He always threw good parties.
Of course, there was much more to Canadian journalist and war correspondent Adam Day – who died earlier this month at 42 years old – than just that. But that’s what I remember, nonetheless.
Adam and I were journalism-school classmates at the University College of the Cariboo – now Thompson Rivers University – back in the early 2000s, and even though we weren’t particularly close, our J-school class back then was small, and we were a pretty tight-knit group.
We all took the same classes, drank at the same pub, and often ended up back at Adam’s place, because unlike most of us who lived in dorms or tiny basement suites, he and a few others had rented an entire house in downtown Kamloops, which made it a prime after-hours landing spot.
I don’t remember ever talking to him about his dream of being a war correspondent, though I knew he was well-travelled even then, so after we graduated and he got a job as a writer for Legion magazine, and subsequently went on multiple tours of Afghanistan as an embedded reporter with the Canadian military, I wasn’t that surprised.
I can’t say I was ever envious of his travels, because all I ever wanted to be was a sports reporter, so reporting from war zones was never high on my to-do list. Hell, I don’t even like the idea of covering city council.
But while I never wanted his beat, I sure admired Adam’s talent.
He was, by all accounts, one hell of a reporter. Both CBC and the Ottawa Citizen, in stories on his death, referred to him as “the voice of many soldiers.”
He was tough, too. He travelled to places most of us don’t even want to think about, and saw things nobody should see. In Afghanistan in 2010, the vehicle in which he was riding was hit by an explosive device, and the ensuing blast left him with an injured spine and four broken teeth.
And yet he kept going back for more.
Once, an angry goaltender shot a puck in my direction after a game, and another time I slipped in some mud on the sidelines of a football game, but those are about the only times I’ve put myself in harm’s way on the job.
In the end, Adam’s job took its toll. His friend and fellow journalist David Pugliese said “it’s fair to say he was dealing with emotional and psychological issues” as a result of his career choices.
Makes writing about high-school basketball seem awfully insignificant, by comparison, doesn’t it?
As tributes have rolled in since his death, I’ve come to hope that, despite this tragedy, his family and friends – all of whom knew him much, much better than I ever did – can take at least some solace in knowing that he achieved exactly what he set out to achieve, all those years ago.
Not everyone gets to say that about their careers or their lives, truncated or not.
Nick Greenizan is a reporter at the Peace Arch News.
