A Yukon-born writer who became the closest thing Toronto media had to a national institution
Pierre Berton
Pierre Berton spent decades as a Toronto newspaperman, magazine editor, television personality and prolific popular historian, becoming one of the most recognizable figures in Canadian media.
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Pierre Berton moved to Toronto to work in newspapers and magazines, eventually becoming the managing editor of Maclean's and a columnist for the Toronto Star, building a public profile that expanded further once he became a regular fixture of Canadian television, appearing for decades on CBC programs including the panel show Front Page Challenge. His blunt, opinionated on-air style made him one of the most recognizable media personalities in the country.
A prolific popular historian
Alongside his journalism and broadcasting career, Berton wrote dozens of bestselling popular history books on Canadian subjects, from the building of the transcontinental railway to the Klondike gold rush to Canada's role in the War of 1812, doing more than perhaps any other single writer to make Canadian history accessible and commercially successful for a mass popular audience. He lived for many years in Kleinburg, just north of Toronto, and remained a prominent public figure in Canadian cultural life until his death in 2004.
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