Canada from Afar: The Daily Telegraph Book of Canadian Obituaries

289 Pages·1996·11.52 MB·English

by  David Twiston Davies

The Daily Telegraph
Book of Canadian Obituaries
CANADA FROM AFAR
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The Daily telegraph
Book of Canadian Obituaries
CANADA FROM
AFAR
Edited by
DAVID TWISTON DAVIES
Dundurn Press
Toronto • Oxford
Copyright © The Telegraph pic 1996
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise (except brief passages for the purposes of review), without the prior
permission of Dundurn Press Limited. Permission to photocopy should be requested from the
Canadian Reprography Collective.
Editor: Judith Turnbull
Designer: Sebastian Vasile
Printer: Best Book Mfrs.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Canada from afar: the Daily telegraph book of Canadian obituaries
Includes index.
ISBN 1-55002-252-0
1. Obituaries - Canada. 2. Obituaries - England - London. 3. Canada - Biography. 4. Canada
- History- 1963- - Biography.* I. Davies, DavidTwiston, 1948-.
FC25.C35 1996 920.071 C96-931216-4 F1005.C35 1996
Publication was assisted by the Canada Council, the Book Publishing Industry Development
Program of the Department of Canadian Heritage, and the Ontario Arts Council.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author
and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credit in
subsequent editions.
Printed and bound in Canada
Dundurn Press Dundurn Press Dundurn Press
2181 Queen Street East 73 Lime Walk 1823 Maryland Avenue
Suite 301 Headington, Oxford P.O. Box 1000
Toronto, Ontario, Canada England Niagara Falls, NY
M4E 1E5 OX37AD U.S.A. 14302-1000
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Foreword, by Conrad Black xv
Trooper George Ives 1
Professor Barker Fairley 4
Charlie Rutherford, VC 6
Air Vice-Marshal Sir Victor Tait 9
Howard Green 11
Captain Eric Brand 13
Major-General Harry Letson 16
Billy Browne 18
Pauline Vanier 20
A.J. Casson 24
Beatrice Lillie 27
Hugh Keenleyside 30
'Punch' Dickins 34
K.C. Irving 37
Roland Michener 40
Joey Smallwood 42
E.P.Taylor 47
Bruce Hutchison 50
Sir Robert Gunning, Bt 53
Lovat Dickson 55
Lionel Chevrier 57
Professor Gerald Graham 60
Paul Martin 62
Harold Ballard 66
Morley Callaghan 68
Cardinal Leger 71
Eugene Forsey 75
The Reverend John Foote, VC 78
Buck Crump 80
Roland Wild 82
v
Contents
Major-General 'Johnnie' Plow 85
Air Marshal Roy Slemon 87
DrRossTilley 90
G.P. Purcell 92
Bob Furlong 94
Dr George Laurence 97
Donald Fleming 99
Alistair Campbell 101
Walter Gordon 103
Colonel FredTilston, VC 105
Colonel Charles Stacey 108
Charles Ritchie 111
Hugh MacLennan 116
Brigadier Jim Roberts 119
Andrew Taylor 122
Brigadier-General 'Ben' Cunningham 125
Ernest Manning 128
Professor Tuzo Wilson 133
Stewart MacPherson 136
Captain Tom Fuller 140
Brigadier-General 'Swatty' Wotherspoon 143
The Marquess of Exeter 145
Major-General Bruce Matthews 147
Omond Solandt 149
Robert Beatty 152
Joan Miller 155
The Dowager Lady Beaverbrook 157
Lieutenant-Colonel Jack Mahony, VC 160
Major-General John Rockingham 163
Major-General Des Smith 166
George Woodcock 169
Northrop Frye.. 172
Shaun Herron 175
'Flying Phil'Gaglardi 178
Major-General Dan Spry 181
Robertson Davies..... 183
Ross Munro 187
Professor Harry Ferns 190
VI
Contents
George Ignatieff 194
MaxDunbar 197
Arnold Smith 199
'Hank'Wardle 203
General Freddie Sharp 206
Bernard Braden 208
Group Captain George Grant 210
Major-General Norman Wilson-Smith 212
Sveva Caetani 215
'Wally' Floody 217
Captain Tom Pullen 219
Jean Marchand 222
Lucien Cardin 225
General Jacques Dextraze 227
Colonel 'Bucko' Watson 230
Charles Lynch 233
Lieutenant-General Stan Waters 236
Brigadier-General Campbell Mussells 239
Lieutenant-Colonel Raymond Labrosse 241
Steve Roman 243
Esmond Butler 245
Don Jamieson 247
Rene Levesque 249
Jack Pierce 252
Margaret Laurence 254
Professor George Story 256
Richard Hatfield 258
Nicholas Pennell 261
Roger Marshall 263
Abbreviations for Awards and Orders 265
Index 266
By Name 266
By Province or City 269
vn
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PREFACE
THE LAST FLOWERING of Fleet Street - before the denizens of the
medieval printers' district were scattered throughout London with the
advent of computer technology - was the newspaper obituary. For
most newspapermen, in Britain no less than in Canada and elsewhere,
obituary writing is a necessary chore, one to be shuffled onto younger,
weaker or older members of staff. "Duffy," the city editor admonishes a
hapless reporter in Ben Hecht's The Front Page, "if you don't smarten
up I'll send you to Obituaries." A death is recognized as news, but the
recording of the bare facts together with a few sketchy remarks on a
deceased's life, hastily culled from the last three news stories in his or
her library file, is all too often deemed more than sufficient.
A change began with the arrival of two people at The Daily
Telegraph. Conrad Black, who became majority shareholder in March
1985, and Hugh Massingberd, the former editor of Burke's Peerage
publications, who joined the paper's obituaries section in July 1986.
The Telegraph had an obituaries editor of 12 years' standing in the
estimable Augustus Tilley, but he had been charged with keeping as
much material out of the paper as he decently could. Readers were only
interested in live people, the previous owners believed, but since the
Telegraph was a serious broadsheet, it could not ignore the important
deaths. A good spread could be allotted on a news page if the dead
person was deemed worthy by the powerful and sceptical members of
the "backbench" of the senior sub-editors. Nevertheless, Tilley was
normally expected to produce half a dozen paragraphs a day; an
essential part of the job, he declared, was to bring a book to read in the
office.
Massingberd, however, came with the ambition of challenging
the Times, which was acknowledged as the one serious practitioner in
the obituaries field. Ever since the Telegraph absorbed the Morning Post,
which had attached importance to obituaries, in 1937, the Times had
IX