Stevie Cameron blended hard-hitting journalism with a deep commitment to justice and generosity
In August 1999, Karlheinz Schreiber sat in a corner of a bustling Toronto hotel restaurant, gesturing enthusiastically to National Post reporter Philip Mathias about an instant spaghetti cooking machine he was promoting. It was a strange scene for the German-Canadian businessman, whose name was synonymous with high-stakes deals involving planes, tanks, and whispers of political intrigue. Mathias, who had initially broken the story that connected former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to the Airbus probe, listened carefully for the possibility that Schreiber might let something slip.
The conversation was interrupted by the sudden arrival of two RCMP officers who sat down at Schreiber’s table and produced a warrant tied to a German tax fraud investigation. For a moment, Schreiber appeared caught off guard, but his surprise quickly melted into his trademark bravado. “Well,” he said, “let’s see whether the Germans can do anything through the Canadians.” German authorities were seeking Schreiber’s extradition so he would be forced to face allegations of failing to pay over 25 million German marks in taxes—equivalent to $20.8 million at the time. That night, Schreiber traded the comfort of his cushy hotel room for a Toronto detention centre.
Schreiber’s arrest was the spark that would reignite the Airbus Affair—and it would also pull investigative journalist Stevie Cameron back into the fire. Cameron wrote the 1994 book On the Take, which intricately chronicled corruption during the Mulroney years. But as the police investigation plunged deeper, Cameron would see the spotlight shifted onto her. That arrest in a Toronto restaurant would escalate one of the most significant political scandals in Canadian history. And, for Cameron, it marked a fundamental shift in her stellar journalism career: instead of reporting the news, she found herself at the centre of the story.
Long before she became a household name, Cameron’s life was the stuff of stories. Her father, Harold Edward “Whitey” Dahl, was a bush pilot with a reputation for being a rebel and risk-taker. As an American mercenary, he had voluntarily flown for the Spanish Republican Air Force during the Spanish Civil War. Her mother, Eleanor Bone, came from a wealthy family in Belleville, Ontario. “Her parents were useless,” says Amy, Cameron’s youngest daughter. “Wonderful, exciting, fabulous, thrilling, useless parents who had no money and spent it all.” Sometimes Cameron was sent to live with her grandfather in Belleville, where she was welcomed with warm fires, glittering Christmas parties, and lavish feasts. Back with Mom and Dad, the scene reverted dramatically. “They would fly off and be living in a crummy apartment in Switzerland and have these desperate times with their parents,” says Amy, “these parents who are so volatile.”
In 1953, the family’s precarious world unravelled. Dahl was arrested in Paris, along with his mistress, under suspicion of stealing gold from a plane he had piloted. His detainment shattered the family, and Bone severed the marriage. Cameron, then a young girl, never saw her father again. Two years later, Dahl died in a plane crash near Fort Chimo (now Kuujjuaq), Quebec, during a storm while ferrying equipment for the construction of Arctic radar stations.
Amid this challenging upbringing, Cameron’s curiosity and creativity nevertheless flourished. “Right before she died, we found her diary from when she was 19 years old,” says Amy. “Her writing is captivating and funny and irreverent and full of interesting stories about her friends.”
Cameron’s path to journalism was just as dynamic. After finishing high school in Belleville, she earned a BA in English at the University of British Columbia. Then she became a junior code breaker for the National Research Council, monitoring Soviet air traffic during the Cold War. Life took another turn when she married political scientist David Cameron. The couple moved to the United Kingdom, where Cameron pursued further studies in literature at University College London. Ever curious and ambitious, she then trained as a chef at the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu in Paris between 1974 and 1975, adding culinary expertise to her growing list of accomplishments. Eventually, the Camerons returned to Canada and decided to settle down. They took up residence at a farm near Peterborough and both began teaching at Trent University.
But Cameron’s restless curiosity from her youth remained. “Mom, while she had initially imagined a life where she would be at home and her husband would be working, and she’d have this lovely traditional experience, she was too curious and too engaged in the world,” says Amy. “She tried it when we were little. She was a stay-at-home mom, and she was bored to tears.”
