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Without a doubt, Jan Wong knows how to stir things up. For six years, she skewered celebrities, big and small in her column "Lunch with Jan Wong" in The Globe and Mail. And for that she was both admired - and a little bit feared. She's also gutsy: She covered the Tiananmen Square Massacre on the ground, and she smuggled sharp objects onto airplanes in the weeks after 9/11 to test security.
All of which would make you think Jan was pretty tough. But all that changed in 2006: Jan covered the Dawson College shootings in Montreal for The Globe. A disturbed 25-year-old named Kimveer Gill had stormed the college, wounding 19 people and killing one person before killing himself.
In her piece, Jan wondered if Quebec's linguistic policies played a role in the killer's actions. The outcry was fast and furious: She received hate mail, a death threat, was unanimously denounced in the House of Commons and the Globe apologized for some of Jan's language.
But this was just the beginning. Turns out Jan started to suffer from clinical depression; unable to function; unable to write. It turned into a two-year struggle between her employer and her health insurer that eventually got her fired. Jan's experiences are captured in a self-published book called 'Out of the Blue: A Memoir of Workplace Depression, Recovery, Redemption and, Yes, Happiness'.
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