The Telegram Sets, The Sun Rises

Originally published as a “Historicist” column on October 27, 2012. This article won the “Short Publication” category at the 2013 Heritage Toronto Awards.

The final front page of the Telegram, October 30, 1971.

11:20 p.m., Friday, September 17, 1971. Telegram publisher John Bassett entered his newsroom at 440 Front Street West. Assistant city editor Tim Porter, the son of one of the paper’s most colourful columnists, noticed something was amiss when he greeted his boss. “There was anguish on his face,” Porter later told the Star. Bassett tore a sheet of paper off a teletype roll, entered his office, locked the door, and sat down at his typewriter.

Two hours later the sheet was delivered to a copy editor. After two minor errors were fixed, Bassett’s piece went to print. It was published in a grey box on the front page of the weekend edition of the Telegram. Black would have been more appropriate, as Bassett had composed the death notice for the 95-year old-bastion of Tory Toronto, out of whose ashes emerged a tabloid which soon declared itself “the little paper that grew.”

Toronto Life, November 1971.

“The decision has been taken to cease publication of the Toronto Telegram,” began Bassett’s message to readers on September 18, 1971. “Many details must be completed and, hopefully, the newspaper will continue to appear for a time, but the decision has been taken.” He cited losses of $2 million over the previous two years, projected a deficit of $1 million for 1971, and noted that $8.3 million from other sources had been required to keep the paper alive. Bassett had made $5 million by selling shares in Maple Leaf Gardens and the Argonauts earlier that month; it was used to reduce the Telegram’s corporate debt. Deals to sell off the paper’s assets were underway, with the proceeds used to pay off banks, employees, and suppliers. The decision to close the paper was “the saddest I have ever had to make in my life, in war or peace.” Bassett ended the notice by thanking readers and staff for their loyalty and offered an apology: “I’m sorry, I couldn’t do better.”

The paper’s unions were immediately blamed for the paper’s demise, two of which had voted to authorize a strike action two days earlier at the King Edward Hotel. Labour strife had dogged the Telegram for years: members of the International Typographical Union had picketed all of the city’s dailies since 1964, while agreements with the other unions had expired at the end of 1970. Bassett offered a wage freeze for 1971 and a $10/week raise for 1972, and opened the paper’s books to verify that the paper was, in fact, losing money. The unions later proposed taking any wage increases for 1971 as IOUs, but Bassett held firm, coldly stating in a meeting before the vote “You’ll have to take whatever steps you feel are necessary and so will I.” Some union members felt that Bassett was close to capitulating or couldn’t believe that, given his interests in CFTO-TV and sports teams, he didn’t have enough money to meet their demands.

440 Front Street West, home of the Telegram from 1963 to 1971, later home of the Globe and Mail, The Telegram, September 20, 1971.

What they didn’t know before voting was that Bassett had already decided to shut the paper down, despite having the third largest circulation of any English daily in Canada. He had shopped the paper’s assets around for awhile, including negotiations with the Star to sell the Telegram’s subscription lists. He offered the paper to journalists Pierre Berton and Charles Templeton, who declined after seeing the books. The final decision to fold the paper was made on September 13, when Bassett sought permission to do so from the paper’s trustees. The Telegram’s fate was sealed during a meeting that night at John David Eaton’s home at 120 Dunvegan Road, where the Bassett and Eaton family members who were shareholders in the paper gathered. Only the publisher’s son Johnny opposed the closure.

During the strike vote, Bassett dined at Mister Tony’s restaurant in Yorkville with Telegram managing editor Douglas Creighton and political editor Fraser Kelly. After they learned the vote results, Kelly told Bassett that there were many Telegram employees who felt he didn’t care about the paper anymore, believed he had or was about to sell, and that regardless of the vote the paper was through. “You’re right on all counts,” Bassett responded.

Three writers who migrated from the Telegram to the Sun. Advertisements, the Telegram, October 28, 1971.

