Veteran journalist Joan Leishman became a mentor and advocate for refugees

Joan Leishman was a globe-trotting journalist, a champion of refugee writers in Canada and a tireless human-rights advocate. She spent more than 30 years in the employ of the CBC, in radio and television.

In 1992, she opened the broadcaster’s first South African bureau as the apartheid era ground to an end after the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990, which she had covered for CBC. While based in Africa, she also covered the Rwandan genocide. Earlier in her career she had worked as a freelancer in Mexico City when a massive earthquake devastated parts of the city.