Tickets to the Canadian gala can be purchased HERE.
(LifeSiteNews) – Dorothy Cummings McLean has been writing since she was given a blank book for Christmas when she was six or seven years old.
She started keeping a diary and began writing short stories and plays throughout her childhood.
“My most memorable one was called ‘The Maple Monster,’” she shared. “It was about a winged dragon that flew over Toronto to live in the part of the Don Valley nearest my grandmother’s house. It attacked my school bus, which stopped near there, and the dragon ate my friend’s sister.”
“The monster was such a pest, Prime Minister Trudeau (the first) was informed.”
McLean had already published two books before she came to work for LifeSiteNews – a Graham Greene tribute novel and Seraphic Singles: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Single Life. In a twist of irony, she got married right before learning that the latter had been accepted for publication.
She married a Scot and, after joining him in his home country “had a hard time finding full-time work,” McLean recalled. She was still writing her longtime column for the Toronto Catholic Register “as well as blogging and being rejected by short story magazines.”
“I was already feeling fed-up with underemployment when my husband was diagnosed with brain cancer,” said McLean. “When I saw an advertisement in LifeSiteNews for a ‘Culture of Life’ reporter, I applied. I had been in the Toronto pro-life movement as a teenager, so I already knew LifeSite’s origin story, as it were. And Steve [Jalsevac] and John-Henry [Westen] knew my writing from the Catholic Register, it turned out.”
McLean’s journalistic talents quickly shone at LifeSite, and some of her unique life experiences became an unexpected help to LifeSite’s reporting. In her mid-twenties, for example, McLean took up boxing – giving her an edge when reporting about men competing in women’s sports.
“I was the first woman to box at my Hamilton [Ontario] gym,” she said. “The second (or maybe third) was Jessica Rakoczy,” now a seven-time women’s lightweight boxing world champion. She and McLean sparred at least once.
“I was gutsy but not particularly talented. She sure was though,” McLean added. (It is worth noting, though, that none of her LifeSite colleagues, male or female, have ever dared challenge McLean to a boxing match.)
McLean’s Polish sources instrumental in aiding reporting on tragic ‘RS’ euthanasia case
McLean’s favorite LifeSiteNews memories “are from covering the Synod for the Amazon,” when she was sent to Rome for three weeks in 2019.
“LifeSiteNews had three reporters there, with Jim Hale behind the camera. The audience hall for the Vatican’s media office was full of journalists from around the world, many of whom I recognized…As you can imagine, there was some tension between the different sides in our ecclesiastical civil war.”
The two LifeSiteNews stories she’s written that have impacted her the most personally are both related to the Catholic faith: the “RS” euthanasia case and the Father Thomas Rosica plagiarism scandal.
About the former, McLean explained:
‘RS’ was a Polish Catholic living in Britain who had a heart attack and slipped into a coma. His doctors wanted to withdraw his feeding and water tubes to bring about his death. His wife agreed with this plan, but his birth family did not. LifeSiteNews’ reporting on this case helped increase publicity in Poland, and what was supposed to be a quiet euthanasia – and the judge took great exception to it being called euthanasia, by the way – turned into a diplomatic incident. The crux of the matter was whether RS would have wanted to continue living. His birth family insisted that, despite having married a divorcee, he had remained a devout Catholic and was against starving and dehydrating disabled people to death. One of my Polish sources sent me a photograph of him meeting John Paul II, which we published with a bar over the man’s eyes. There was a publication ban on his identity, and I didn’t want to get charged with contempt of court. In the end, the doctors won, and RS died. I remember the moment I saw the news on my cellphone. I felt very sad.
And the Rosica plagiarism scandal was personal for McLean:
The Father Rosica plagiarism scandal was deeply absorbing but awful because it involved so many good people. Fr. Rosica and I had gone (in different decades) to the same theology school; we had the same Canadian publisher; we had friends in common. It was deeply painful for me to call up old professors and mentors and ask them for confirmation that Fr. Rosica had indeed gone to this college or that institution and if, by any chance, a copy of his licentiate thesis had been kept. (It hadn’t.) Contacting my own publisher for comment was heart-breaking. And now watching friends from the old days re-introduce Fr. Rosica as someone to whom the laity should listen is painful, too. At the same time, there is some dark humour in the fact that I first discovered Fr. Rosica’s plagiarism because of a skill I learned in a college founded by his own Basilian order. “Teach me goodness, discipline and knowledge”? Perhaps. Close reading? Definitely.
McLean looking forward to speaking with readers
McLean will be at LifeSite’s July 18, 2023 Markham, Ontario gala, where after enjoying a cocktail reception and dinner, attendees will watch as a special “LifeSite Live” is filmed.
“What I miss most about Toronto are the people,” McLean said. “I am looking forward to having conversations with readers at the Gala. I hope teachers attend because I very much want to hear about their new challenges. I’m thinking about transgenderism and other harmful ideologies, but also about children’s intellectual development and mental health overall.”
“Meanwhile, as an old mentor once told me, people forget that even journalists don’t know what’s going on until somebody tells us,” she added. “I hope readers will tell us what new stories we should be reporting.”
Tickets to the Canadian gala can be purchased HERE.