Stephen J. Thorne, Legion Magazine‘s late senior staff writer, enjoys a visit from the Canadian Veteran Service Dog Unit from nearby White Lake, Ont., at Ottawa’s Legion House in June 2024. [Aaron Kylie]
“No, I’m Aaron,” I responded to the question from a Legionnaire at a hotel in Saskatoon in September 2025.
But I understood the confusion. After all, Legion Magazine’s senior staff writer Stephen J. Thorne was a regular, covering Royal Canadian Legion events across the country since he joined the publication in 2016. If there was a man with a camera roaming around, there was a good chance it was him.
“Oh, sorry,” said the Legionnaire. The apology, however, felt as though it had double meaning—sorry for the mistake; but also, a tinge of regret that I wasn’t actually Stephen. I get that, too.
After a sudden illness, Stephen died on Dec. 5, 2025, at age 66.
He was gregarious and seemed born for his role at Legion. Legionnaires and readers alike greatly appreciated his work, written and visual.
He had had a passion for the military from his earliest days, as he wrote about in the prologue to his 2024 book On War: Exploring How and Why We Fight. The conflict-themed comics, movies, TV shows and books of his 1960s youth led him to journalism and eventually, 29 years with The Canadian Press as a reporter, editor, photographer and foreign and war correspondent.
In that role, Stephen won three National Newspaper Awards, four Radio Television Digital News Association national broadcast awards, two Canadian Press Story of the Year awards, and the inaugural Ross Munro Award for Defence Reporting in 2002. He also covered the dying days of South African Apartheid and the wars in Kosovo and Afghanistan.
A few years later, Stephen started writing freelance articles for this publication, where that youthful interest in war and his career experience were the perfect blend for Canada’s military history magazine. And he seemed to relish it, almost as though the job was as made for him as he for the job. After just two years, he joined the staff full-time.
Stephen wrote prolifically: a weekly column, at times biting, for Legion’s website, as well as regular feature and news stories—producing more than 500 articles on a wide range of topics related to the country at conflict and beyond. He also authored seven special editions of Legion’s sibling publication Canada’s Ultimate Story and the aforementioned book. All in just nine years.
Legion Magazine also benefited greatly from Stephen’s skill as a photojournalist. A series of portraits of wounded Canadian Afghanistan veterans—along with the related stories—that he produced early in his days with the publication evolved into an exhibit, The Wounded, that premiered at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa in 2019 and continues to tour to this day. (In 2008, Stephen’s work and that of fellow photojournalist Garth Pritchard formed another of the museum’s exhibits, Afghanistan: A Glimpse of War.)
Stephen’s portraits of veterans from that conflict, as well as of those who served in the Second World and Korean wars, were among his best photographic work. And he loved producing them almost as much as he enjoyed speaking with the veterans and relaying their stories.
Thorne, dressed up for Halloween 2023. [Aaron Kylie]
If you’ve ever had to summarize a person’s life in a few hundred words, you know the task is impossible, both because the space is far too insufficient, but also that each of us only knows a specific facet of a person. What’s above is Stephen’s resume. And as impressive as it is, the man himself, to me at least, was far more than that. But it’s just my perspective as a colleague and friend, not of him as a son, a father or a partner—though I believed him to be loving and dedicated in those roles, too, if the passionate stories he told about his family were any indication.
As many days as Stephen would patiently listen to my tales in our gabfests, or that he simply walked out in disgust if I dared to rail against the CBC, he too would share stories from his life. Of growing up in Halifax and playing basketball; of days as a young man working with resource companies flying in Canada’s Far North; of his early days with CP in St. John’s or later times in Toronto; of his kids, Kate and John; of long days behind the lens shooting basketball, cowboys or eagles; of last night’s baseball or hockey game; of his biker days and the crash that ended them; of his fiancé Dorothy and new cat Max.
Admittedly not a cat person, that was probably my max, at which point Stephen would bound down the hall to chat with Legion’s art team, presumably a far more feline-friendly group.
In reflection, while I never had one, Stephen felt like a big brother. He would share unequivocally. He listened the same way. While I had been a journalist for more than two decades when I joined Legion Magazine, I was certainly no military or history expert. Stephen was always patient and diplomatic in pointing out potential editorial missteps. Rightly or wrongly, soldiers will always be “wounded,” never “injured,” and it will never be “the minesweeper HMCS whatever” (the inherent repetition of calling a minesweeper a ship)—for Stephen. And with all those years at CP, he was intimately familiar with its style; No. 1 not # one—for Stephen, and CP, I suppose.
Likewise, despite his decades of experience, Stephen was always open to new ways, to being pushed, to being challenged—and rose to it all.
Stephen’s book On War was an ambitious project and I’m grateful that I got to work with him on it. He was immensely proud of it. We had planned others, but regardless, it will stand as a crowning achievement of his incredible career: the culmination of childhood dreams and his life’s work.
There could be much worse than being confused for Stephen J. Thorne.
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