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.
More recently, so-called “virtue” or “morality” laws implemented in August require women to veil their entire bodies, including their faces, at all time in public. Women were also forbidden from singing, reciting and reading aloud in public, as a woman’s voice is deemed “intimate” and should not be heard. Last month, the Taliban went a step further, issuing a decree that also prohibits women from praying aloud or reciting the Qur’an in each other’s presence.
Lang says seeing this unfold has been like losing her niece all over again.
“I went into a tailspin and I was full of rage and grief that so much had been sacrificed and here once again was a military withdrawal that couldn’t have been more disgraceful or disasterous,” she said.
It’s why Lang now works with Right to Learn Afghanistan, a non-profit organization that is working to make the right to education a reality for Afghan women and girls.
“I think that was something that Michelle really cared about. She wanted to bring those stories to our Canadian audience.”
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 2024 has been the deadliest period for journalists since the group began collecting data in 1992. As of Nov. 8, the organization says 79 journalists and media workers have been killed this year. Most of these deaths have been in Israel, Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.
“It hits very close to home when I hear about journalists who have killed doing their job,” Lang said. “Reporters go into these conflict zones do it with a sense of wanting to help effect social change in some fashion by revealing the horrors of war.”
Lang says that’s ultimately why she decided to write this book, as a way to honour both Michelle Lang’s sacrifice and the work of the many other journalists and media workers like her.
“I think they’re brave men and women and they have compelling stories to share,” she said. “We need to find a way to provide them with greater protection while they’re doing their job.”