The gentlemen of the Fourth Estate
The summer after high school I got a job at the Picton bureau of the Kingston Whig-Standard, a stroke of luck that channelled my ambitions of becoming a writer into journalism. For a decade I bounced around various newspapers trying to find my place, finally landing on my feet as Montreal Gazette theatre critic in the mid-80s. Newspapers are my first love, an indelible part of my life as a writer. What I remember most fondly are the characters.
My first boss, the Whig’s Picton bureau chief, Bill Macdonald, was a soft-spoken guy in his early 20s who drove a yellow MGB convertible. I was hired to be his weekend replacement, but somehow he managed to drift into the office every Saturday morning, ostensibly to check the Canadian Press wire feed, in reality to teach me the rudiments of reporting. Most Saturday nights we ended up at the Picton Yacht club with his pals, where I developed an appetite for White Russians – a sticky mixture of Kahlúa, Vodka and cream.
That fall I began a journalism degree at Carleton University, but a summer of bylines in the Whig convinced me the only way to learn the trade was on the job and I already had one. So I switched to political science. Midway through a BA, I moved to a summer job at the Journal in Ottawa, which is where I would later find a generous mentor who would change my life, and a pair of white knights who did their part in making a bold choice possible, if just.
After graduation, I set out for Europe, to learn French in Paris and travel. On the way back from Greece, I met an aspiring painter, went home with him to Germany and accidently became pregnant. A heady time. Big decisions. He said I’d never succeed as a writer with a child in tow, nor could he afford the responsibility of a family. Wondering what to do, I explored several options, including dropping a note to the Journal’s editor, Dave Humphreys, saying I’d be interested in a job the following spring – preferably one that required using my new French-language skills. His answer was quick, a telegram offering me the Hull (now Gatineau), Quebec, bureau post if I came back immediately. No promises for spring.
I was 24, steeped in the literature of existentialism and convinced a great life needed bold choices. The salary was $300 a week, which in 1977 seemed more than enough to raise a child on my own. So I said yes, but kept my personal news quiet.
A few weeks after I started the job that September, I went into Humphreys’ office, closed the door, and told him I was going to have a baby in February, adding that I was sure I could build up enough overtime hours to cover the time off for giving birth. If he was shocked, he hid it well.
For the next few months I kept my head down. Oddly, nobody in the newsroom seemed to notice the baby bump under my bulky sweaters. The night desk editor, a Brit named Mel, kept asking me out. When I finally told him (over the phone) that I was having a baby, he was ecstatic, suggested we move in together so he could look after the child by day while I worked. I politely declined.
Mid-November, I was sent to cover a hospital fire. By 3 a.m., I had to beg the Journal photographer, also covering the blaze, to drive me somewhere for food. He was stunned when I told him the cause and graciously obeyed.
But the medal for gallantry goes to the man I most dreaded: my competition, Neil Macdonald, Hull bureau chief for the Ottawa Citizen, subsequently a stellar CBC TV news reporter in a slew of foreign hotspots. Neil was intensely ambitious. While I was exhausted most of the time and often bored by local politics, he was gleefully waging war with the Journal. Six-foot-plus and fierce, he never missed a chance to beat me, once getting a huge front-page story out of a Gatineau council meeting because he knew the meaning of the word tutelle in English and I did not. I recall with shame the sick feeling of seeing his byline on page one after we’d both been at the same council meeting. Somebody on the Journal’s city desk did a pick-up for the late edition and life went on.
My first full-time job, the Gatineau beat was a treadmill. Not until the third Sunday in January did I finally have a minute to crack open the Penguin Book of Childbirth, some 400 pages long. Glancing at the graphic photos of delivery, I was nauseated, skipped to the chapter on how to predict the due date, did the math and realised the doctor had made a mistake: I was going to give birth in a few days. I tossed the paperback aside and fell asleep.