With two daughters to care for and a life that felt too small for her ambition, she faced a choice between settling for the quiet life she once imagined or chasing the unknown. When her teaching contract at Trent was not renewed, she pivoted toward an old passion: writing. This was not unexpected. At home, the Cameron family was unlike most others. The dinner table wasn’t always a place for chatter and clinking silverware. Instead, family members absorbed themselves in books, immersed in different worlds, yet together in the same room. It wasn’t a lapse in family connection, but rather a shared love for the written word—a house rule fostered by her mother’s insatiable curiosity. “If everybody had a book,” says Amy, “then we could all read.”
In 1979, Cameron put her Cordon Bleu training to work, securing a role as a food editor for the Toronto Star. After an exhausting year of commuting between Ottawa and Toronto, Cameron returned home to become a lifestyles and travel editor at the Ottawa Citizen. The reading habit became even more ingrained, as a steady supply of books flowed into the household. “She would bring them home, whatever her staff weren’t taking,” she says, “and just dump them on the stairs in the front hall. My sister Tassie and I had free rein. Mom didn’t care what it was. She’d just say, ‘You’ve got to read anything.’”
Soon after moving to the Citizen, Cameron took advantage of an opportunity and joined the paper’s new investigative unit, becoming a national political columnist. “She started doing lifestyles and then realized, “‘Well, the men are telling the stories that people pay attention to, and I want to tell stories that people pay attention to,’” says Amy. “She discovered she loved it—and that was it.”
By December 1989 Cameron was a seasoned political journalist at The Globe and Mail. One afternoon, early in the month, she was on her way home from the newsroom when a breaking report came on the radio: there had been a shooting at Montreal’s École Polytechnique. At the Globe office, Gwen Smith, a friend and colleague, received a call from fellow reporter Victor Malarek: They’re just shooting women. “The words hung in the air, stark and horrifying,” Smith says. “It was like every hair on the back of your neck just went up.”
Cameron took the pain, outrage, and grief and channelled it into what she did best—write. In the wake of the massacre, Cameron’s column, “Our Daughters, Ourselves,” became not just a recounting of tragedy, but a profound reflection on what it meant for modern society, for women, and for humanity. It was writing that demanded not only to be read but to be felt. Perhaps the most powerful punch came in Cameron’s last lines: “So now our daughters are truly frightened and it makes their mothers furious that they are frightened. They survived all the childhood dangers, they were careful as we trained them to be, they worked hard. Anything was possible and our daughters proved it. And now they are more scared than they were when they were little girls. Fourteen of our bright and shining daughters won places in engineering schools, doing things we, their mothers, only dreamed of. That we lost them has broken our hearts; what is worse, is that we are not surprised.”
Kimberley Noble, who also worked with Cameron at the Globe, describes “Our Daughters, Ourselves” as “a beacon for many people just trying to process the horror.” Cameron captured not just the terror but the systemic issues of misogyny and violence it brought to light. “That’s just how Stevie resonated with an audience,” says Smith. “She could capture, in that way, what everybody was thinking.”
This compassion wasn’t just a tool for Cameron’s reporting—it was a guiding principle. She believed that journalism wasn’t just about holding power to account: it was about understanding the human cost of injustice. Her work demonstrated that compassion could be a powerful ally in the pursuit of truth. “This was a woman who knew all these power brokers, but she would sit down and have a cup of coffee with the guy who just lifted himself up off the pavement outside the church,” says Smith. “She was just this wonderful dichotomy.”
Nowhere was this more apparent than in Vancouver, where Cameron lived while researching her books on B.C.-based serial killer Robert Pickton. When her daughter Tassie would visit, she’d bring her along to navigate the Downtown Eastside’s dark alleys. On one of these trips, they saw a thin young woman who leaned against a brick wall ahead, carefully guiding the needle as she injected heroin into the delicate flesh beneath her eye. Cameron paused, unflinching. Tassie watched in stunned silence, her stomach twisting at the sight.
Cameron waited, patient as ever, until the girl was finished. Then, with a gentle familiarity, having met the woman before, she stepped forward and greeted her as if she were seeing an old friend. She slipped a bill into the woman’s hand. “Here’s some money for a sandwich, okay?” The woman nodded in gratitude as Cameron moved on, her stride purposeful but unhurried. Her daughter followed, in awe. “She knew all the sex workers,” Tassie says. “There was no pity. It was compassion, not judgment.”
