Judi McLeod

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Judi Ann T. McLeod (born 1944) is a Canadian journalist. Formerly a reporter for a series of newspapers in Ontario, she now operates the conservative website, Canada Free Press (CFP).

Early life and career

McLeod was born in

Halifax Chronicle-Herald when she was 18.[2]

Career

McLeod met her future husband, John, when she was a young reporter for the

Brampton Times, he suggested that the paper also hire his wife, who was then working for a Toronto public-relations firm.[2] She became city hall reporter for the Brampton Times in 1981.[2]

When she was removed from her beat in 1983, she alleged that the Progressive Conservatives she had accused of meddling in local politics had put pressure on the newspaper.[3] When her husband reinstated her to the position, the newspaper fired them both.[4] The Globe and Mail reported that Canada's multiculturalism minister, Liberal MP James Fleming, was investigating McLeod's removal. Fleming believed the reassignment amounted to intimidation of a reporter doing her job.[5] The Ontario Federation of Labour protested on McLeod's behalf against what they called political intervention.[5][6] Days after being fired, McLeod won the Edward J. Hayes Memorial Ontario award for beat-reporting.[2] Broadcast journalist and panelist Peter Desbarats called her coverage the best of any in 22 Ontario dailies.[2] The McLeods subsequently filed a lawsuit against The Brampton Times for wrongful dismissal, but later withdrew it.[2] Judi McLeod also filed a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission against the Brampton Times.[7][8]

The work she created in her final year at the Times won the beat category, at the Western Ontario Newspaper Award.[9]

She and her husband founded The Bramptonian, a short-lived local newspaper covering Brampton, in 1984 [10]

They were brought to the

school trustees who sat on the Toronto Board of Education at the time.[3] McLeod also called ethnic parents who wanted heritage language instruction "as diabolical as any of the characters from the imaginative pen of Charles Dickens... a nasty lot indeed,"[11] warned people against "multiculturalism gone haywire", and opposed the board's decision to organize a conference for students on apartheid in South Africa.[12] Described as a "journalistic pit bull" in her years at education reporter for the Toronto Sun, McLeod was described by The Globe and Mail as having "influence among the bureaucrats who run Toronto schools from The Education Centre on College Street."[12]

After being fired from the Sun, she moved to

Kingston Whig-Standard.[13]

Our Toronto Free Press and Canada Free Press

In 1991, she returned to Toronto and founded, with help from then-city councillor Tony O'Donohue, Our Toronto, a free monthly newspaper that printed and distributed 100,000 copies.[1] Our Toronto Free Press, which as a free-distribution monthly newspaper with a right-wing stance, and which originally focussed on municipal politics and local issues.[14] It was funded by advertising and from McLeod's personal savings; it was published out of her "modest" apartment.[1]

Reporting on the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, in a 1999 article in Toronto Eye magazine entitled, Portrait of a Poverty Pimp, McLeod accused the leadership of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty of exploiting the homeless for the purpose of advancing a radical Marxist agenda, and was herself accused of "Red-baiting, misrepresentations, and badmouthing."[15]

In the 2000s, Our Toronto Free Press evolved into the Canada Free Press, which is now published online only.[3] The Free Press has been described as "an online conservative tabloid."[16]

See also

Notes

  1. ^
    ProQuest 436482811
    .
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Johnson, William. "'Gutsy'" reporter McLeod gets the pink slip, The Globe and Mail, March 23, 1983. p. 8 [1]
  3. ^ a b c d "Judi McLeod now writing on the web". Estonian World Review. July 28, 2006. Retrieved June 16, 2020.
  4. ^ Kashmeri, Zuhair. "Had criticized Brampton politics Reporter moved from The Beat: The Globe and Mail. January 27, 1983, p. 3
  5. ^ a b Kashmeri, Zuhair. Reporter's reassignment investigated by Fleming. The Globe and Mail, February 3, 1983. p. CL8
  6. ProQuest 386590377
    .
  7. ^ No Byline. "Reporter fights to get beat back" The Globe and Mail, February 10, 1983, p. 4
  8. ISBN 978-1460403990
    .
  9. ^ "Fired reporter given award". The Calgary Herald. Calgary AB. Canadian Press. 9 April 1983. Retrieved 14 July 2011.
  10. ^ No byline. "Year after firing by paper Pair help to publish rival," The Globe and Mail, April 3, 1984, p. M5
  11. ISBN 0920059694
    .
  12. ^
    ProQuest 386004269
    .
  13. ISBN 978-8471337733
    .
  14. ^ "ESR | December 4, 2006 | Shades of fading blue: Canadian conservatives' quest for a "National Review North" publication has mostly failed".
  15. ^ Keil, Roger. "Third Way Urbanism: Opportunity or Dead End?" Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, vol. 25, no. 2, 2000, pp. 247–267. [www.jstor.org/stable/40644998].
  16. ISBN 978-9400743601
    .

External links
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