Slain journalist Michelle Lang remembered in new book

On Dec. 30, 2009, Lang and four Canadian soldiers were killed after roadside bomb detonated in Afghanistan.

A few days before what will be the 14th Remembrance Day since her niece’s death, Catherine Lang lays a wreath bearing Michelle Lang’s name. The sunrise ceremony at Calgary’s field of crosses off the city’s Memorial Drive is chilly and emotional as Lang’s former colleagues at the Calgary Herald stand in remembrance, quietly shedding tears.

“Michelle was an engaging, charismatic, wonderful person,” Catherine Lang tells Global News in an interview the day before. “She loved to have fun.”

On Dec. 30, 2009, Lang and four Canadian soldiers were killed after roadside bomb detonated in Afghanistan. The then-35-year-old had been in the midst of a six-week assignment for the Calgary Herald and Canwest News Service. Lang, one of a steady rotation of media personnel to be embedded with the Canadian military, became the first and only Canadian journalist to die in the two-decade-long war.

“It was fairly soon after she was killed that I thought, this is something I need to do for her,” Catherine Lang says. “I really wanted to honour her and create legacy.”

That legacy has taken the form of a new book. Embedded: The Irreconcilable Nature of War, Loss and Consequence examines the circumstances around Michelle’s death and the sacrifices made by journalists in times of conflict and war.

“I’ve learned a number of things, not the least of which is how important that first record of history is journalists provide,” Lang said. “If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t have that record to fall back on and I think that is the sacrifice journalists like Michelle are willing to die for.”

Though Lang acknowledges it’s impossible to reconcile this loss for those who knew and loved Michelle, she takes comfort knowing her niece was doing a job she held so much passion for — even if, more than a decade later, Afghanistan is back under Taliban control.

Canada ended its mission in Afghanistan in 2013, while the U.S. and NATO completed a full troop withdrawal in 2021, a move that would prove catastrophic for the women of Afghanistan as the Taliban quickly seized power. In the years that followed, the Taliban government made it illegal for girls to attend school above a sixth-grade level. Afghan women have also been banned from using public gyms or parks, and they cannot attend university, hold a position in government or work with a national or international NGO.