Employees were shocked when they heard about the paper’s closure, which had inspired fierce loyalty. Hartley Steward captured this in a Toronto Life article on the paper’s demise:

Nobody ever had a job at the Tely. You were with the Tely. And if you weren’t with the Tely, you were against it. At cocktail parties we were backed up against the wall, always with drink in hand, to answer for its insanities. And we came back off the wall swinging every time at the armchair critics because, with all its imperfections, it was our newspaper and it was put together four times every day with so much energy, so much loving care, against so many odds, that it could not go undefended.

The most quoted line regarding the closing came from veteran sports columnist Ted Reeve: “When I started to work for the Telegram in 1923, I thought it was going to be a steady job.”

Jaws dropped when it was soon revealed that the Star bought the Telegram’s subscription lists for $10 million and would lease the paper’s home for two years (the building was soon bought by the Globe and Mail, who moved in after the Star’s lease was up). The unions and groups of employees scrambled to find anyone willing to buy the paper, though potential saviours like Ed Mirvish and mining magnate Steve Roman passed, or placed conditions Bassett did not wish to honour. They urged all levels of government to save the Telegram, which produced little more than regrets and partisan bickering.

Among the more immediate concerns: questions about how the timing of the paper’s closure would affect coverage of the provincial election in October 1971. After Bassett announced that the paper’s final edition would appear on October 30, a week after the election, Ontario NDP leader Stephen Lewis charged that the Telegram was hanging on long enough to print editorials supporting Premier William Davis and the Progressive Conservatives.

The Telegram, October 15, 1971.

While the paper’s 1,200 employees looked for new jobs, a handful revisited a recurring idea to improve the paper’s advertising and circulation numbers, which had declined against evening rival the Star for years. Around 1966, Creighton and Johnny Bassett had discussed a companion morning tabloid which would be physically easier for commuters to handle, and offer a livelier alternative to the city’s only a.m. paper at the time, the staid Globe and Mail. This idea was refined by former Telegram managing editor Andy MacFarlane in 1967, who supervised mockups designed by artist Andy Donato of a multi-edition paper called “The Sun.” MacFarlane pictured a paper which was light on hard news and heavy on columnists, features, and sports. Publisher Bassett rejected the idea, feeling that it would compete with the Telegram instead of complement it. He wasn’t comfortable with the tabloid format due to its association with past sleazy Toronto rags like Flash and Hush. Creighton and MacFarlane tinkered with other tabloid formats, including a national paper inspired by the New York Post, but all received thumbs down.

As prospects of saving the Telegram dimmed, a group which coalesced around Creighton, Telegram Syndicate manager Don Hunt, and foreign correspondent Peter Worthington planned a new weekday morning tabloid. There was little time to develop the proposed publication, as Creighton and Hunt felt it needed to hit the presses within 24 hours of the Telegram’s final edition. Remembering Bassett’s qualms about the tabloid format, the paper was dubbed the Toronto Sun because it sounded like a traditional newspaper name.

The Telegram, October 30, 1971.

Over the course of October 1971, the Sun developed its editorial policy. In his biography, Sunburned, Creighton included Worthington’s notes from the discussions that would shape the paper’s viewpoint, elements of which won’t surprise long-time readers:

Policy would be of basic “independence” and ideologically in the centre—more so than either Globe or Star. It would appeal basically to people who work for a living, not those who seek a free ride from society.

It would concentrate on local affairs—would be brightly written, irreverent, but balanced and responsible. In essence, it would tend to be an “opposition” newspaper and have no sacred cows. It would be the mouthpiece of no group—and certainly not the fashionable “left” elements of our society.

The editorials would be straight, hard-hitting and opinionated, and quite unlike the wishy-washy editorials that the Telegram indulged in. They’d be Daily Mirror-style in bluntness. We would stress the idea that we are Toronto’s “other voice”—the voice that the death of the Tely deprived Torontonians of. Keep stressing our independence.

Creighton would be publisher, Hunt general manager, and Worthington executive editor of the new paper.

Nailing down financial backing wasn’t easy. Lawyer Eddie Hyde was the initial financial point man, but a deal he built collapsed. Another lawyer, Progressive Conservative fundraiser and advisor Eddie Goodman, rounded up $700,000 worth of promised support (half of which was actually collected). With those funds in place, the Sun’s existence was publicly announced on October 14, 1971. Negotiations with Bassett allowed the paper to claim the Telegram’s paper boxes and news archive, as well as the Telegram Syndicate. Major media figures like Roy Thomson and the management of Southam Press gave the Sun little to no chance of survival in an age where long-running papers like the Telegram were folding.

