Robert Lewis, a native of Waterloo, Quebec, spent 40 years as a journalist, including a dozen years as a correspondent in the Parliamentary Press Gallery and seven years as editor-in-chief of Maclean’s.
It seems I was destined to become a journalist. In Grade 5, I volunteered for the class paper and, at Loyola in Montreal, I spent as much time in the news room as the study hall. My first job was on the police beat of The Montreal Star. The paper sent me to Ottawa nine months later. I was 22. It was an era marked by scandals, cabinet crises and the bitter showdown between Prime Minister Lester Pearson and Conservative leader John Diefenbaker. The Montreal Star bureau was actually an alcove in a main corridor leading to the House of Commons. It was an exciting time of major news breaks and I made page 1 most days.
Newlands/QuixPix-Maclean's.
An eight year stint with Time magazine followed, including an assignment in Ottawa following the election of Pierre Trudeau as Prime Minister. As the magazine’s bureau chief in Montreal, I covered Expo ’67, the infamous deGaulle “Vive le Quebec libre” visit and René Lévesque’s angry departure from the Liberal party. As Toronto bureau chief major assignments included the election of David Crombie as mayor, the defection of Mikhail Baryshnikov from the Bolshoi Ballet and the Canada-Russian hockey series of 1972 and 1974. In Boston Richard Nixon, campus unrest and the fallout from the Vietnam war kept me busy.
I went back for Maclean’s as Ottawa bureau chief in 1975, during a seven-year period that embraced Trudeau’s demise and his political revival after the deafeat of Joe Clark’s government. In 1982 I became managing editor and was in charge of the launch of the university rankings issue, now a yearly feature. I was named editor-in-chief in 1993. I am proud that the magazine won several awards for investigative work, including a series on sexual assault in the military that received an honorary citation by the Michener Awards.
After 25 years with Maclean’s, in 2000 I became vice president of content development for Rogers Media. After I retired in 2008, I served as chair of the Canadian Journalism Foundation and as a member of the York University Board of Governors. I now live in Toronto with the incomparable Sally O’Neill, my wife of 51 years —and counting. (September, 2018).
Bio
It seems I was destined to become a journalist. In Grade 5, I volunteered for the class paper and, at Loyola in Montreal, I spent as much time in the news room as the study hall. My first job was on the police beat of The Montreal Star.
Newlands/QuixPix-Maclean's.
The paper sent me to Ottawa nine months later. I was 22. It was an era marked by scandals, cabinet crises and the bitter showdown between Prime Minister Lester Pearson and Conservative leader John Diefenbaker. The Montreal Star bureau was actually an alcove in a main corridor leading to the House of Commons. It was an exciting time of major news breaks and I made page 1 most days.
An eight year stint with Time magazine followed, including an assignment in Ottawa following the election of Pierre Trudeau as Prime Minister. As the magazine’s bureau chief in Montreal, I covered Expo ’67, the infamous deGaulle “Vive le Quebec libre” visit and René Lévesque’s angry departure from the Liberal party.
As Toronto bureau chief major assignments included the election of David Crombie as mayor, the defection of Mikhail Baryshnikov from the Bolshoi Ballet and the Canada-Russian hockey series of 1972 and 1974. In Boston Richard Nixon, campus unrest and the fallout from the Vietnam war kept me busy.
I went back for Maclean’s as Ottawa bureau chief in 1975, during a seven-year period that embraced Trudeau’s demise and his political revival after the deafeat of Joe Clark’s government.
In 1982 I became managing editor and was in charge of the launch of the university rankings issue, now a yearly feature. I was named editor-in-chief in 1993. I am proud that the magazine won several awards for investigative work, including a series on sexual assault in the military that received an honorary citation by the Michener Awards.
After 25 years with Maclean’s, in 2000 I became vice president of content development for Rogers Media. After I retired in 2008, I served as chair of the Canadian Journalism Foundation and as a member of the York University Board of Governors. I now live in Toronto with the incomparable Sally O’Neill, my wife of 51 years —and counting. (September, 2018).
