David Oancia

David Oancia was born on December 6, 1929 in Stonehenge, Saskatchewan, Canada, the son of a Romanian immigrant father who ran a shoe shop. In his teenage years he worked in the Yukon in the fur trade. In 1952, he began work as a journalist at the Moose Jaw Times-Herald, and later worked at the Regina Leader-Post and the Canadian Press in Canada, Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. In 1963 he started working at The Globe and Mail, and in two years became the newspaper's correspondent in China where he was the last non-communist reporter. In 1967, he received the National Newspaper Awards for his coverage and journalistic excellence. He returned to Canada in 1971 and worked at the Montreal Star. In 1974 he became director of Journalism at the Sir George Williams College at Concordia University. In 1979 he was named director of CBC Television News in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 1982 he was appointed director of Information for the University of New Brunswick, and in 1984 he became editor at the Saint John Telegraph-Journal and Evening Times-Globe. He died from internal bleeding a week after surgery at St. Michael Hospital in Toronto on January 18, 1995. He was 65 years old. He is remembered as a pioneer of Canadian journalism and a witness of China's turbulent history.