Bow Tie Confidential

Admire the Toronto Star or disdain it, champion its place in Canadian culture or deplore it, rely on it as a news source or ignore it — it is difficult to deny that the rise to power of the Honderich family, long associated with the institution, is an astonishing North American story. From poverty to power, from social isolation to arbiters of society, from village life to the high life of what would become Canada’s premier city, Beland Honderich and his son John personified any number of forgotten Horatio Alger novels, including Fame and Fortune, Struggling Upward, Luck and Pluck, and Strive and Succeed, if not always Strong and Steady.

The one Alger title that seems not to fit is Bound to Rise, for it was far from inevitable, and in truth very unlikely, that a Mennonite “water boy on a railroad repair and construction gang” would climb to the top of Canadian journalism, largely on the strength of carrying water for...