Carleton’s journalism program launched a fundraiser for the Mary McGuire Journalism Internship Travel Fund with a powerful and emotional event thanking McGuire for her years of dedication and celebrating CBC’s decision to extend and expand paid CBC North internships for Carleton students.
The travel fund was the brainchild of McGuire, a long-time journalism professor who had to leave her position on Carleton’s journalism faculty in 2018 because of a cancer diagnosis. McGuire began her journalism career with CBC in Whitehorse and decided that her legacy at Carleton would be a travel fund to offset the costs of travel and living expenses for Carleton students who took up paid internships in the North. And she convinced the CBC in 2020 to create a paid internship in tandem with the travel fund. To date, five students have already benefited from the program.
CBC President Marie-Philippe Bouchard announces the extension and expansion of a CBC North internship program with Carleton.
The Dec. 1 event announced the CBC’s decision to extend the paid internship program for another five years, to 2030, and to expand the placement period to four months from two. The fundraiser is to boost the travel fund, which will now be called upon even more to cover additional costs for interns.
CBC President Marie-Philippe Bouchard came to Carleton to make the announcement and to thank McGuire personally. Like virtually every other speaker who came to the podium, Bouchard became emotional when she spoke of McGuire’s dedication and vision in establishing the travel fund. Donations can be made through Carleton’s FutureFunder page.
Bouchard said the internships and the travel fund “honour three of Mary’s big loves, the North, journalism and youth.
“Journalism internships like this one are essential. They help forge strong journalistic skills which are needed now more than ever, given today’s environment of polarization, misinformation and disinformation,” Bouchard said. “It gives interns a unique opportunity to live and work in the North.”
Mary McGuire, at right, with His Excellency Whit Fraser, CBC News Editor-in-Chief Brodie Fenlon, CBC President Marie-Philippe Bouchard and Carleton Provost Pauline Rankin.
Some of McGuire’s closest friends and colleagues gathered for the event. Among them was His Excellency Whit Fraser, the spouse of Governor General Mary Simon and himself a longtime CBC broadcaster across the North and in Ottawa, where he met McGuire.
“Nearly all of the presentations that I do, I realize right at the beginning, and I always admit I’m here because I married well,” Fraser joked.
“Today, I know I’m here because I carried a microphone,” Fraser said, his voice choking with emotion. “In this old heart and in this old head is a reporter, always was and always will be.”
“Very early in those days in Frobisher Bay in 1967, I learned quickly because we were always by ourselves, to ask the same question every day and sometimes a dozen times a day. What’s the story?
“This is a story. This is doing remarkable things for young students and journalists, it is doing remarkable things for the CBC itself and it’s doing remarkable things for Carleton.
“It’s a beautiful story, but my lead, is Mary McGuire. Just to you, lovely lady, thank you for a lifetime of commitment, honesty, hard work, focus, all of the things that make a reporter.’’
Brodie Fenlon, general manager and editor-in-chief of CBC News, spoke of how CBC North “plays a critical role in the life of so many northerners,” but also the importance of bringing the North to the rest of Canada.
“You really cannot understand Canada until you’ve been there…there are so many stories waiting to be told,” Fenlon said.
“It’s a real pleasure to meet Mary McGuire. This travel fund makes it easier for young journalists to get there, live there and work there so they can see firsthand what local journalism means to Canada’s remote communities and better understand the unique realities of life in the North.”
Fenlon also quoted the head of CBC North, Mervin Brass.
“Working in the North is similar to being a foreign correspondent, if you come from the south. Working in the north puts you in communities where sometimes English is barely spoken, you’re working in a different culture, and you need to learn how to build trusting relationships in a matter of hours.”
Fenlon said that CBC has expanded local service across the country. “There has never been a more important time for local boots on the ground reporting in communities.”
In a recorded video message, McGuire said her terminal cancer diagnosis made her focus on the things that matter most and how to give back. She noted that she took advice from her son, who encouraged her to “find a project that would honour the way you lived your life and connect the dots of your life and I think this did that so well.
McGuire said it was clear to her from her years of experience at Carleton that students “could almost never do an internship in the north because of the cost of travel and housing.”
“I wondered, could I create a fund that would provide some money so that students could do internships in the north and get the experience I had launching a journalism career in a place that was so new and so different and would open their eyes to the country.”
Mary McGuire being interviewed by journalism students after the event.
Allan Thompson, the current head of Carleton’s journalism program, noted that McGuire’s legacy will now “span the generations – past, present and future. Your work here at Carleton changed the lives of generations of students, many of whom populate the journalism landscape today. And now, through your travel fund, you will continue to change the lives of future generations, even those who will never have the good fortune to meet you.”
McGuire herself took to the stage at the end of the event to respond to a standing ovation.
“It’s really hard not to cry after all of those kind words,’’ McGuire said. “I am so full of thanks to all of you.’’
“That I was able to start my journalism career in the North and explore that whole world and meet those remarkable people is something I carried with me through life. And that I can continue somehow to share that gift with many more students into the future…warms my teacher’s heart.”
Event Photo Gallery
Photos by Bryan Gagnon
Tuesday, December 2, 2025 in General, Journalism News, News
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