Monday night was Hull council, a dreaded assignment for obvious reasons. Just as a councillor started rambling on in near-indecipherable joual, I saw Neil walking toward me. He leaned down, rested both hands on the table and said: “Not much on the agenda. If you don’t write anything, I won’t.” Of course, I agreed. He drove home. The next night I went into labour.
My daughter was born at 3:11 p.m. on Wednesday. At 5 p.m. the nursing station put through a call to my bedside from the Journal’s city editor, Gord Eastwood.
“Take the whole weekend off,” he barked, then broke into laughter, adding: “Sorry, but I’ve always wanted to say something like that.”
I’ve read some of the other stories in this volume and talked to women whose newsroom memories include harrowing tales of sexism, machismo and sometimes, overt harassment. All quite credible, but little of that atmosphere penetrated the bubble that surrounded me in those days. Single motherhood made me unapproachable. It certainly focused my time-management skills.
During the pregnancy and for a year after, I shared a house on Frank Street with three others, including my long-time friend Shirley Won, who went on to become a business writer at the Globe. I remember spending one memorable evening flaked out on the living room sofa, listening to the two guys who lived with us call out potential names from the phone book for my consideration. Hey, it was the 70s.
When I went back to work three weeks after the birth, a young Italian mother who lived next door looked after my baby at her house four days a week. A girl I’d met in the Netherlands came over to help. She babysat one day a week, ran the house and made sure I got a decent night’s sleep. At first, the Italian woman felt sorry for me as a single parent. After a few months she said she was jealous. I had quite a team working on the situation.
Nevertheless, by spring I really needed a break. Dave Humphreys understood and agreed to get a summer student to do my job while I went on leave – unpaid of course. Shortly after I’d settled into a cottage along the St. Lawrence with my five-month-old daughter, a friend called to say Humphreys had been fired. I rushed back to Ottawa to find a severance slip in my mailbox. When I asked the new boss, John Grace, for an explanation, he said he didn’t know anything about Dave’s deal. So I cleaned out my desk, went around the crowded newsroom saying goodbye to my colleagues and left the building in tears.
A few days later I ran into Mel, who had left the Journal’s night desk to work for a new start-up weekly, the Ottawa Post. He was appalled by the way I’d been treated and offered to set up an interview with his publisher. The Post founder was another Brit, Colin, divorced, with two teenage children, facts he brought up during my interview.
“You certainly got your figure back quickly after giving birth,” he said cheerily. I smiled, got the job. The day I turned up for work, I learned Mel had been sacked.
I called him immediately. He was exceedingly gracious, said Colin was insane, but I should carry on. I felt awful but needed the job. A few days later the Journal offered me my old position back, but it was clear the Post, while a farcical enterprise, was also a more child-friendly atmosphere. No, I did not fall for the boss, nor did Colin act out his disappointment. I did get to write a great variety of features, including a profile of Leonard Cohen. We met in an Ottawa hotel room at the end of a day of interviews for his book of poetry. I started out by mumbling something like: “Sorry to be the last on the list. You must be sick of answering questions.”
“Not at all,” he replied, with consummate grace. “You know, writing is a solitary occupation. It’s nice to get out of the house once in a while.”
In the great heyday of daily print journalism, newsroom culture was consuming and sociable. People worked and played hard. I was just trying to survive and so missed most of what others remember as the great party times. I was trying not to drown, to stay focused on avoiding the statistical probability of poverty presented by my situation. I hankered to do another kind of writing, but knew it would have to wait.
In the meantime, there was so much to learn about the craft from journalism. Speed, brevity, clarity, the effort of accuracy – all skills that are essential to any type of writing. In the long run, deadlines are not compatible with good writing, which takes time, reflection, inspiration and an enormous amount of revision – not to mention an ability to cope with rejection. Daily journalism offers instant gratification, which can become addictive.
