Linda Diebel was a tenacious reporter and gifted story-teller who broke new ground as the Toronto Star’s first Latin American Bureau chief in 1995.Diebel died this week of natural causes several months after a serious fall down the stairs in her Toronto home. She was 71.“Linda was a one of a kind trailblazer,” said Torstar chair John Honderich, a former publisher of the paper.“She was our first female correspondent in Washington and her work as a correspondent in war-torn Mexico was both daring and insightful” Honderich said.Former Star managing editor Mary Deanne Shears recalled Diebel’s doggedness as a reporter.“Linda exuded a very deep passion for journalism and was just about unstoppable in her search for truth,” Shears said.“When she took on an assignment, her editors knew no stone would be left unturned. Her work ethic demanded she be given the appropriate time to research and write,” she said.Diebel was known to friends and colleagues for an intense and quirky personality and a flamboyant fashion sense.“To be sure, she was intense, a trait that led her to write award-winning journalism and books,” Shears said.“No subject was beyond her grasp: political intrigue, wars, civic issues. She cared about them all,” she said.Olivia Ward, a close friend and fellow foreign correspondent at the Star, remembers Diebel as an ace reporter who would dig until she uncovered the full story.“Linda was an absolutely fierce and dedicated journalist who would go to the limit on any story,” says Ward, who covered Moscow for the paper in the 1990s.Diebel joined the Star’s Ottawa bureau in 1988 after stints as a senior writer for Maclean’s Magazine and in the Montreal Gazette’s Ottawa bureau.She also worked at the Vancouver Sun and the now defunct Montreal Star in her early career.Tim Harper, a former national editor and columnist at the Star, recalled Diebel not onl ...
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