Cameron uncovered details most reporters wouldn’t dare touch, exposing corruption at the highest levels and solidifying her reputation as one of the country’s fiercest investigative journalists. “She had this zeal to get the story, but it wasn’t malicious. She believed in journalism, and believed our job was to get to the bottom of it,” says Smith. “Stevie would be up late reading more stuff or talking to more people,” says Smith, “because she wanted to get the story out—if the story was there.”
On November 8, 2003, Gwen Smith shuffled into her morning routine, still groggy, when the sight of the newspaper jolted her awake. There, splashed across the front page of the Globe was Stevie Cameron. Smith’s jaw dropped. Stevie must have died, she thought. That was the only reason she could imagine seeing her friend’s face printed in such a way. Yet the headline on Kirk Makin and Paul Waldie’s story read: “Could this journalist be the secret informant?”
The allegation stemmed from her work covering Mulroney and the Airbus Affair. Cameron’s investigation had revealed a labyrinth of political intrigue and corporate malfeasance. After leaving office in 1993, the former prime minister received $300,000 in cash from former Airbus chairman Schreiber, who had been lobbying for federal contracts, including the Airbus deal and a proposed factory for armoured vehicles. The payments were made in secret—allegedly for lobbying services—and came to light after Schreiber was arrested by the RCMP.
To dig deeper into Mulroney’s involvement with Schreiber, Cameron had formed a partnership with The Fifth Estate’s Harvey Cashore. Together they detailed Mulroney’s corruption as prime minister and set the stage for public scrutiny of his financial dealings. “We went all over Europe on [the story] and we produced the truth,” Cameron said in a 2004 interview with CBC. “The whole story is there.”
Through meticulous research and with trademark tenacity, Cameron and Cashore shed light on a story few dared touch. It cemented Cameron’s reputation as a journalist unafraid of powerful adversaries. “Some of these politicians would say, ‘Oh, wow, she was a hard ass,’” says Smith. “If Stevie had you in her sights—don’t get me wrong, that pen was sharp—likely there was a good reason.”
But Cameron’s relentless pursuit of the truth came with a price: Mulroney’s defenders soon accused her reporting of crossing a line. Shortly after the Makin and Waldie bombshell story, Justice Then released documents from secret hearings to the public, revealing more threatening allegations against Cameron. Included in these documents was RCMP Superintendent Alan Mathews’s affidavit that alleged Cameron had spoken nearly 700 times with contacts at the RCMP between 1988 and 2004.
The media storm was relentless: “Stevie the Stalker,” “An Obsessed Woman with an Agenda,” “The Queen Bee of Mulroney-bashing” read headline after headline. Critics suggested her journalistic integrity had been compromised, arguing that a journalist’s role is to report on events, not assist law enforcement. Though Cameron staunchly denied these allegations, asserting her loyalty was to the truth and the public interest, the controversy cast a shadow over her work.
Mathews later testified that the number of direct contacts between the RCMP and Cameron was actually “very few,” but the damage was done: the accusations had already undermined her reputation as a journalist. “When [RCMP] Staff Sergeant Fiegenwald wrote a public letter to say the allegation was nonsense and that he admired my work, none of the [Conrad] Black papers would print it,” Cameron wrote in a 2003 column for the Globe, “I Was Not the Real Story.”
While Makin and Waldie’s initial story elaborated on the confusion and disagreements within the RCMP surrounding Cameron’s status as a confidential informant, her career faced significant challenges in the aftermath. There were more than three years of investigations into her RCMP involvement, which ultimately remained undetermined. Judge Then ruled Superintendent Mathews had “acted in good faith” when he made the decision to classify Cameron as a confidential informant. Although Judge Then never named Cameron as a confidential informant outright, he cited numerous reasons why Mathews’s decision was reasonable. All the while, those who knew her best defended her integrity. Noble, for example, insists that Cameron’s commitment was always to journalism and the public’s right to know. “I didn’t ever see her make a decision that wasn’t journalistic.”
