One of his first journalism jobs was with the AP in Prague in 1948. When the Communist government began to arrest journalists, he was forced to leave his homeland again, and ended up in Canada. He worked as a waiter, construction worker, and seaman before studying at the University of British Columbia, where he worked on the campus newspaper. This led to a job at a Vancouver newspaper and then the Toronto Star. He moved overseas to join UPI in London and the Herald Tribune in Paris before returning to Canada, where he was hired by the CBC in 1966.