The Telegram’s last editorial page cartoon, illustrated by John Yardley-Jones, October 30, 1971.

A lone print run of 340,000 copies was made for the final edition of the Telegram on October 30, 1971. Sensing a future collector’s item, people grabbed as many copies as they could. One antique dealer, who claimed to be serving former Torontonians, ordered 1,000 papers. Demand was so high that some copies of the 25 cent paper reportedly sold for five dollars. While some carriers reported that their bundles were stolen, one creative paperboy tossed his papers in a shopping cart and hawked them along Jarvis Street. His lineups were up to six vehicles deep.

At the Telegram, the farewell celebrations began with a champagne delivery to the sports department around 8 a.m., and continued at various apartments and watering holes across Toronto for the rest of the day. Even the police supplied complimentary booze. One worker showed up in a rented top hat and mourning suit, and repeatedly played “The Last Post.”

Despite hangovers, Sun employees were expected to show up at the space the paper rented at the Eclipse Building on King Street West on Halloween, to prepare the paper’s debut. Because the second floor was still being renovated, the paper initially operated out of the fourth floor, recently abandoned by a silk screening company. The worn, grimy conditions fit the underdog image the paper built. It also had a shaky electrical system, as columnist Paul Rimstead quickly discovered. When he attempted to plug in a kettle to make, depending on the source, either tea or booze-laced coffee, he plunged the newsroom into darkness.

Rimstead got plenty of mileage from the sad state of the premises, who referred to it as “the beautiful downtown Eclipse Building right next door to Farb’s Car Wash and across the road from King’s Plate Open Kitchen where you can buy a beef steak pie for 50 cents.” His ability to get away with revealing the behind-the-scenes world of the Sun, especially when he insulted his bosses in a manner that would have seen him canned elsewhere, became a key element of the new paper’s style. Many found it incongruous that a paper of such ‘conservative’ beliefs could be so liberal in its treatment of staff,” Worthington later noted, “not realizing that this was the essence of consistency for a paper that believes in and trusts individuality.”

The first print run didn’t go smoothly. First a courier got lost on the way to Inland Printing in Mississauga. One story was still sitting at the Eclipse Building. When the presses finally rolled at 2 a.m. on November 1, 1971, they produced a loud bang. The low-grade newsprint they were using was prone to breaking on the press, causing paper to spill everywhere. Less than two hours later, the first papers were ready. Because of the delays, only 75,000 out of the intended 125,000 copies were printed. Just like the final Telegram, the first edition of the Sun disappeared quickly.

The Sun’s debut front page, November 1, 1971.

Readers who saw the Sun rise discovered a paper whose content and tone linger in more sensationalized forms today. The headline story by future columnist Bob MacDonald spotlighted wasted government spending. The Sunshine Girl was in place, though she more closely resembled Worthington’s original vision of a girl-next-door than the later tarted-up models. Letters received snappy one-line responses. Cultural sensitivity was on display: an Asian-themed fashion spread was titled “Next: the year of the coolie.” Lubor Zink promised to continue providing “serious analysis of the complex domestic and international problems” that he had in his Telegram political column, which was code for obsessing over Communism and the evil of Pierre Trudeau.

The paper started with 62 employees and a tight budget, forcing everyone involved to come up with creative approaches to fill its pages. Because the Sun couldn’t afford the fee the Toronto Stock Exchange charged for listings, it copied the Star’s stock pages. When the Star found out, they purposely inserted mistakes. Eventually, Star managing editor Martin Goodman had a good laugh, then allowed the Sun to continue copying the Star’s listings for the princely sum of one dollar a week.

An example of early Sun reader devotion. Toronto Sun, November 3, 1971.

