2012 Atlantic Journalism Awards Finalists
Attachments
| Slug/Label | |
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| Date Aired or Published | March 17, 2012 |
| Media outlet where first aired or published: | CBC Radio Newfoundland & Labrador |
| Name of Program: | Performance Hour |
| If co-produced, list partner: | |
| Location: | St. John's |
| List awards, grants: | |
| Running time (TV/Radio): | 48.08 |
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Short explanation of the story and how it developed: The trigger for this feature was the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which in 2012 marked its 10th anniversary and its first successful war crimes conviction (the Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga). To many Newfoundlanders, the anniversary seems only distantly relevant. Certainly, they do not imagine a war criminal as the man next door. However, it appears that for half a century (1924-1965) St. John's sheltered a known war criminal. Hugh Tudor was a decorated World War One British major-general who spent the last four decades of his life in Newfoundland, shunning photographs and interviews, scrupulously avoiding publicity and living a carefully quiet life in the shadows - far from his country, his wife and children, and very far indeed from the limelight. But he lived in fear, carrying a revolver and a set of brass knuckles in case of a surprise attack. For he harboured a dark secret - one that would eventually cause an assassin to cross the Atlantic with a mission: to hunt him down. Or so they say. Uncovering Tudor's story today is to find a mystery, turning on an event which may or may not have happened but is widely believed. The central character is long dead, and few Newfoundlanders who knew him are still living. With the passage of time, facts have elided to rumour and finally to fiction. This radio feature tells Tudor's story as he is remembered in St. John's: part fact, part fiction, and framed by a mysterious event which may explain how people coped with their failure to recognise the war criminal living next door. Ultimately it is a story about a community belatedly coming to terms with its conscience. |
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Resources of the newsroom (money and time) available to complete the story: Battery Radio is an independent production company with few resources. For example, there was no travel budget for this feature. Recording in Ireland was done while the producer was onsite for an unrelated marketing junket, and the program developed later in St. John's. CBC Radio purchased Canadian broadcast rights, but not copyright, as a program acquisition. |
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