Ruth Teichroeb accepts the 1992 Michener-Deacon Fellowship from His Excellency Ray Hnatyshyn, Governor General of Canada. The photo was taken during the Michener Award ceremony held at Rideau Hall, May 5, 1992.
Ms Teichroeb has been a Winnipeg Free Press social affairs reporter since 1990. A graduate of Waterloo and Carleton Universities, she worked with the Vancouver Province before moving to the Free Press in 1988. She is a double Michener winner – an unprecedented achievement. Her work on Manitoba adolescent treatment centres won the newspaper its second straight appearance in the Michener Award finals. She intends to use her four-month study leave to examine problems in Manitoba’s emerging native child welfare system and specifically the increasing tension between native child welfare agencies and main-stream authorities as native groups press for more autonomy. Her investigation will be the basis for a series of newspaper articles and ultimately the publication of a book on the subject. (Flowers on my grave : how an Ojibwa boy’s death helped break the silence on child abuse) (Teichroeb Fellowship report).
The fellowship of the Michener Awards Foundation, introduced in 1987, is known today as the Michener-Deacon Fellowship (named after the late Roland Michener and the late Paul Deacon, a senior media executive and Michener Awards Foundation president). The fellowship is to encourage excellence in investigative print and broadcast journalism that serves the public interest through values that benefit the community. Mature journalists are invited to submit written outlines for studies over four months that will strengthen their competence.