The paper quickly developed a rapport with its intended audience with its self-mythologizing narrative as the underdog of Toronto media fighting for the little guy. Staff received plenty of gifts from readers, including Chinese takeout, cigars, flowers, and a lost Telegram box. Phone lines jammed after Rimstead promised to give away bumper stickers on day three. An editorial celebrating the paper’s one-week anniversary thanked the readers for their support and provides points about the Sun that are still debatable:

For all us underdogs trying to challenge the goliaths, journalism has suddenly become fun again. We are the lucky ones in the Tely’s death. We are still fighting for something; we have hope. For that we thank you, our readers. And we’ll get better. Honest.

Sources: The Death of the Toronto Telegram & Other Newspaper Stories by Jock Carroll (Richmond Hill: Pocket Books, 1971), Sunburned: Memoirs of a Newspaperman by Douglas Creighton (Toronto: Little, Brown, 1993), Life in a Word Factory by Ron Poulton (Toronto: Toronto Sun, 1976), The Little Paper That Grew by Jean Sonmor (Toronto: Toronto Sun, 1993), Looking For Trouble by Peter Worthington (Toronto: Key Porter, 1984), the November 1971 edition of Toronto Life, and the following newspapers: the September 18, 1971, September 25, 1971, and November 1, 1971 editions of the Toronto Star; the November 1, 1971 and November 8, 1971 editions of the Toronto Sun; and the September 18, 1971 and October 30, 1971 editions of the Telegram.

BEHIND THE SCENES

Final back page Simpsons ad in the Telegram, October 30, 1971.

It was 41 years ago on Halloween weekend that the Toronto Telegram went out of business and the Toronto Sun was born – 1,200 people out of a job, 62 got with new ones. What brings this to mind is an account of the Tely’s demise on the website torontoist.com, by one Jamie Bradburn which is detailed and about as accurate as anything I’ve read about those turbulent times. – Peter Worthington, introducing a column on the Sun’s 41st anniversary, October 31, 2012.

When you have a regular column, sometimes you hack out pieces to get them done. Other times, you take your time to produce a labour of love, a piece that you hope tells a story the way you want it to be told, and that stands up as a work readers will enjoy for years to come.

This story was a labour of love.

The tale begins in my grandparents’ basement in Leaside, sometime in the early 1980s. Amid books saved from my father’s childhood and games like Tiddlywinks, there were some old newspapers. Three stick out in my mind: the King George VI memorial edition of the Telegram, the final edition of the Telegram, and the first edition of the Sun. I doubt I processed much apart from the ads, but these old newspapers were fascinating.

Add in my father’s stories about delivering the Tely when he was a kid (including, he claimed, during Hurricane Hazel). Add in my childhood fascination with the Sun, which he picked up whenever we visited Toronto. Tabloid dailies didn’t exist in southwest Ontario or southeast Michigan. None of the other papers we received had comic book sized weekend funnies. The ads had a different feel the papers I liked flipping through (looking at you, Friday movie section of the Toronto Star and Sunday arts section of the New York Times). Given my later feelings about the Sun’s political and philosophical leanings, it’s fascinating to think back at how innocently I looked at it.

As I grew older, my interest grew in publications that no longer existed, and how much of an outlier the transition from the Telegram to the Sun was in the early 1970s, an era where many major papers died across North America and new launches usually failed.

From the moment I started contributing “Historicist” columns, I knew this was a story I would tackle. I worked on it off-and-on for several years, gathering material until I reached a point that I felt confident that the piece was ready to be unleashed on the interwebs. The writing process took longer than usual—instead of doing my usual dash out the final draft in one long burst, I took my time over several days, refining all the way along.

The effort paid off. The feedback was among the best for anything I’d ever written, culminating in the Peter Worthington quote I led off this section with. If people who were there felt it was accurate, I guess I used good sources. The story won a Heritage Toronto award the following year, and has had a decent online afterlife. I even wound up with a copy of the final edition of the Telegram that one reader offered, as I never knew where my grandparents’ copy wound up.

I’ve resisted doing an updated/expanded version in case I ever summoned the courage to pitch a book based on my backlog or incorporating it into a history of Toronto newspapers I’d love to write someday (if you’re a respectable publisher reading this, let’s talk – just sayin’…). But the 50th anniversary of the Sun seems like an appropriate time to go the deluxe edition route.