Cameron herself was horrified seeing her own face staring back at her from the morning paper. “Mom was attacked where it would hurt the most,” says Tassie, “and in her own paper, too.” Amy adds, “Her instinct was to fight back.” Cameron responded to the allegations by maintaining that any information she shared with the RCMP was already public and that she was neither informed of nor agreed to confidential informant status. “If Harvey Cashore at The Fifth Estate and I didn’t chase that story, and chase that story, that story never would have been told,” Cameron said in the 2004 CBC interview. “You have to know how to stand up to these guys and I can do it.” She reiterated this in her testimony before the House of Commons Ethics Committee in 2008, highlighting her commitment to journalistic integrity.
Still, Cameron’s involvement in the story sent shockwaves through the media. Her experience forced journalists to reconsider the ethical boundaries of their work, particularly the risks of appearing too close to law enforcement or other sources of power. It highlighted the balance between gaining access to critical information and maintaining the perception of neutrality. “It struck fear in the hearts of every journalist who had done the same kind of investigative work,” says Amy. “You build your connections, you have your conversations, you double-check everything. You do it with the understanding that when it finally is published, your employer is going to have your back. That that was turned on its head was really a wake-up call for many of that generation of journalists.” Noble expressed a similar point of view, noting it was a “cautionary tale” that has influenced how far she is willing to go to report a story.
In the wake of the RCMP informant allegations, Cameron soon found that the unwelcome media attention was not her only problem: she also became stuck in a lengthy legal battle to try to clear her name. “She had to have a lawyer sitting in on a number of those hearings,” says Noble. “She had to have standing, and it was expensive.”
“The idea that they were going to ring her out for every penny she had in the legal machinations was awful,” adds Amy. “She couldn’t face that without having the top lawyer at her side, and that is an incredibly expensive thing.” Once Cameron had depleted her savings defending herself, fellow journalists organized a fundraiser to help cover her legal expenses.
Cameron herself was a beacon of generosity. She wasn’t content to write about injustice; she rolled up her sleeves and got involved. “Mom was very conscious of people who needed help or who were in challenging situations, and would step up,” says Amy. “She used to say, ‘To those who’ve been given a lot, much is expected,’” adds Tassie. “That was one of her guiding principles.”
It’s why Cameron in 1991 helped found Out of the Cold, a program out of St. Andrew’s Church dedicated to supporting Toronto’s homeless by providing hot meals, haircuts, clothing, and other essential services. “Because she was a chef,” says Amy, “the thing that mom did to show love was feed people.” Jan Wong, a close friend and colleague, remembers the time Cameron invited her to join her holiday celebrations the year she had none of her own—always “taking in stray cats.”
Wong stepped up as chair of the Cameron fundraiser to raise money for her hefty legal bills, which had reached nearly $120,000 by July 2004. The support came pouring in. Cameron had connections across so many different industries that Wong and other organizers were able to put together the event without spending a dime. “It was phenomenal,” says Smith, “just to understand what Stevie meant to so many of us.”
After the Airbus Affair, Cameron continued to do what she loved: she wrote. She continued producing articles and published two books on serial killer Robert Pickton, who preyed on vulnerable women from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, The Pickton File (2007), and On the Farm: Robert William Pickton and the Tragic Story of Vancouver’s Missing Women (2010). For the latter, she won the 2011 Arthur Ellis crime writing award for Best Non-Fiction Book.
On August 31, 2024, Stevie Cameron died in her home surrounded by family. Recalling her mother’s professional rules of life, Tassie smiles as she recites them:
“Don’t treat people poorly, don’t hurt people, don’t be mean to the assistant, don’t be greedy, don’t cheat on your taxes, don’t lift yourself up by putting someone else down.”
Oh, and there was one more: “Work harder than everybody else and don’t fuck up.”
To be clear, “fucking up” did not mean making ordinary mistakes. It meant compromising your integrity, being unkind, or taking shortcuts at someone else’s expense. Cameron’s legacy isn’t just her fearless pursuit of truth—it’s her insistence on doing so with humanity.
About the author
Maya is in her fourth year of TMU’s Bachelor of Journalism program, pursuing a double minor in English and history in preparation for teachers college. Maya has published work with the Unaffiliated Press, where she discovered a passion for the editorial side of journalism. As an aspiring English teacher and self-proclaimed grammar nerd, Maya is excited to take on the challenges of Copy Edit Chief. In the rare moments when you find Maya without her eyes glued to a page, you can often find her scribbling down ideas for a book, guzzling espresso, or coaching youth soccer.
