Diana Swain was born on September 24, 1965 in Thompson, Manitoba, Canada. Diana Swain is an award winning investigative journalist in Canada.
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Background
Diana comes from a broken family and her parents separated and divorced when she and her little sister were very young. She and her younger sister moved to Chilliwack, British Columbia with her mother. In 1983, as an eighteen year old, she graduated from high school with dreams of joining the media industry. Diana graduated from the British Columbia Institute of Technology with a Diploma of Technology in Media and Broadcast Communication.
Diana first entered the media world by starting to work for a weekly magazine in Chilliwack, where she worked for ten months. She then moved on to the Chilliwack (CHWK) radio station and she then proceeded to join a radio channel in Kamloops, located in British Columbia.
Investigative Journalism Career
Her big career break came when she joined CKPG TV in Prince George and started as a news reader in 1986. Diana joined Winnipeg television in 1988 as a co-host in the evening news on CKND. The best part was that she was sharing the screen space with her father, Brian Swain as a co anchor. It was an interesting pairing because it does not often happen where a parent and child can end up in the same profession and work with each other at the same time. Brian was very proud of his daughter because she was able to learn from his advice and apply it to her work. He held back tears the first day they got to work together because it was such a surreal moment for them.
In 2010, Diana was appointed as a Senior Correspondent for CBC news' investigative unit. Diana told Inside Halton why she loves her job as an investigative journalist, “Reporting is in my blood. It’s what I love doing and the opportunity to really get into stories is something, I think, that most journalists really envy. Daily news is fantastic work, but on some levels can be very frustrating because you don’t get to get into the story like you do when you have a little more time. For journalists like me this is a dream job where I’ll be doing investigative journalism. They’ve put together a team of really strong journalists that I’ll be working with and I’ll still have the opportunity to fill in for Peter (Mansbridge) when he’s away. I still get to do the anchoring piece, so it’s a perfect blend of all the things I really enjoy.”
Her career has spanned more than 25 years of reporting from Canada and around the world. During this period of time, she has reported some of the most important events like the 1997 flood in Manitoba, the Summer Olympics in Beijing and the devastating 9-11 attacks in America. She has done some compelling interviews with interesting subjects.
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Her investigative journalism includes the investigation of Scouts Canada's handling of allegations on sex abuse, the investigation of millions of tax-dollars of Canada hidden in offshore accounts. She was also behind the story about the response of Canada's military to the returning soldiers. She reported on how the soldiers were struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because of the experiences they went through during their war battles. Even though it is a subject that many news outlets don’t want to talk about because they don’t want to anger their government, Diana thought it was more important to let the soldiers tell the truth than to sugarcoat the industrial military complex. Instead of spreading the propaganda that war is like the movies where the soldiers win and come back as heroes, she wanted to tell the truth and show the pain that returning soldiers have to endure.
She has been nominated and has received awards including the Gemini award for the Best News Anchor, and the prestigious Hillman award.
Diana's hard work and career oriented personality has brought her many positive benefits and she has quickly moved up in the ladder in a tough industry. She is charming and is known for attention to detail.
Personal Life
Diana celebrated her marriage with Ron Kuipers in a big ceremony with loved ones. They have two children together. Mason, a boy was born in 1995 and Lara, a girl was born in 1998. There is no public information on when and where Diana and Ron met, their period of courtship or when they got married. The only information available is that they are still together, happily married. The lack of information is due to the fact that Diana wants to keep her personal life private. Even though she is a public figure, that is where the exposure ends. She thinks that the only thing she owes to people is her work. She is not obligated to let people into her personal life. Since she sometimes investigates dangerous situations, she feels it is safer and better for her family to have as little as possible about them out in the public.
When the show Disclosure was taking place in Toronto, she had to constantly fly back and forth from home to her job. Since her husband Ron Kuipers, a freelance producer and writer was from western Canada like her, they wanted to live in Winnipeg for as long as possible.
The commute for Diana became too annoying and they both agreed it would be a smart move for them to move closer to Toronto so that she wouldn’t always have to go back and forth, “We only had a weekend to find a house, just knowing we wanted a nice neighborhood for our kids. The realtor that helped us showed us 31 houses in two days from east of Toronto in the Beaches to Oakville. The last one we saw was the one we bought in Glen Abbey. We still marvel at the fact we didn’t know where we were, we didn’t know anything about neighborhoods or Toronto and we can’t believe our luck.”
Last Modified: Apr 8, 2020
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