An Interactive Talk with Peter C. Newman

Organized by the Pols'02 Reunion Committee & Department of Political Studies
 

In honour of their 15th reunion, the Political Studies Class of 2002 is hosting an interactive talk with acclaimed Canadian journalist, prolific author, and historian, Peter C. Newman moderated by Leif Malling.

About the Speaker: Peter Charles Newman is a journalist, author, and newspaper and magazine editor. Newman began writing for the Financial Post in 1951 and by 1953 he was Montréal editor of the Post, a position he held for 3 years before returning to Toronto to be assistant editor, then Ottawa columnist, at Maclean's. In Ottawa, Newman produced his masterly popular political chronicle of John Diefenbaker, Renegade in Power: The Diefenbaker Years (1963). Five years later, he published a similar study of Lester Pearson, The Distemper of Our Times (1968). The following year he became editor-in-chief at the Toronto Star (later publishing in Home Country: People, Places and Power Politics, 1973) and changed his focus from politicians to members of the Canadian business establishment. In Flame of Power (1959), he assembled 11 profiles of the first generation of Canada's business magnates; next he explored the lives of those who currently wielded financial power in popular studies such as his 2-volume The Canadian Establishment (1975, 1981), The Bronfman Dynasty (1978) and The Establishment Man: A Portrait of Power (1982). A third book called Titans: How the New Canadian Establishment Seized Power was added to this series in 1998. His books have sold 1 million copies in Canada and he has had a profound effect on political reporting and business journalism, making them more personalized and evocative. He was editor of Maclean's where for a decade (1971-82) he worked to transform the magazine from a monthly to a weekly with a Canadian slant on international and national events. In 1982 he resigned to work on a three-volume history of the Hudson's Bay Co. In 1998, Newman received the Canadian Journalism Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award and the Toronto Star's Excellence in Journalism. (Source)