Enough babbling from me. Let’s dive into the additional material…

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL

The front page announcement on the September 18, 1971 edition of the Telegram that the paper would soon cease to be. Technically, Bassett’s claim that the Tely was Toronto’s oldest daily was true, if you separated the Globe and Mail‘s existence from the Globe (born 1844).

Telegram delivery trucks, September 18, 1971. Photo by Bob Olsen. Toronto Public Library, Toronto Star Photo Archive, TSPA_0110627F.

The original caption for this image, as published in the September 20, 1971 edition of the Star: “Telegram trucks stand ready to deliver a newspaper that, according to publisher john Bassett, is doomed to extinction. Bassett announced Saturday morning that the afternoon Toronto daily could no longer publish; but did not indicate when its last edition would come out. Bassett, in his announcement, said it was no longer economically feasible for the newspaper to publish. The move will end the jobs of some 1,200 employees; 250 of them in editorial and 200 truck drivers and helpers. Publisher John Bassett has turned down offer of help from Ontario government.”

Globe and Mail, September 20, 1971.

Toronto Star, September 20, 1971.

The Telegram, September 21, 1971.

One of the first eulogies from the Telegram‘s columnists.

The Telegram, October 28, 1971.

The Telegram, October 29, 1971.

Veteran Ottawa columnist Douglas Fisher‘s two-part finale. He would continue with the Sun until 2006.

The Telegram, October 28, 1971.

Dennis Braithwaite would bounce back and forth between the Star and the Sun over the course of the 1970s.

The Telegram, October 29, 1971.

Entertainment editor Roy Shields’ goodbye feels at home in the 21st century, especially his reflection on racial issues and a certain strain of Canadian smugness. Shields had been the Star‘s TV critic before moving over to the Tely in 1967.

The next day, he had a few more sentences…

The Telegram, October 30, 1971.

The Telegram, October 30, 1971.

Switching from microfilm to my copy of the final edition of the Tely, let’s begin with Bassett’s final editorial.

Peter Worthington’s preview of the Sun where, with some breaks, he remained until his death in 2013. His final piece was his own obit.

Goodbyes from the sports department.

The front page of the “On View” section. Note use of City Hall iconography in the section box.

Advertisers like Honest Ed’s said their goodbyes.

Toronto Star, November 1, 1971.

The Telegram, October 27, 1971.

Beyond the birth of the Sun, the death of the Telegram impacted what readers saw in Toronto’s other two dailies.

The Star increased its daily print run by nearly 200,000 copies to 622,000 on weekdays and 815,000 on Saturday, making the Star the fourth-largest afternoon paper in North America behind the New York Post, Philadelphia Bulletin, and Detroit News. Some of these papers were printed at 440 Front West under a two-year lease of the Tely‘s print facilities. All 93 delivery vehicles were acquired, along with the services of 6,000 carriers who would deliver copies of the Star to former Tely subscribers for a trial period.

Around 350 employees moved over to the Star across all departments. Content wise, the Star gained columnists Dennis Braithwaite, Dalton Camp, and Gale Garnett, movie critic Clyde Gilmour, entertainment writer Sid Adilman, and sports writer Bob Pennington. The “Today’s Child” adoption column moved over. The comics section gained Peanuts, along with Andy Capp, B.C., Beetle Bailey, Judge Parker, Marmaduke, Nancy, On Stage, and The Wizard of Id. Columnist Ron Haggart was slated to join the Star to comment on Queen’s Park, but the deal was cancelled after he wrote an article for an NDP publication praising its candidates during the provincial election campaign. He ended up helping launch CITY-TV’s news department

The Telegram, October 18, 1971.

The Globe and Mail bought 440 Front West and would move in after the Star‘s lease was up. It also acquired the rights to Weekend Magazine. On the writing side, its most significant scoop was Tely sports editor/Neil’s father Scott Young.

Birth and death notices from Editor & Publisher, November 6, 1971.

Toronto Sun, November 1, 1971.

Toronto Sun, November 1, 1971.

From day one, the Sun printed some questionable headlines.

Toronto Sun, November 2, 1971.

