Julian Sher is aCanadian investigative journalist, filmmaker, author and newsroom trainer based inMontreal, Quebec. He was an investigative producer for ten years then a senior producer for five years with theCBC'sThe Fifth Estate. He has written extensively aboutoutlaw motorcycle gangs,child abuse and the justice system.[1]
Sher began work atCBC inMontreal as an on-air radio journalist and show producer from 1983 to 1986. From 1986 to 1989, he was an investigative reporter forCBC Television in Montreal. He became a producer for the CBC network programThe Fifth Estate from 1989 to 2001, where he covered wrongful convictions, police corruption, war criminals and biker gangs.
Sher played a leading role alongsideDaniel Burke andHana Gartner in exposing InspectorClaude Savoie of theRoyal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) as corrupt. The scandal ended with Savoie committing suicide in his office at the RCMP's national headquarters on 21 December 1992. Sher stated in 2022 about Savoie's suicide: "I didn't kill him, I didn't load the gun, I didn't put the gun to his head. He made his choices. I'm not responsible but if Dan and I had decided not to do the story, if we had not covered this stuff, would he be alive? He might have decided to kill himself when the RCMP investigated him...The lesson I learned from that is the consequences of our work. For many of the people we tell stories about, it's their lives and sometimes their deaths."[2] Sher then worked as an investigative reporter for theGlobe and Mail and theToronto Star. He returned to be the Senior Producer for CBC'sThe Fifth Estate from 2012 to 2018.[3]
From 2001 to 2013, he wrote six investigative books. His bookSomebody's Daughter: The Hidden Story of American's Prostituted Children and The Battle to Save Them was described by Publishers Weekly as a “thorough, deeply affecting study... [that] strikes a rare balance between revealing trauma and hope.”[4]
His other book on child safety,One Child at a Time: Inside the Police Hunt to Rescue Children from Online Predators, was described by newspaper reviewers as “riveting” “eye-opening” and “gripping”.[5] His writings on child abuse have appeared on the front page of theNew York Times, the cover ofMaclean's magazine and theOpEd page ofUSA Today.[6]
He co-authored two books on outlaw motorcycle gangs,The Road to Hell: How the Biker Gangs are Conquering Canada andAngels of Death: Inside the Biker's Global Crime Empire, which was called “a devastating indictment of the gangs' drug-running and racketeering across three continents by theLondon Daily Mail and has been translated into several languages in seven countries.[7]
His bookUntil You Are Dead:Steven Truscott's Long Ride Into History about Canada's most famous murder trial helped lead to an official re-opening of a 40-year-old case and clearing a man who was wrongly convicted.[8]
His first bookWhite Hoods: Canada's Ku Klux Klan, an expose of racism in Canada is cited as the main source of the subject in the encyclopedias.[9]
He has filmed, written, directed and produced documentaries on scandals, wars and corporate intrigue in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, South Africa, Somalia, Costa Rica, Honduras, Mexico, Holland, France, England, the United States and Canada.
Sher taught journalists atCNN, theBBC, in newspapers and TV networks across Canada. He has been a guest speaker and trainer at conferences for theInvestigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) and Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ). He also trained in Bangladesh for FOJO and MRDI, with Syrian journalists in Turkey forJournalists for Human Rights, in Kosovo for theCanadian International Development Agency, and in the African countries of Tanzania, Ethiopia, Uganda, Ghana and Nigeria.
In 1990, Sher was president of theCanadian Association of Journalists.[10] He now sits on the advisory board of the Investigative Journalism Bureau[11] at theUniversity of Toronto.
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