Jan Wong dishes on depression in the workplace - Arts - Macleans.ca
Globe : while reaction to Wong’s article was “disproportionate,” he wrote, Wong’s statements “were clearly opinion, not reporting and should have been removed from the story. A decade since Wong’s Globe and Mail column “Lunch With. In 2004, Wong denounced the Globe. She cancelled her subscription to the Globe. “If I see the emperor is wearing no clothes, I’ll say it, even if I know the other villagers are going to stone me. ”. Work was Wong’s “core, my identity,” she writes. Wong writes she was ordered back to work in December or her sick pay and benefits would end. Her tenacity garnered headlines: in 1988, a vice-president of the Toronto Stock Exchange was sacked after Wong unearthed lies on his CV. That year, she was named China correspondent, a six-year stint than won her plaudits for ballsy coverage of... It took a blow-up with an Air Canada flight attendant to alert Wong to the fact she was cracking up, she writes, and needed to “Of course I knew it would be sensitive,” Wong says, tucking into rabbit ragù over pappardelle. Wong is stressed, she says. It’s not 10 minutes into my lunch with Jan Wong, and the veteran journalist’s Type-A ways are on full display. At lunch, Wong shrugs off the criticism: “I don’t do subtle. Colleagues note Wong hadn’t lost her zeal for breaching boundaries other reporters wouldn’t. Besieged by anxiety, Wong called in sick. Settled into our destination, a chic downtown Toronto restaurant, Wong appears harmless in a brown pantsuit, seed-pearl necklace and sensible shoes. Wong’s doctor recommended travel—a “geographic cure. Wong was denounced in Parliament. ” Wong was furious, and hurt. When I arrived, Wong was busy grilling the owner for crime-scene details. Wong is friendly and open, though commandeering. I don’t do wink-wink,” she says. She’d received death threats in the past, and the paper handled it. this time, she writes, she had to call police herself. Still shaky, she took a scheduled two-month book leave to finish her book Beijing Confidential. After we both decide on the special, she orders for us then sets about structuring the conversation: “Let’s start at the beginning,” she says. Within days, she writes, she felt marginalized at work. ” In October, she sent the paper a doctor’s note confirming she was ill. “Everybody is saying I said they shot people because of Bill 101. One recalls her working on a story about germs on cellphones. She recalls every published “correction” of her work, but not when her first-born son began walking. ” famously—often brutally—skewered subjects, there’s little evidence of the “Hannibal Lecter of the lunch set,” as Pamela Wallin once called her. Where does it say that. “I get crap all the time for my writing....