deeply disturbed” to hear about the research and “immediately reached out” to the hospital, presumably to shut it down.
We rushed to our desks and started working on a new story. Our normally quiet newsroom, usually filled with reporters methodically combing through hundreds of pages of research, became a scene out of All the President’s Men. Fingers flew across the keyboard, three people furiously dialled government phone numbers desperate to get someone, anyone, from the province on the phone. Finally, my colleague Masih Khalatbari calmly stated: “I might have a direct line to Doug Ford.”
No one believed him. Rob punched in the digits, treating it more like a box to tick than something that would garner a result. I rushed to start recording the audio.
An outgoing ring filled the tense room. Then, another. And then, an unmistakable voice greeted us on the other end.
“Doug Ford,” Rob chuckled. “You answer your own phone, it’s true!”
With more feeling than I’ve ever heard from a politician, Ford told us about his love for the seven dogs in his family, promising he’d end dog research in Ontario.
His words were in stories everywhere, and so was the IJB.
In a profession where the standard is to promote your own work without acknowledging that of other publications, it was astonishing to see our humble investigative unit celebrated by other journalists. The IJB model is built on collaboration: collaboration with other outlets, journalists, experts and students. It is the antithesis of the traditional lone wolf, every-man-for-himself newsroom culture where reporters don’t even tell colleagues what they are working on.
This story certainly wouldn’t have been possible without the collaborative work of whistleblowers and scientific experts. We believe collaborative reporting is the future. We seek to increase its prevalence across the country. Having our work acknowledged and expanded by other outlets – including the CBC, CTV, Global News, the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star – gives me hope for the future of an industry that not only celebrates each other’s wins but also collaborates in pursuit of facts and truth.
It’s not every day that you get to do your dream job before you graduate university. It’s not every day that you have a hand in exposing clandestine research performed on puppies, and it’s not every day that Ontario’s Premier shuts down the program and vows to end all dog testing because of your work.
This work is a far-cry from the quick turn around work I’m used to, when you need 400 words about a protest on the boss’ desk by the end of the day.
Sitting wide-eyed in an interview with a whistleblower who knows the information they possess is so valuable they are willing to risk their job for it, was revelatory and surreal.
It’s also the most rewarding work I’ve ever had the privilege of doing.
Jenna Olsen is a journalism student at the University of King’s College in Halifax, N.S.