A welcome from mayor William Dennison, who compared a competitive press to beauty contests.

Toronto Sun, November 2, 1971.

Sun on the Run

Originally posted on Torontoist on September 15, 2009. 

Front of Sue-Ann Levy’s campaign office on Mount Pleasant Road, 2009. 

When voters go to the ballot box in St. Paul’s on Thursday their choices will include the latest in a long line of Toronto Sun columnists who have attempted to parlay their print personas into elected office, usually for parties that have matched the paper’s right-wing tilt. City Hall columnist Sue-Ann Levy’s run is part of a tradition that stretches back to the early days of the paper and was inherited from a large number of staffers from the Telegram that sought to represent the public. Some came to the paper during/after their elected stints (True Davidson, Douglas Fisher, Paul Hellyer, Morton Shulman), while others found the exposure didn’t hurt when they ran (Garth Turner). Today we’ll look back at three prominent figures from the paper who, despite not achieving their ultimate goal, left behind tales of colourful, controversial campaigns.

Logo for Paul Rimstead’s mayoral campaign. Toronto Sun, December 4, 1972.

From the paper’s first edition in 1971 until his death in 1987, Paul Rimstead provided readers with a daily dose of his colourful misadventures. His hard-drinking, populist persona earned him a loyal audience that played a part in his decision to run for mayor in 1972. Born out of a joke during a “welcome home” party at the Brunswick House after he had spent the winter in Mexico, Rimstead initially intended to run for office employing the same irreverent tone found in his column. Along with several other Sun staffers, Rimstead considered ideas such as running a donation-free campaign and a deal with a brewery to market a specially labelled beer around the city. But as Rimstead thought more about a run, his mood changed, as he revealed in his column on October 18:

I went home, enthused about another madcap adventure and started to think. Something told me it wasn’t right. Just a small signal somewhere up there in my usually-vacuous noggin. It would be a ball. Two months of parties. A chance to poke fun at City Hall. But, dammit, this is Toronto we’re fooling around with…This used to be the best city in North America, the best possible place to live. I was away for seven months. When I returned, it was bursting at the seams. More clubs, more music, more entertainment, relaxed laws…more hookers, more crime, more undesirables. We are growing too fast…I am far too worried about the future of Toronto to fool around with it, even though I love a good time. That’s why I can’t run a fun campaign.

At the end of that column, Rimstead asked readers if he should consider a serious run for office. The Sun’s switchboard was flooded with calls for the rest of the day—by the time Rimstead checked with the office before an evening jazz gig, more than thirteen hundred readers called in favour. He soon set up headquarters at the Brunswick House, where volunteers produced signs and buttons. Rimstead remained nervous about entering and waited until the last minute to file his nomination papers, by which time he had already participated in several candidate meetings. His platform consisted of issues he felt the three leading candidates (aldermen David Crombie, Tony O’Donohue, and David Rotenberg) were afraid to tackle—the deterioration of Yonge Street, a rise in handguns, racial tensions (he felt the city turned its back on the black community), the need to shut down Rochdale College, and the need to slow overdevelopment of office towers downtown. As he was allowed to continue writing his column, he arranged to have the three frontrunners write one column a week for the Sun. Rimstead ceased writing for one week after an opponent complained he had an unfair advantage, but returned when he discovered the other papers in town would cover him as just another fringe candidate. The last week of the campaign saw a desperate, bordering on whiny, tone creep into Rimstead’s columns, as he pitched his platform and complained about the lack of respect and coverage from elsewhere. As he noted on November 28, “I’m learning a lot in this election. In a way, it is going to hurt. I am as disappointed in politics now as I am with my own profession. I am afraid I am going to come out of this a cynic.” When the ballots were counted on December 4, Rimstead finished in fourth place with just less than eight thousand votes.

Perhaps Rimstead’s run was best summed up by Jean Sonmor in her history of the Sun, The Little Paper That Grew:

He entered as a lark but found himself taking it seriously and the more he did, the more his patchy naivete stuck out all over the place…in the end, the snowy day and the overzealous use of his column to promote himself kept his vote low and his candidacy on the fringe. What the Sun had hoped would be a great whimsical romp turned into a vaguely embarrassing chapter for everyone concerned.

