Jack Cahill, 79: foreign correspondent for Toronto Star
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Jack Cahill, 79: Star man was foreign correspondent
Globe-trotting reporter, author dies at age 79
Best way to get a story was `to see it, feel it, touch it'
PATRICK EVANS
STAFF REPORTER
He grabbed a shark by the tail in Australia. He ate braised bull's penis in
Beijing. He drank three-mice wine in Hong Kong, with real dead mice at the
bottom of the bottle.
And he found bliss in those summers spent sailing the Great Lakes, sipping a
rum and Coke, putting the world to rights with his buddies.
Former Toronto Star reporter Jack Cahill, who died at 79 yesterday in
Toronto after a lengthy illness, believed the best way to get a story was -
in his own words - "to see it, feel it, touch it."
He had to be there, watching history unfold, regardless of the danger.
"He was one of the last old-time journalists, and the world was his beat,"
said Michael Pieri, a foreign editor at the Star in the 1970s. "He
represents an era that saw some of the best foreign correspondents."
Cahill won a National Newspaper Award for his account of escaping Vietnam
after the fall of Saigon in 1975. He got onto one of the last evacuation
helicopters out of Saigon, which deposited him safely onto an American
battleship.
But Cahill and a group of Vietnamese refugees were kicked off the ship in
the middle of the night because, as the captain told them, they weren't
Americans.
He spent six days as one of 8,000 passengers on a refugee ship in the South
China Sea. With only three small paper cups of water a day, he endured
incredible heat and used now-worthless Vietnamese currency as toilet paper.
He recalled the adventure in an article he wrote for the Star to mark his
retirement in 1991. His tactile reporting style is everywhere in his
writing, grabbing readers through their senses: "The holds smelled of urine
and sweat. ... It was so hot down there you could see the air. Hot, stinking
air is yellow or purple."
Cahill's family, living in Hong Kong at the time, had no news of him for a
week after he disappeared from Saigon. His oldest son, Anthony, remembers
when the family first found out Cahill was alive and well.
"The irony was he'd gone from living on that ship, living on nothing for six
days. Then we got a call (from him) from the pool of the Canadian
ambassador's residence in Manila. Having a scotch, I think."
Anthony says that was typical of his father's career - the James Bond-like
ease with which Cahill could switch from wearing a flak jacket on a
battlefield to a tuxedo at an Ottawa political schmooze.
Cahill was born in Brisbane, Australia, in 1926. He finished high school
just in time to enlist in the Royal Australian Air Force at the end of World
War II, too late to see any action. "He ended up playing football for the
RAAF," says Marie, Cahill's wife of 48 years.
Cahill left the service and started doing newspaper apprenticeships in 1946.
After a stint at the Courier-Mail in his hometown of Brisbane, he worked as
the chief crime reporter at Sydney's Daily Telegraph from 1953 to 1957.
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`He represents an era
that saw some of the best
foreign correspondents'
Michael Pieri,
former foreign editor at the Toronto Star
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During the Sydney years, Cahill's editor sent him with an underwater
photographer to get a shot of Cahill grabbing a shark by the tail. The shark
was a sluggish specimen, never known to bite. But the story gave Cahill the
notoriety of a daredevil journalist.
He kept much nicer company than sharks in those years, too. The day Cahill
met his future wife Marie, he gave her a pretty good preview of two themes
that would run through his entire life: danger and water.
Marie was an emergency room nurse, and he came to her wet and bleeding. "He
was washed onto the rocks (while) scuba diving, and I was one of the people
looking after him."
She laughs as she recalls, "I thought he was rather cranky at the time." But
Cahill called her up soon after their emergency room meeting and asked her
out on a date.
They were married in 1956.
The next year, Cahill moved to Canada, where he worked for The Vancouver Sun
as its Ottawa bureau chief until 1965. Later that year, he started at the
Star as a reporter.
He was appointed national editor in 1969, did a brief stint as Ottawa bureau
chief in 1970, and worked as the Star's Asian bureau chief from 1973 to
1978.
In addition to newspaper writing, Cahill published five books, including a
biography of former prime minister John Turner and a collection of his
adventures as a foreign correspondent called If You Don't Like the War,
Switch the Damn Thing Off!
In his years as a journalist and a Toronto Star legend, he followed former
prime minister John Diefenbaker on his tour of the Soviet Union, saw the
Khmer Rouge conquer Cambodia, and covered the Israeli invasion of Lebanon
from the Lebanese side. He crossed minefields. He survived artillery fire.
But for all his adventures overseas, Cahill's family and friends say he
found his greatest happiness sailing around the Great Lakes.
His long-time friend and fellow Star journalist Tony Westell was often at
his side.
"That's him and Westell," says his son Anthony. "They'd go away on sailing
trips in the summer and discuss the world's problems, and by the time they
got back, they'd have them solved."
Westell remembers those summers fondly.
"We tended to prefer the ports on the American side (of the lake)," he says.
"They were more laid back, and ... the rum was cheaper. Jack liked rum.
Spending a night in one of those ports, talking about our lives and
careers - he was happy then."
Jack Cahill leaves Marie and their four children: Anthony, Sally, Kerry and
Patrick.