Long-time Legion Magazine staff writer Sharon Adams poses for a portrait after winning the Ross Munro Award for outstanding reporting on defence matters in 2022, which recognized her stories on a variety of subjects, such as PTSD (below) and sexual trauma (below). [LM]
Long-time Legion Magazine staff writer Sharon Adams, who retired from the publication in December 2022 after a 50-year career in journalism, died this past summer at 76. The B.C. native spent the last 15 years of her award-winning career penning stories on these pages, writing an estimated million-plus words in that time.
Following a long career in daily newspaper reporting and editing—Adams started out at the Edmonton Journal in 1972, hired by legendary Canadian Press war correspondent Ross Munro, and later worked in several roles at the Calgary Herald—she joined Legion Magazine in 2007. Adams played a key role in expanding the publication’s focus and readership with eye-opening stories on a variety of subjects, both historical and current.
Adams wrote two regular columns, “Military Health Matters” and “Artifacts,” in additional to the weekly online column “Military Milestones,” as well as feature stories. She painstakingly covered military health, medicine, technology, research and veterans’ care and compensation, delving into issues ranging from post-traumatic stress and suicide to sexual misconduct and wartime advancements in front-line medicine.
[Sharon Adams/LM]
[Sharon Adams/LM]
“Her work on post-traumatic stress, moral injury, brain injury, suicide, mefloquine and sexual misconduct brought clarity, empathy and authority to the conversations.”
She earned numerous awards for her Legion Magazine work, most notably a National Magazine Award for a 2013 piece on PTSD and the 2022 Ross Munro Award for outstanding reporting on Canadian defence matters.
“Her work on post-traumatic stress, moral injury, brain injury, suicide, mefloquine and sexual misconduct brought clarity, empathy and authority to the conversations and helped break the silence,” said the citation for the latter honour.
Indeed, it’s likely her coverage of military health, research and welfare for which Adams is best remembered. The health and welfare of Canadian veterans and serving personnel emerged as a top issue confronting the country’s military after the war in Afghanistan and few journalists were as devoted to delivering deeply researched, long-form stories on the topic as Sharon Adams.
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