George Garrett: Intrepid Reporter

If you listened to CKNW any time from the mid-1950s to the end of the ‘90s, you’ll remember George Garrett.

His memoir, George Garrett Intrepid Reporter has just been published, and it’s a great ride through four decades of politics, disasters, consumer investigations and murders.

I met George in the mid-1990s, when I was a Vancouver Sun reporter at the beginning of my career and George was nearing the end of his. I’d studied some of his investigative work in journalism school which included going undercover as a tow truck operator to expose a scam in the ‘70s and covering a riot at the B.C. Pen.

Known as “Gentleman George,” because in the competitive world of journalism, he was just so darn nice. Daphne Bramham told me she once arrived late to a scrum and George handed her his notes. She asked him why he’d do that—a reporter from a competing media outlet—and he just said ‘why not?’

George helped me when I was researching Murder by Milkshake, my book about the murder of Esther by her husband CKNW personality Rene Castellani who was having an affair with Lolly, the young receptionist. George worked with Rene and knew “Lolly the dolly,” and covered the case for the station during Rene’s two trials for capital murder.

George was there for all the major events. He covered the Second Narrows Bridge collapse in 1958 that claimed 19 lives and the Hope slide of January 1965.

He wrote the book the same way he reported his stories, with humour and compassion, relying on brief notes and memory. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t go to great means to get a good story, and some of the methods he used are not only very funny, but should be required reading for journalism students.

He covered some of the most sensational murders of last century. There was the disappearance of Lynn Duggan in 1993, and the discovery of her skull in the North Vancouver forest a year later. Her boyfriend, a former VPD police officer was eventually charged in her murder and that of another girlfriend.

There was 19-year-old Sian Simmonds, sexually assaulted by her doctor and murdered by a hitman to stop her reporting him and ending his medical career.

George personally knew Doris Leatherbarrow and her daughter Sharon Heunemann who ran a lady’s wear shop in North Delta, and whose son/grandson Darren recruited two teenage friends to murder them so he could inherit the money. George went to the funeral and was shocked when Sharon’s husband wrote a eulogy with an unflattering description of her in gym wear. “After the service, I complimented the minister on how well he had conducted the service and commented on the husband’s eulogy, saying I wanted to make sure I quoted it correctly,” writes George. It was a thinly veiled attempt on my part to get that eulogy—and it worked! The minister reached into his inner jacket pocket and handed me the eulogy. I admit that sometimes I was shameless in order to get a good story.”

You can meet George at his Vancouver book launch at the Book Warehouse on Main Street, on Tuesday March 12 at 7:00 p.m.

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