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Author's take on notorious serial-killer case

Investigative journalist and author Stevie Cameron discusses Robert William Pickton case at a lecture on March 9
February 21, 2012
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By Howard Bokser


The journalist who spent eight years covering an infamous serial-killer court case is coming to Concordia March 9. 

Toronto-based investigative reporter and author Stevie Cameron first caught wind of the disappearance of a number of sex-trade workers from Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside in 1998. Four years later, Robert William Pickton was arrested for the murder of many of the missing women. 
 
Stevie Cameron
Investigative journalist and author Stevie Cameron. | Photo by Angela Fama
When asked to cover the trial, Cameron jumped at the chance — although she couldn’t know it would occupy nearly a decade of her life.
 
Pickton was convicted in 2007 of six second-degree murders — he’s actually suspected of killing as many as 49 young women — and sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 25 years. The case officially closed in 2010 when the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear an appeal. 
 
“Whenever I told anyone that I was working on the Pickton case — which was complicated, a horrible story — they couldn’t believe it,” Cameron says. “But I always say that it was the best assignment. I loved it.”
 
The result of her diligence is the acclaimed bestseller, On the Farm: Robert William Pickton and the Tragic Story of Vancouver’s Missing Women (Knopf Canada, 2010). Cameron will discuss her book and the case, as well as other lessons she’s gleaned from her distinguished career, at the Reader’s Digest Annual Lecture Series in Journalism. 
 
Cameron is perhaps most known for On the Take: Crime, Corruption, and Greed in the Mulroney Years (1994), her bestselling exposé of Canada’s 18th prime minister. She wrote that and its follow-up, Blue Trust: The author, the lawyer, his wife and her money (1998), with research assistance by former Concordia journalism lecturer Rod Macdonell, while Andrew McIntosh, BA 97, did research for On the Take. 
 
“I’ll talk about my process for those books, which I wrote while based in Montreal,” says Cameron, who still spends time in the province at her summer cottage in the Laurentians.
 
Since completing On the Farm in 2010, Cameron has taken a bit of a break, spending some time with her family — including daughter Amy, a Concordia grad (BFA 96). Yet her intimate knowledge of the gruesome serial-killer case has made her much sought-after. “Pickton keeps me busy,” she says. “I’ll be speaking about it four times over the next six weeks, right across the country.”
 
The Reader’s Digest Annual Lecture Series in Journalism is sponsored by the Reader’s Digest Foundation of Canada and Concordia’s Departments of Journalism and English and is free of charge and open to the public. 
 
When: Friday, March 9 at 7:30 p.m.
Where: Room H-407, Henry F. Hall Building (1455 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W.), Sir George Williams Campus
 
Concordia students and faculty members are also invited to hear Cameron, William Marsden, assistant city editor at the Montreal Gazette, and literary agent Chris Bucci discuss the process of transforming an idea into a book at the Annual Professional Development Panel. The event is hosted by the Department of Journalism and Writers Read at Concordia and takes place Friday, March 9 from 2 to 3:30 p.m. in the J.A. DeSève Cinema, Room LB-125, J.W. McConnell Library (LB) Building, 1400 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W. 
 
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