Flag Day — Feb. 15, 1965

I always remember Feb.15. It is the day the maple leaf flag went up for the first time on the Peace Tower — and the day I started work on Parliament Hill in 1965. The Montreal Star office was a cramped alcove off a corridor adjacent to the main room of the press gallery. It was one trash can short of a slum, a scene right out of Front Page. But the intimacy of our corridor hovel allowed us to rub shoulders with some fascinating journalists, from the bottom in the photo: Peter Stursberg, Jean-Pierre Fournier, Jean Charpentier (by a nose behind the coat rack) and, standing right, Lubor Zink. Our ‘press box’ in the House was just 100 paces down the corridor through the archway. All of us, ministers, MPs, aides and reporters worked in the same building. The proximity encouraged the flow of information — and a degree of civility and camaraderie often missing today.

Courtesy Maclean’s, photo by Don Newlands, KlixPix.com