S9E7 Big Men Fear Me - The Life and Times of George McCullagh
11/28/23 • 35 min
The Globe and Mail is an absolute fixture of the Canadian media landscape. One would be hard pressed to find a single Canadian who would not know what the Globe and Mail is, or could not name it if asked to name three Canadian newspapers. Yet so few Canadians know the man who founded it. This man was a figure of Gatsby-esque proportions. A media mogul, a sports enthusiast, a wealthy and connected Toronto elite who had immense influence over both the Canadian cultural and political landscape. He was also a man who harboured a dark secret, a secret that eventually killed him.
The guest for today is Mark Bourrie, author of Big Men Fear Me: The Fast Life and Quick Death of Canada’s Most Powerful Media Mogul.
Mark wrote as a freelance correspondent for the Globe and Mail from 1978 to 1989 and for the Toronto Star from 1989 to 2004 and was a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery from 1994 to 2018. Mark taught media history and journalism at Concordia University, history at Carleton, and Canadian Studies at the University of Ottawa. He is the author of 13 books and his 2019 book Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre Radisson, was a Canadian best-seller and winner of the RBC Charles Taylor Prize for literary excellence. Mark has also been the recipient of several major media awards, including a National Magazine Award and has written extensively on topics for both history and law.
Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/curiouscanadianhistory
Get add free content at Patreon!Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
The Globe and Mail is an absolute fixture of the Canadian media landscape. One would be hard pressed to find a single Canadian who would not know what the Globe and Mail is, or could not name it if asked to name three Canadian newspapers. Yet so few Canadians know the man who founded it. This man was a figure of Gatsby-esque proportions. A media mogul, a sports enthusiast, a wealthy and connected Toronto elite who had immense influence over both the Canadian cultural and political landscape. He was also a man who harboured a dark secret, a secret that eventually killed him.
The guest for today is Mark Bourrie, author of Big Men Fear Me: The Fast Life and Quick Death of Canada’s Most Powerful Media Mogul.
Mark wrote as a freelance correspondent for the Globe and Mail from 1978 to 1989 and for the Toronto Star from 1989 to 2004 and was a member of the Parliamentary Press Gallery from 1994 to 2018. Mark taught media history and journalism at Concordia University, history at Carleton, and Canadian Studies at the University of Ottawa. He is the author of 13 books and his 2019 book Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre Radisson, was a Canadian best-seller and winner of the RBC Charles Taylor Prize for literary excellence. Mark has also been the recipient of several major media awards, including a National Magazine Award and has written extensively on topics for both history and law.
Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/curiouscanadianhistory
Get add free content at Patreon!Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Previous Episode
S9E6 The SS in Canada Part Two
Back in episode 4 myself and historian Per Anders Rudling spoke in length about the history behind Ukrainian Waffen SS veterans settling in Canada in the aftermath of the Second World War. This discussion was a result of the embarrassing moment in Canada’s parliament where parliamentarians gave a former Waffen SS soldier a standing ovation. Our conversation was so good and there was so much covered we decided to turn it into a two parter. Thus, in this second part of our discussion we explore why the history of Waffen SS veterans in Canada took so long to come out, what this says about Canada, what it means for Canadian history and the history of Ukrainians in Canada, and finally the serious backlash that Per has received while uncovering this issue including serious efforts to silence him.
Per Anders Rudling is a historian at Lund University in Sweden who focuses on the subject of nationalism, historical culture and historical memory in areas that today make up parts of Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. He 2015 he published The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism which became an award winning work. Per is currently researching Ukrainian nationalism during the Cold War.
Twitter – https://twitter.com/DocBorys
Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/curiouscanadianhistory
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Next Episode
S9E8 Confederates in Canada and the Canadian Connection to Lincoln's Assassination
On the 30th of May 1867 Jefferson Davis, former president of the Confederate States of America, arrived in Toronto following his imprisonment after the Civil War. In a speech to a crowd of Canadian onlookers he said, “I thank you for the honour you have shown me, May peace and prosperity be forever the blessing of Canada, for she has been the asylum of many of my friends, as she is now an asylum for myself, may god bless you all.” What did he mean by an asylum for himself and many of his friends? When looking back on the Civil War it is difficult to sympathize with anyone who served on behalf of a political institution that sought to keep hundreds of thousands of people brutally enslaved. Yet, the reality is that back in the 1860s certain parts of Canada, and sizeable groups of Canadians and Maritimers, were indeed sympathetic to the southern cause, if not outright supportive. Various parts of British North America were used by Confederate spies, agents and saboteurs to conduct operations against Abraham Lincoln’s Union. In certain quarters of some cities and towns Confederates and their supporters could be found drinking, socializing, drumming up support, raising money, planning miliary operations and even dreaming of murder.
BOOK RECO: The North Star: Canada and the Civil War Plots against Lincoln by Julian Sher, published by Alfred E. Knopf Canada in 2023
Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/curiouscanadianhistory
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