Advertisement for Lubor Zink’s second election attempt in Parkdale. Toronto Sun, July 7, 1974.

Concurrent with Rimstead’s mayoral run was editorial page commentator Lubor Zink’s first attempt to woo voters as the federal Progressive Conservative candidate in Parkdale. Unlike Rimstead, any humour in Zink’s columns tended to be unintentional. Having fled his native Czechoslovakia after the Communists took over in 1948, Zink’s zealous criticism of anything with the slightest Commie tinge bordered on grotesque caricature, even when his accounts of horrible conditions behind the Iron Curtain were dead on. He displayed an obsessive hatred of Pierre Trudeau, whom he was convinced was destroying the country in a dictatorial manner. Though he would claim otherwise, it seemed clear that his hate-on for Trudeau was the guiding force behind his campaign, even if he told the Sun “he doesn’t bother me as a person—but he does as Prime Minister. I am accusing Trudeau of not only slowing down the economy and raising unemployment artificially, but of killing jobs by undermining the working morale—by destroying the work ethic that built this country.” He blamed the destruction of work ethic on government programs that allowed young people to “do their own thing” instead of good old-fashioned work. When the votes were counted on October 30, Liberal incumbent Stanley Haidasz remained in office, but Zink had improved the Tories’ usual lousy standing in the riding with a second-place finish. Zink waited until late in the evening to congratulate Haidasz on his victory, by which time the MP had left. On the way out, Zink was jeered by two young boys who echoed a refrain that had been heard throughout the campaign: “Zink stinks!”

Insults didn’t deter Zink, who tried again two years later. The 1974 campaign was a nasty affair, as swastikas were spray-painted on Zink’s headquarters on Queen Street and on campaign signs in the north end of the riding, while Haidasz’s windows were smashed. Zink blamed the graffiti on the Liberals’ “almost pathological appeal to chauvinism and racism.” He was bitter about his reception in the “Polish Fortress” he found around Roncesvalles Avenue, where voters were afraid to publicly associate themselves with the columnist. “I am being called a stinking Jew and a Nazi collaborator,” he told the Star. “I would be proud to be a Jew. It so happens I am not Jewish.” He claimed that posters were ripped up nightly and that the tires and radiator hose on his car had been slashed. Haidasz brushed aside these complaints as a case of Zink “running scared” as he tried to take advantage of the vandalism. A call from a local Polish paper that it was “obligatory” to vote for Haidasz because of his Polish background added to the tension. Zink lost again, blaming the defeat on goon tactics and voters who feared change. “They don’t realize that the economy now is like a firecracker in the sky that is burning itself out,” he told the Star. “Anyone who tries to tell them that the brightness can’t last is bound to be unpopular.”

A burning dislike of Trudeau also fuelled the political adventures of the Sun’s first editor-in-chief, Peter Worthington. That he considered running for public office surprised many, as Worthington often admitted that he didn’t care for politicians. But 1982 found Worthington looking for new challenges after he resigned as editor-in-chief of the Sun following its sale to Maclean Hunter. Following a mountaineering trip to the Himalayas, he joined a crowded field of candidates running for the Progressive Conservative nomination in a federal by-election in Broadview—Greenwood. The nomination meeting at the CNE Coliseum on September 9 proved a raucous night, as Greek-Canadian delegates were fuelled with rage stoked by candidate Bill Fatsis and an editorial that had appeared in the Greek Canadian News two days earlier that accused Worthington of “racist fanaticism.” The charge was based on an August 26 Sun column where Worthington denounced multicultural policy as a waste of money that divided Canadians. Boos drowned out Worthington’s supporters as their man lost to Fatsis by sixty-nine votes. Some party officials were relieved not to have to deal with Worthington’s maverick nature…or so they thought.

Cover of Looking For Trouble, published the same year as Peter Worthington’s second run for office in Broadview—Greenwood.

