For decades, the Parliamentary Press Gallery excluded woman members. It was an old boys’ club and it took strong, independent women like Genevieve Lipsett Skinner to break down the barriers. She had been a reporter in Winnipeg, a lawyer, a member of the Political Equality League and one-time political candidate. Read more…
Narrator Richard Clarkin and I recently took to Zoom to discuss recording Power, Prime Ministers and the Press and how he managed to bring life to anecdotes and voices from 150 years of history during some 30 hours of studio work.
In 1938, DePoe left the University of British Columbia and signed up with the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals. He left for Europe as a wireless officer. Excerpt: …Service in Europe was a turning point. The action in Italy and Holland brought him face to face with death. In one Read more…
The two teachers and their two children were in the Philippines on a Lunar New Year holiday from Shanghai when the outbreak took hold. With their school shut down in China, they decided to fly to New Zealand where friends in their old neighbourhood put them up. Six weeks later, Read more…
In 1884 the twenty-five-year-old Duncan persuaded John Cameron, then editor of the Toronto Globe, to pay for articles on the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in New Orleans. She also sold freelance pieces on the world’s fair to the Washington Post, the London Advertiser, and the Memphis Appeal. That Read more…
Before he won the Liberal leadership in 1990, Jean Chrétien was my guest in a foursome at the Peter Gzowski Invitational, an annual golf tournament to raise money for Frontier College’s literacy programs. Our honorary caddy was the great Canadian cellist Shauna Rolston. As they headed down the first fairway, Read more…
As I rolled down the car window to take a picture, the deer looked up blankly, then resumed munching on the lawn of a neighbouring house. Welcome to St. Andrews, NB, where the deer run wild in the streets and backyards, chomping their way through hedges, gardens and flower beds. Read more…
I’m indebted to Brian Dempson of St. John’s for sending me this picture with his comments on my book. He is the son of one-time Toronto Telegram reporter Peter Dempson (far right) who, with Press Gallery colleagues Mark Harrison of the Toronto Star (far left) and Clark Davey of the Globe and Mail, joined John Read more…
The departure from cabinet came with a stark, unequivocal statement: “I resigned as a matter of principle. The point was finally reached when I considered that my honour and integrity required that I take that step.” So spoke Conservative defence minister Douglas Harkness in the House of Commons on Feb. Read more…
After a talk I gave this week on my book at the Toronto Cricket Club, there was a lively discussion about the current state of politics and news. Admittedly, this was a group composed mainly of people of a certain age who had observed many of the events in the Read more…