I could imagine a great career as a journalist, but knew it would mean going where the news was important and often dangerous. Success would demand all-consuming dedication, which just wasn’t going to be possible as a single mother. So after a couple of years at the Sunday Post, I left the workforce to do an MA in drama at the University of Toronto, which led to a job as the Montreal Gazette’s theatre critic, one of the few beats where I could be in control of my schedule, work long hours and still be home for my child’s bedtime.
One of the first people I met upon arriving at the Gazette in the mid-80s was Michael Cooke, a Brit who had just become co-managing editor while still in his early 30s. He would go on to an illustrious career, managing papers across Canada, in Chicago and New York, before arriving at the Toronto Star as editor-in-chief, a position he retired from in 2018.
Cookie, as he was called behind his back, had just returned from a Southam journalism fellowship at U of T, and stopped me in the newsroom for a chat about our alma mater. Suave, confident, in a smart navy suit and red tie, he was clearly a breed apart from the generally sartorially challenged Gazetteers. I was intimidated, a little nervous. At one point while we talked, I spotted a paper clip on the carpet and reached down to pick it up. He snatched it out of my hand, flung it across the newsroom. “No need for that,” he said, smirking. “You’re not a penniless freelancer now.”
He had just identified the degree of confidence essential to success in the world of big-city dailies. I was making real money now, but was pretty sure I wouldn’t be staying forever. I said nothing, probably blushed and clung to my frugal habits.
The mid-80s at the Gazette were gravy years. The demise of the Montreal Star in 1979 had sent a waft of ad revenue and subscribers to the smaller Gazette. Not only did I have a great salary, manageable hours and editorial support for my work, I was able to cover the Stratford and Shaw Festivals, plus the New York scene once a year. I made several trips to Europe, including to an international critics’ conference in Poland – on expenses. Nobody ever said no to my crazy ideas.
I had a front-row seat for the birth of what would become Quebec’s internationally-renowned theatre scene. And two freelance assistants were paid to help out with the load. I won the Nathan Cohen award for theatre criticism twice and saved enough to buy a duplex on the Plateau Mont-Royal. It was, no equivocation, a dream job.
Night after night, watching other people put their skin and deepest impulses on the line left me feeling privileged and, eventually, restless. I did not want to spend my life judging other people’s creative efforts. Becoming a single mother at 24 had instilled both confidence and terror. I believed I could do anything. Moreover, I felt I had to do something before the good life became impossible to give up.
A lot of people were shocked when I quit the Gazette, including I’m sure my freelance assistant, Pat Donnelly. She had actually worked in theatre. She didn’t feel part of newsroom culture and swore she would not get my job. But she did, and kept it for 30 years.
Once out in the cold, I had no idea how one went about “getting into theatre,” especially an ex-critic. My friend Bruce Bailey, the Gazette’s film critic, had a lot of experience in theatre, so I asked him to direct my collection of comic sketches called Snakeprints for the Quebec Drama Festival of 1988. He read the script, grumbled something about it being unproduceable and proceeded to spend the next three months directing three young theatre school grads in my first staged work, presented for one night only at Montreal’s Centaur Theatre. We won the Best New Play award.
Through Bruce, I met Clare Schapiro. In 1989, she and I went down the rabbit hole of our own venture, THEATRE 1774, which I left after a decade to write novels. Throughout this frequent change of hats, I’ve continued to freelance for newspapers and magazines.
Looking back at the role journalism has played in my life, I can’t help but recall the 70s and 80s with rose tinted nostalgia. Great characters populate my recollections. At the best of times, the industry I knew was greater than the sum of its parts. Journalists are competitive, sometimes ruthless and always at some level out for their own glory. But the work paid homage to the ideal of public service. It seems unfathomable that such a world should fall prey to the robber barons of capitalism and be reduced to pauper status amid a circus of free fake news. A world without the Fourth Estate is hard to imagine.
MARIANNE ACKERMAN is a Montreal writer, author of a dozen plays, four novels and two collections of short stories. She is married to Gwyn Campbell, research professor at McGill University. Her daughter Fiona, a painter, lives in Vancouver.