Peter Worthington
Peter Worthington | |
---|---|
Born | Peter John Vickers Worthington 16 February 1927 Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada |
Died | 12 May 2013 Toronto, Ontario, Canada | (aged 86)
Occupation | Writer |
Spouse | |
Children | 3[3] |
Peter John Vickers Worthington
In 1996 Worthington was inducted into the Canadian News Hall of Fame.[5]
Early life
Born in
From there he went to the University of British Columbia. Worthington left the university before completing his degree and joined Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry as a Lieutenant in 1950.[6]
In the Korean War he was a
After his discharge, he returned to the University of British Columbia, completing his B.A., and proceeded to earn a Bachelor's in journalism from what is now Carleton University in Ottawa.[6][7]
Toronto Telegram
In 1956, he joined the staff at the
In April 1961, Worthington was in Algiers, and on May 15, 1961 Worthington was in Luanda, Angola, covering the Portuguese Colonial War. In 1962 he was in Netherlands New Guinea, covering the invasion of the country by Indonesia. He was also in the North East frontier of India and China when Chinese forces invaded in that same year.
On assignment for the Telegram, Worthington was in Dallas on November 25, 1963, where he was an eyewitness to the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald.[8] He covered the trial of Jack Ruby in February 1964.
Starting in January 1965, Worthington was posted in Moscow. In 1967 he was assigned to Cairo, where he covered the Six-Day War. On August 21, 1968 he was in Prague, Czechoslovakia.
Worthington covered the Nigerian Civil War of 1967 to 1970 in a series of reports that resulted in his second of four National Newspaper Awards and a National Newspaper Citation.
Editor of the Toronto Sun
On Saturday September 18, 1971 the Telegram announced it was closing. Joining former employees of the Telegram, a new tabloid was started (the Toronto Sun newspaper), the first edition appearing Monday, November 1, 1971, a day after the last edition of the Telegram. Worthington was the new paper's founding editor. He assumed the title editor-in-chief in 1976 when former Toronto Telegram editor-in-chief J.D. MacFarlane was hired in order to make clear that he didn't answer to MacFarlane, who was forced to take the title "editorial director" instead.[9]
A conservative, Worthington led the brash new tabloid throughout the 1970s as it campaigned against the government of Pierre Trudeau. In 1978 he became the first Canadian journalist to be charged under the Official Secrets Act for a column in the Sun identifying 16 Canadians who had been recruited by the KGB into treasonous acts on behalf of the Soviet Union. After a year of preliminary hearings, the case was thrown out of court.
Worthington resigned from the Sun's Board of Directors and as editor in 1982 after the board voted to accept an offer by Maclean-Hunter to purchase the Sun chain; fearing that the newspaper would lose its independence, he cast the sole dissenting vote against the sale.[3]
Political career
Following the newspaper's sale, Worthington took a leave of absence from the Sun in 1982 in order to seek the nomination of the
Son-in-law and political analyst David Frum credits Worthington's 1982 nomination battle and his subsequent battle with the Tory leadership as "set[ting] in motion the train of events that brought down Conservative Party leader Joe Clark and opened the way for Brian Mulroney to win the landslide Conservative victory of 1984."[10]
Worthington was a committed conservative and
FBI informant allegations
Worthington was accused by the Ottawa Citizen of being an informant for the American Federal Bureau of Investigation about the suspected political sympathies of a number of his friends, including June Callwood.[11][12] Worthington filed a complaint against the Ottawa Citizen with the Ontario Press Council and won an apology for its error.
Return to the Sun
After his political defeats, Worthington returned as a columnist for the Toronto Sun and its sister newspapers. In 1989, he was fired by publisher
Personal life
Worthington was married to Yvonne Crittenden and is stepfather of conservative writer Danielle Crittenden, wife of writer and political advisor David Frum.[6]
Death
Worthington died in
Bibliography
- Worthington, Peter (1984). Looking for Trouble: a journalist's life, and then some. Toronto: ISBN 0-91949336-X.
References
- ^ Ottawa Citizen (24 June 1957). "Helen Parmelee is Wed to Peter Worthington". Retrieved 5 September 2015.
- ^ Archives Canada profile Archived 2015-09-24 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b c Worthington, Peter (May 14, 2013). "Peter Worthington in his own words". Toronto Sun. Retrieved May 14, 2013.
- ^ Jeffords, Shawn (May 14, 2013). "Toronto Sun founding editor Peter Worthington dead at 86". Toronto Sun. Retrieved May 14, 2013.
- ^ Maclean's
- ^ a b c d e f "Toronto Sun founding editor Peter Worthington dead at 86", Toronto Sun, February 13, 2013
- ^ "Peter Worthington". The Canadian Encyclopedia
- ^ Peter, Worthington (22 November 2011). "I Saw Lee Harvey Oswald Gunned Down". HuffPost Canada. Huffington Post. Retrieved 18 April 2021.
- ^ "An Officer and a Journalist :: Ryerson Review of Journalism :: The Ryerson School of Journalism". Archived from the original on 2016-03-05. Retrieved 2015-05-31.
- ^ Frum, David (May 13, 2013). "Peter Worthington, 1927-2013". The Daily Beast. Retrieved May 14, 2013.
- ^ "Writer feels 'betrayed' over name on FBI list" by Jane Armstrong and Dale Brazao, Toronto Star, page A22, September 28, 1989
- ^ "Worthington was informant for FBI, documents reveal", Toronto Star, page A22, September 28, 1989
- ^ Coyle, Jim (May 13, 2013). "Peter Worthington, Toronto Sun co-founder and legendary journalist, dead at 86". Toronto Star.
External links
- Worthington reporting on the 1981 Toronto bathhouse raids
- CBC - Death of Peter Worthington, published 13 May 2013
- Peter Worthington fonds at Library and Archives Canada