"Who is this Pierre Beartawn I keep hearing about?” The Globe and Mail’s editor, Englishman Richard Addis, is reputed to have asked early in his tenure (1999–2002). The response is unrecorded, but the question indicates that the newcomer had plenty to learn about the society he was to join. Pierre Berton, by the turn of the last century, arguably was one of English Canada’s best-known public figures. When he died, on November 30, 2004, at age 84, of a combination of heart disease and diabetes, he had authored some 50 books, written countless newspaper columns and articles, and appeared thousands of times on television and radio. Bruce Hutchison, an author he greatly admired, had earlier and famously written of Canada as “The Unknown Country.” By the time of his death, Berton’s untiring efforts conclusively had made it, at least in popular historical terms, much more of a Known Country.
But how much was really known about the man himself?
A.B...
Roger Hall is a member of the Department of History at the University of Western Ontario, a senior fellow of Massey College at the University of Toronto and the general editor of the Champlain Society.
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