BetaKit remembers beloved senior writer on anniversary of his passing.
Charles Mandel was short and short-tempered.
He was quick to file, faster still with a joke or pun, and always looking for an opportunity to lighten the mood.
Charles was cordial to communications professionals and direct with his interview subjects. A senior writer at BetaKit for almost three years, Charles never missed a deadline, even if that meant driving his editors crazy or his story off the beaten path.
Charles passed away one year ago today at the age of 64 after a difficult battle with cancer. To honour his memory, BetaKit would like to share stories of his work and life.
An avid outdoorsman, mountain biker, and marathon runner, Charles lived off the grid in Nova Scotia. He documented his frontier lifestyle on his Substack, Tales from Beyond the Grid. Spotty internet aside, the remote locale did not often impact his work, but did provide colleagues with regular guest appearances on team calls from the various dogs, horses, donkeys, and other assorted animals that found a home on his acreages.
Born to a family of poets, Charles’ career in journalism spanned five decades and crisscrossed the country, from Edmonton to Vancouver to Toronto and many parts of the Maritimes. Over this period, Charles pursued an astonishing variety of roles and news beats: visual arts columnist, news and features editor, literary correspondent, national news correspondent, music journalist, climate reporter, and business tech reporter.
His bylines graced over 60 publications, far too many to list in full. To highlight a few: Wired, Canadian Business, the National Post, The Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, Canadian Geographic, Quill & Quire, The Toronto Star, and several community papers and alt-weeklies.
Charles was also the recipient of multiple awards and honours, including a National Magazine Award, a Kenneth R. Wilson Memorial Award, and two (Prince Edward) Island Literary Awards. His work was instrumental in helping BetaKit win a SABEW Canada Best in Business award for General Excellence, which we dedicated to his memory.
Charles joined BetaKit in August 2021 as deputy editor before settling comfortably into the position of senior writer. In over 500 files for the publication, his work ran the gamut from hard news (including quarterly earnings reports, which he hated), policy-driven features (which he doggedly pursued) and fun profiles of interesting characters (which he loved more than anything).
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Charles was passionate about enterprise reporting, holding those in power to account, and shepherding a new generation of journalists. Mentor to a newsroom filled with young reporters, he was quick to offer public praise and thoughtful in his private critiques. The team marvelled at his encyclopedic knowledge of Canadian history (including CanRock, the only true music) and ability to pull at story threads to reveal connections or details others overlooked.
A terrible singer by all accounts, Charles nonetheless led the team in offkey renditions of Happy Birthday at every possible opportunity—and rarely, actual birthdays. Marking milestones through song has now become a BetaKit tradition.
In the words of his colleagues, Charles was filled with passion, fire, and talent. He was no-nonsense and prone to laughter. Crotchety and punctual. The pun master. A reminder that the shared love of good stories and great people is enough to make genuine connections. A hard-working, stubborn badass.
We all wish there was more time to know him better, but cherished the time we had.
Charles worked at BetaKit well into the depths of his illness, and did so without complaint or impact on the quality of his work. He wouldn’t listen to anyone who told him he should stop. Over his long career, Charles had seen too many Canadian publications shutter, too many peers packaged out of the industry to easily give up his life’s calling. Committed to the craft of journalism, he fought and reported and wrote to the very end.
You can come to know a writer through their words, so I will give the final word to Charles with an excerpt from one of his musings off the grid. Written shortly before his passing, I can think of no better example of his character.
Obviously, this is a lot less than ideal. But what can I do but forge ahead? Carpe diem! Such as it is. I need to keep my sunny-side up. It helps that I have a strong partner, but it gives me pause to think what a spot we might find ourselves in if something else should happen. It helps that I have kind friends, but you can only ask so much of them.
Sell the place? Unimaginable!
We have become so used to the beauty and solitude of the place, the bird calls ringing out in the morning and at dusk. The coyote’s mournful howls, and the scornful chatter of the squirrels. The fog burning off in the morning.
I fight back. I have good doctors who help direct me to the best options available. I believe that I still have one year, two years, five, 10 left. When I begin to slide I hold that like a shiny promise in the front of my mind. I am not going anywhere. Trees rustle in the wind. The bird sings. The sun shines.
And the brook runs. And it runs. And runs.
