ENRIGHT o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-04-10 published
The Globe was his church'
The editor-in-chief was mentor to journalists, defender of social
policies, respected by those criticized in print, and described
as a man with a 'warm human touch'
By Michael
VALPY
Thursday,
April 10, 2003 - Page R11
In his two decades as editor-in-chief of The Globe and Mail,
former senator Richard (Dic) James
DOYLE wielded a journalistic
influence in Canadian public life matched only by that of George
BROWN, the newspaper's founder.
He died yesterday in Toronto, one month past his 80th birthday.
His wife of 50 years, Florence, passed away on March 20.
Senator DOYLE -- editor from 1963 to 1983 -- gave the newspaper
a boldly independent voice, loosening up its then lock-step support
for the Progressive Conservative Party.
Under his direction, the newspaper would praise a government
one day and lambaste it the next. He was a passionate defender
of civil liberties, intensely engaged in the development of Canada's
social policies throughout the 1960s and 1970s and as much concerned
with the powerless in Canadian society as the powerful.
"In the time I've been editor," he once said, "we've not supported
any party in office. I think we make whomever we support uncomfortable.
We're the kind of friend you could do without."
He once said he felt more intellectually comfortable with Pierre
TRUDEAU than all the prime ministers he knew, and one of his
favourite editorial cartoons was one he suggested after overhearing
his daughter Judith talking to a friend in her bedroom. It showed
two teenage girls sitting on a bed under a poster of Mr.
TRUDEAU.
One girl says to the other: "He's not 50 like your father's 50."
His views, although stamped on the editorial page, were never
imposed on his reporters. He was concerned with a story's news
value -- not the fallout -- and he expected his staff to act
with the same concern.
He wanted The Globe to be a writer's newspaper and gave his writers
autonomy, even when their views went against his own philosophies.
He had a special place in his heart for columnists who expressed
contradictory opinions.
The young writers invited to attend the buffet lunches he gave
regularly for prime ministers, premiers and cabinet ministers,
bank presidents and giants of the arts were treated to superb
tutorials in the life of their nation that left an indelible
mark on their minds.
Warm, funny, theatrical and gregarious, he was a mentor and model
for many of Canada's best-known journalists -- among them, the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Michael
ENRIGHT and Don
NEWMAN,
former Globe and Maclean's managing editor Geoffrey
STEVENS,
his successor as Globe editor Norman
WEBSTER, and former foreign
correspondent, dance critic and now master of the University
of Toronto's Massey College, John
FRASER.
"He was absolutely fearless," Mr.
STEVENS said yesterday. "He
did tough stuff. He did important stuff. And he refused to bow
to pressure from business, from politicians and for that matter
from journalists. I didn't always agree with him, but I always,
always respected what he said."
Mr. FRASER said: "He was an editor who made young journalists'
dreams come true. Like many who came under his spell at The Globe
and Mail, I will go to my grave grateful for the horizons he
opened up to me."
George BAIN, for years The Globe's Ottawa columnist, recalled
the only time Senator
DOYLE actually complained about something
Mr. BAIN had written was when he filed an end-piece to a royal
tour and suggested that the institution wasn't appropriate to
the Canadian circumstances.
"Dic, as a devoted monarchist, was moved to say, 'Did you have
to?' The fact is I felt I did -- and he, despite strong feelings,
didn't say, 'You can't.' "
When
Prime
Minister Brian
MULRONEY appointed him to the Senate
in 1985, he decided to sit as a Conservative out of courtesy.
Mr. MULRONEY described him yesterday as "a marvellous man, rigorous,
thoughtful, with a disciplined approach to life and a very warm
human touch to everything he did.
"When he cut people up, including me, there was no malice to
it, no ad hominem attack, he was never bitter or partisan in
any way.'The full impact of Senator
DOYLE's presence as editor
was probably first felt by The Globe's readers on March 20, 1964,
when a front-page editorial appeared under the heading, Bill
of Wrongs.
It was prompted by legislation proposed by Ontario's Conservative
attorney-general, Frederick
CASS, which empowered the Ontario
Police Commission to summon any person for questioning in secret
deprive him of legal advice; and keep him in prison indefinitely
if he refused to answer.
"For the public good," the editorial stated, the Ontario Government
"proposes to trample upon the Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus, the
Canadian Bill of Rights and the Rule of Law.
"Are we in... the Canada of 1964 -- or in the Germany of 1934?
"This legislation is supposed to be directed against organized
crime. In fact, it is directed against every man and woman in
the province."
Soon after, Mr.
CASS resigned.
Senator DOYLE's skills as a writer were particularly evident
on an election night when the paper would present an editorial
on the results between editions. Alastair
LAWRIE, now retired
as an editorial writer, recalled that once the results were known,
Senator DOYLE would stand in silent thought for maybe a minute
and a half and then start to dictate. In a matter of a few minutes,
he would complete a reasoned editorial that scarcely required
the addition of a comma.
