JB's Warehouse & Curio Emporium

Awhile back, I posted some browning profiles of prominent Canadian newspaper editors. Here's the last of the Toronto-related pieces, featuring long-time Telegram editor John "Black Jack" Robinson. As historian Jesse Edgar Middleton once noted, Robinson spared no mercy for municipal politicians "who showed signs of ‘wobbling’ or seemed unduly eager for self-aggrandisement." According to Telegram chronicler Ron Poulton, the best description of Robinson was provided by longtime Mail and Empire / Globe and Mail columnist J.V. McAree, "who envisioned him hurrying through the streets with a gait like an Indian on the trail, eyes down, pockets stuffed with newspapers, coat everlastingly flapping. He sometimes passed his own daughters without seeing them. Friends who haled him were grabbed in passing and coaxed to keep up. McAree thought that Robinson was colour-blind to all shades between black and white. 'Either a thing was something to thank God for ...

Discovered deep in the stacks of the University of Guelph's library: a pamphlet published by the Thomson newspaper chain circa 1959 spotlighting major editors of the past. The selection of honorees covers Canada from coast to coast throughout the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, from the pre-Confederation career of Joseph Howe to several figures who died during the early 1950s. This series of Toronto-related excerpts begins with a profile of Joseph "Holy Joe" Atkinson , the crusading editor who shaped the Star .