Remembering Stephen Thorne (1959-2025)

Stephen Thorne has died. The bitter, unexpected death of a tough journalist who wrote about death but couldn’t report on his own. He’d have written a damn fine story about it.

I was his boss for years, in Halifax and Ottawa, though Stephen had no time for bosses. He followed his nose for stories whether or not anybody asked for them. Sometimes he seemed like a pesky kid brother, a bag of trouble who had to be bailed out then reprimanded. Stephen was usually good-humoured about it, but always reverted to rogue.

He jump-started his career by dropping out of Acadia University, in Wolfville, N.S. He freelanced for the Halifax Herald with stories and photos from the Annapolis Valley, absorbing the profession and elevating the newspaper’s sleepy standards. He took flying lessons so one day he could be Errol Flynn, dropping into disasters with pen and notebook.

In 1984, Stephen joined the Halifax bureau of The Canadian Press news agency, where disasters were endemic. (The bureau was established in 1917; weeks later the Halifax Explosion cut the telegraph wires.) He began writing about mass deaths while covering the 1985 Arrow Air crash at Gander, Nfld., 256 victims. A mine blew up in Plymouth, N.S., in 1992, killing all 26 men underground. Stephen was there. A passenger jet plunged into St. Margarets Bay, in 1998. Stephen reported on the recovery of floating body parts of 229 people. And so on: Deaths at sea when giant cargo ships slipped into the North Atlantic. War deaths in Afghanistan and Kosovo. Death by race riot in Soweto. Of course he paid a personal price. No one can callus themselves against such horrors.

We got drunk sometimes, and sang “I’m a broken man on a Halifax pier” while stumbling on a Halifax pier. We invented Computer Club, a semi-regular bash at his place to console a colleague who’d been sacked. We marvelled like 10-year-olds at an old sword found among his late dad’s effects at the family home on Connaught Avenue. We got seasick on a heaving fishing boat while jigging for tomcod off Peggy’s Cove. Stephen had a nickname for everyone. Mine was “The Mighty Beebster,” which he blasted on the baseball PA system in Amherst, N.S., when I nervously came up to bat. His family visited our rental cottage on the Northumberland Strait, where crabs pinched the kids’ fingers. We watched Apollo 13 at the Oxford Theatre on Quinpool Road, and got ribbed for being on a date.

Stephen was allergic to news conferences, where reporters get spoon fed. In 1992, the owners of the deadly Westray Mine corralled journalists each day – with the connivance of the RCMP – to dribble out controlled accounts of the search for bodies. Stephen instead staked out the parking lot of the Peter Pan Motel, where searchers who had actually plumbed the shafts – the draegermen – arrived after shift each day. They opened up, describing a choked, underground hellscape. He dared not take notes, but rushed to his room afterward to write it all down. No one else came close to that story. If awards mean anything, Stephen’s reporting clinched many. His eerie account of retrieving human remains from the Swissair disaster while in a boat was the showcase story for a National Newspaper Award in 1999. But here’s the thing: in his brief autobiography posted on his website, not once did he mention any awards. For Stephen, it was the story, not the accolades. I leave to others an appreciation of his photography, a broad canvas capturing cowboys, models, Afghanis, eagles, vintage aircraft, and sports. The images speak of a journalist whose searching eyes were as adept as his ears.

I visited Stephen a few times at his sick bed, rehashing old times, joking, trading gossip. The last time I saw him we hugged. I told him I loved him. He said the same. Such plain words for friends who make their living by writing. Crazy.