Senator DOYLE preferred to work in anonymity, only accepting
honorary degrees and later the seat in the Senate near the end
of his newspaper career.
He sat on no boards, belonged to no important clubs, almost never
appeared on television or radio, didn't sign petitions and seldom
gave speeches. When he met a politician, there were usually witnesses.
He didn't hold a driver's licence and for years arrived at the
old Globe office on King Street by streetcar. When The Globe
moved to its present office on Front Street, Senator
DOYLE took
a taxi.
Retired
Ottawa
Citizen publisher Clark
DAVEY, a former managing
editor of The Globe and a close friend of Senator
DOYLE, suspected
"he didn't trust his Irish temper [to drive] and that was probably
to the common good."
Mr. DAVEY said Senator
DOYLE's low public profile "was part of
his own protection against conflicts on his own part. The Globe
was his church. Journalism was his religion.
"I think that Dic, in the context of his time, probably had a
greater influence on Canadian journalism than any other single
individual," Mr.
DAVEY said.
"It was Dic's execution that made the Report on Business what
it became and is. He was the moving force from within The Globe
often unseen -- in the whole question of conflicts of interest
as they affected journalists.
"He was really the wellspring of that kind of thinking and, of
course, what The Globe did affected very directly what a lot
of other organizations did."
Born in Toronto on March 10, 1923, Dic
DOYLE seemed destined
to get ink on his hands. He said in 1985 that he had decided
on a newspaper career at age 7 and joined the Chatham Daily News
as a sports reporter after he graduated from Chatham Collegiate
Institute. He was promoted to sports editor, city editor and
then news editor.
During the Second World War, he enlisted in the Royal Canadian
Air Force and served with the 115 (Bomber) Squadron (Royal Air
Force) at Ely, near Cambridge in England. He was discharged at
the end of the war with the rank of flying officer.
He was 23 and felt that life was passing him by, so rather than
attending university, as other returning air-force officers were
doing, he returned to the Chatham paper. It was a decision he
said he later regretted.
He came to The Globe in 1951, initially as a copy editor, the
only job available. His first byline appeared in The Globe in
December of 1952 over a story about milk bottles.
In the same year, he also wrote a book called The Royal Story,
a labour of love that proved to be a standard treatment of the
monarchy, and which he was the first to acknowledge, replowed
already well-tilled soil.
(The Royal family had a special status at The Globe under Senator
DOYLE.
One former senior editor, the legendary Martin
LYNCH,
told of being taken off the front-page layout after he replaced
a picture of Princess Margaret, which appeared in early editions,
with a photograph of a prize-winning pig.
When The Globe decided to publish a weekly supplement in 1957,
Senator DOYLE became its first editor, with a staff that had
no experience in the weekly field. The paper was laid out on
the carpet of the managing editor's office after he had gone
home.
It shrunk over the years because, Mr.
DOYLE said, it was ahead
of its time. It died in 1971.
From there, in 1959, he became managing editor of the newspaper
and then editor in 1963. He stepped aside in 1983 to take on
the role of editor emeritus and to write a column -- an experience,
he said two years later, that left him chastened. "The guy [columnist]
out there has his problems."
Former
Globe publisher A. Roy
MEGARRY, said, "In my opinion,
no one -- including the seven publishers that Dic has served
with during his time at the paper -- had made a more positive
and lasting impression on The Globe than he has."
Likely among the greatest tributes paid to him as an editor came
from the Kent Commission established by the federal government
in 1980 to investigate the ownership of Canada's daily newspapers
after the Ottawa Journal and the Winnipeg Tribune folded in virtually
simultaneous moves by the Thomson and Southam chains.
In its report, the commission credited Senator
DOYLE with "adhering
to an ideal of press freedom that often tends to get lost in
the management of newspapers....
"To a great extent, the editor-in-chief of The Globe belongs
to a breed which unfortunately is on its way to extinction.
"The Globe and Mail testifies to the influence that continues
to be exerted by a newspaper with a clearly defined idea of its
role and substantial editorial resources. It is read by almost
three-quarters of the country's most important decision-makers
in all parts of Canada and at all levels of government. More
than 90 per cent of media executives read it regularly and it
tends to set the pace for other news organizations."
The Globe and Mail was bought by Thomson Newspapers in 1980.
Senator DOYLE made no secret of the fact that he would have preferred
having the newspaper bought by R. Howard Webster, who owned it
before it became part of the Financial Post chain. However, in
1985 he said that Thomson was the best alternative among the
others in the field.
When
Prime
Minister
MULRONEY named him to the Senate, he became
the first active Globe journalist to receive such an appointment
since George
BROWN in 1873. As an editor and a columnist, Senator
DOYLE had often preached Senate reform and had opposed patronage
appointments.
His acceptance prompted a flow of letters to the editor that
favoured and disapproved of the appointment in about equal measure.Senator
DOYLE is survived by his children Judith and Sean and his granddaughter
Kaelan MYERSCOUGH.
Funeral arrangements have not been announced.
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