David Moorcroft, BA 77, is president of Strategy2Communications Inc., a retired senior vice-president of Corporate Communications for the Royal Bank of Canada, and a former editor of the Loyola News (1975-1976).
“I’ll never forget the morning of November 24, 1974. It was a Sunday. I was looking forward to watching the Grey Cup championship football game between Montreal and Edmonton later that day with friends when the phone rang. It was a fellow student journalist from our college newspaper with some devastating news. As he spoke, my knees began to buckle.
The previous night, six people had been killed in a car accident — two of them were our good friends and colleagues.
Michael O’Hearn and Martin O’Connor were editor-in-chief and news editor, respectively, of the Loyola News — a student-run paper based at Concordia. Michael and Martin were in their early 20s and soon to embark on what would have certainly been outstanding careers in journalism.
Just a few months earlier, Martin had recruited me to the Loyola News. I knew nothing about journalism and was intimidated by the prospect of writing weekly news stories. When I hit a dead end on my very first assignment, I returned to the newsroom dejected. Martin coached me to look beyond the surface and find the story where I hadn’t seen one. And thus my first newspaper story was published — and my 45-year career in communications was launched by Michael and Martin.
Thirty years later, in November 2004, about 20 former Loyola News staff members gathered in Montreal to mark the anniversary of Michael and Martin’s tragic passing. It was a cathartic experience, with many tears and hugs.
Then in 2014 we met again and decided to create a living legacy. To mark the 40th anniversary of our colleagues’ passing, we established a bursary in their honour to financially assist, each year, one Concordia student who was either registered in the journalism program or a practising journalist on campus. Three student journalists have received the award, with a fourth award due early in 2019.
Today, with the safety of journalists at risk in various parts of the world and quality journalism under attack at home, there has never been a better time to support student journalism. That’s why I co-founded the Michael O’Hearn and Martin O’Connor Student Journalist Bursary at Concordia — and why I am offering to match all donations to the bursary until April 1, 2019, up to a combined maximum of $2,000.”