Despite proclaiming “I don’t think I’ll try politics again. Once is more than enough,” a grassroots campaign impressed Worthington enough for him to re-enter the race as an independent two weeks later. He admitted that “on a personal level, I’ve felt unfulfilled. All the fight was not taken out of me and I wanted to go on. I’m in the same race, I’ve just changed horses.” He also believed that once elected, he would inevitably find his way into the Tory caucus, even if party leader Joe Clark wanted no part of him for violating traditions like supporting the winning party nominee. Nervousness in Tory ranks over the rise in support for Worthington saw Clark visit the riding five times in the final weeks of the campaign. Other newspapers, especially the Globe and Mail, delighted in skewering Worthington, emphasizing his millionaire status, right-wing opinions, lack of knowledge of the riding apart from its softball diamonds, and his tendency to draw attention to himself. He admitted that he “generally made a nuisance of myself” while campaigning, to the point of blaring the theme from Chariots of Fire while wandering along Danforth Avenue. When ballots were cast, he lost to the NDP’s Lynn McDonald by two thousand votes, which placed him far ahead of Fatsis. The wrap party felt like a victory celebration, as Worthington was pleased that Clark had had his “ass kicked.” When asked if he was through with politics, he said, “The last time I quit forever, it lasted three days,” then smiled when he suggested he wouldn’t rule out another run in the future. He later revealed that his secret plan was to run for the party’s leadership so that he could act as a kingmaker for any potential leader who hewed closer to his views than Clark.

By the winter of 1984, the ouster of Joe Clark in favour of Brian Mulroney made Worthington consider another run. Despite manipulations by remnants of the Fatsis camp, Worthington won the nomination. During the election campaign, his outspokenness resulted in opposition from a group calling itself the Committee to Defeat Peter Worthington (CDPW), whose brochures portrayed him as someone who represented hardship for the poor, the military for the unemployed, political confusion and discrimination,” which was backed up by quotes from years of columns. Worthington accused CDPW of being an NDP front and considered pressing hate literature charges. McDonald’s camp denied responsibility and was further outraged when they discovered some Worthington workers reprinted the brochure with a slight modification—the addition of an NDP phone number. Worthington was predicted to win, but finished four thousand votes behind McDonald on September 4. Joking that “it takes real talent to lose even an NDP riding in the middle of a Tory sweep,” he vowed never to run again. Over at McDonald headquarters, a black-draped coffin topped with candles representing Worthington was brought onto the stage once her victory was secure.

In the closing words of his book Looking For Trouble, written in the midst of the 1984 campaign, Worthington wrote:

The creed that the politician’s first duty is to get elected, his second duty to get re-elected, has to change if the country is to improve. The people recognize this, but do the politicians and bureaucrats who control the system? Only politicians can rescue themselves from the quagmire of their own making. It will be interesting to see if someone who feels this way, as I do, can be elected and, if elected, can do anything about it.

Time will tell if any future Sun columnists with designs on elected office will heed these words.

Additional material from Looking for Trouble by Peter Worthington (Toronto: Key Porter, 1984), The Little Paper That Grew by Jean Sonmor (Toronto: Toronto Sun, 1993), and the following newspapers: the September 22, 1982, October 7, 1982, August 14, 1984, and August 17, 1984 editions of the Globe and Mail; the October 31, 1972, June 20, 1974, July 4, 1974, and July 9, 1974 editions of the Toronto Star; and the October 16, 1972, October 18, 1972, October 19, 1972, November 28, 1972, September 9, 1982, September 14, 1982, September 22, 1982, October 13, 1982, and September 5, 1984 editions of the Toronto Sun.

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL

Toronto Sun, December 4, 1972.

Toronto Sun, December 6, 1972.

Globe and Mail, June 20, 1974.

A sample Lubor Zink column from his pre-Sun days, looking at April Fools Day for the Telegram in 1967.

Toronto Star, October 13, 1982.

Toronto Star, October 13, 1982.

Globe and Mail, August 14, 1984.

Globe and Mail, August 17, 1984.

Globe and Mail, August 29, 1984.

As for the 2009 by-election that inspired this column, Sue-Ann Levy finished second behind Liberal Eric Hoskins by a margin of 5,341. She returned to spewing her special brand of vitriol in the Sun, where she remains as of summer 2018.