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In discreet, deferential Canada, Solomon was unconventional. He defied the rules. He was a bull carrying around his own china shop. He was bent on getting an answer, in the style of Mike Wallace or Jeremy Paxman.

He did this with a boyish smile and a practiced joviality. He wasn’t malicious, just tenacious.

This is what makes his loss so hard on the CBC. While he was not necessarily the “heir apparent” to Peter Mansbridge, as some suggest, he should have been a leading contender.

Solomon practised a journalism we need in the face of a government that makes evasion a religion and prevarication an art. His approach as a broadcaster was not cheap or dirty but firm, without any evidence on air of the favouritism or influence-peddling of which he is accused.

Last fall, for example, Solomon interviewed Andrew Leslie, the esteemed former army commander who was new to politics and the challenges of this kind of television. Solomon knows him well, socially, and he might have gone easy on him. He did not. Leslie held his own, as if he were under fire, and Solomon persisted. Neither retreated.

Solomon understands the power of the follow-up question. Others do too, as Paul Wells showed recently when he skewered Citizenship Minister Chris Alexander for offering a selective, misleading view of the history of Liberal governments and immigration.

But what is striking about journalism in Canada today is how often we don’t ask the hard questions. This is either a cause – or a consequence – of a hardened culture of secrecy.