Rudy Platiel

Rudy Platiel was born in Owen Sound, Ontario, during the Depression. He left school at sixteen to work in a furniture factory before being diagnosed with tuberculosis and being admitted to a sanatorium for a year. He had surgery to remove part of one lung, and after being discharged, he took a business course that led to a job as a bookkeeper for a Brampton weekly paper, where he would eventually get his start as a reporter. He was hired several years later by The Globe and Mail as a reporter-photographer, where he worked for thirty-four years covering a wide range of topics. In 1970 he was assigned to spend a year travelling across Canada to document the rise of Indigenous issues. This began a decades long focus in which Rudy covered a number of issues and events that helped shape the cultural landscape of Canada to this day, including the series of constitutional conferences of the Prime Minister and Premiers to include the recognition of Indigenous rights in Canada's newly patriated Constitution. He also covered Canada's first war crimes trial after federal legislation was passed allowing for prosecution in Canada of war crimes committed outside its borders.
Rudy married Agatha in 1962 in Peterborough, Ontario. They had four daughters, Christina, Louise, Vicki, and Valerie (Valerie died at birth).
In 1997 Rudy retired from The Globe and Mail, and during his "second" career as a grandfather, he read stories to his grandchildren and their school classes and gave his time as a Big Brother. The story of In the Land of Ebyam emerged from his love of sitting with young people and sharing a good telling.

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