Shilo Stag

As an acclaimed journalist, Sally Armstrong has reported from some of the most dangerous and broken places in the world.

But her focus has always been on the plight of women and girls, and the stories they have to tell, many of them heart-wrenching based on her observations. An award-winning journalist who is never on a clock when it comes to finding stories to write, she told her attentive audience at the Jr Ranks mess following a lasagna lunch as part of Shilo MFRC’s annual International Women’s Day (IWD) event.

She spends the time to gain the trust of her subjects, then tells their story by listening to their words no matter how horrific it might be. Being in a war zone is never pretty, but as a journalist she knows these stories need to be told to the rest of the world.

She apologized for ending her talk on a sad note: relaying the time she met a dying child while covering a story in Somalia about where Canada’s grain ends up in that war-torn country. She learned a father was shot after asking for food, and when his wife and six kids tried to find help with a two-day walk to the nearest major centre, four of those children died en route.

“What do you do,” she asked. “You have no energy, so do you just leave your child at the side of the road?”

The mother and two of her kids made it to their destination, but soon after mom and another child died. She found the remaining youngster sleeping on a straw mat. When she took a flash photograph of him for her story, he awoke.

“He turned his head to see me, still curious [despite his health]. I smiled at him, and he smiled back. Even in his condition, he was still curious. He died the next day. I will always remember that meeting.”

It was while she was covering the war in Bosnia that Armstrong discovered her calling.

“I decided to devote my journalism career to issues around women after an incident in Sarajevo,” says Armstrong.

She is sometimes called “the war correspondent for the world’s women.”

She’s also known as “La Talibanista.”

Armstrong is a journalist who covers zones of conflict. She often finds herself in the company of military members in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), so her visit to CFB Shilo was a treat despite the frigid temperatures she arrived to following her flight from Toronto.

Her beat not covering city hall or the courts in Toronto — he job is to find out what happens to women and girls in places like Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, South Sudan and the Middle East; but she also covers the status of women in North America.

She is currently working on a remarkable book with Dr. Sima Samar, the woman who defied the Taliban in the 1990s and went on to become the first woman minister of Women’s Affairs and the founding chair of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. Armstrong acknowledged Dr. Samar knows what went wrong in her country and shares the stories as well as the names of the guilty in their tell-all book which will be published this year.
With the incomprehensible turn of events in Afghanistan, and the withdrawal of soldiers from Canada, Britain and United States, Armstrong acknowledges she’s still on the same beat she began covering in 1997. She might be back in that country in the next 10 day, if she’s allowed in by the Taliban now controlling Afghanistan.

“Hard to imagine that in one year scientists found a vaccine that could save all the people in the whole world, but in 20 years we couldn’t find a path to peace in Afghanistan.”

In her 2019 CBC Massey Lectures called Power Shift: The Longest Revolution, Armstrong argues the future of humanity depends on strengthening the status of women and girls. She asserts that improving the status of women is crucial to our collective surviving — and thriving. The facts, Armstrong says, are beyond dispute: when women get an education, all of society benefits; when they get better healthcare, everyone lives longer.

By observing the past, Armstrong examines the many roles women have played in society — and what we learn is gender inequality comes at too high a cost to us all. The only way forward is for women to become truly equal with men.

A four-time winner of the Amnesty International Canada Media Award, Armstrong holds 10 honorary doctorate degrees and is an officer of the Order of Canada.

She was the first journalist to bring the story of the women of Afghanistan to the world and is relentless when it comes to exposing the abuse of women whether on an American university campus or a village in a war zone.

Author Michele Landsberg describes her this way: “Striding into Taliban-held Afghanistan with a chador over her six-foot frame, playing high-fives with a traumatized child rape survivor in the Congolese jungle, marching with the defiant grandmothers in Swaziland, she explores the darkest reaches of women’s experience and brings back astonishing news of hope, challenge and change. From Tahrir Square to LA, Armstrong discovers that the sisters are doing it for themselves — and revolutionizing the world.”

Award-winning journalist Sally Armstrong was introduced during the IWK event organized by Shilo MFRC by CFB Shilo BComd LCol Chris Wood, who helped her up on to the stage at the Jr Ranks mess. During her talk, Armstrong described the time she was transported between two ships at sea, using her hands to illustrate what it was like hovering over the ocean while those on the ships took photographs. LCol Wood and BRSM CWO Jeremy Abrahamse conversed with MFRC executive director Willemien van Lankvelt prior to Armstrong’s talk. Following her talk, she received some MFRC swag, which she said she would use it at an event in May. Photos Jules Xavier/Shilo Stag