“I Love Arguing!”

"Guardian angel” are the words that come to mind when I think about my friend and mentor Tony Westell, although he would be the first to scoff at the religious nuance of the phrase. (Tony was a serious atheist.)

I did not know Tony in the early stages of his rich and eventful life: a stint as a cub reporter in England, during which he worked his way up to the London Evening Standard; next, a permanent leap across the pond with his wife, Jeannie, to the Globe and Mail, eventually heading up its Ottawa bureau; a lateral move to the Toronto Star as national columnist; and then a change of hat when he joined Carleton University’s faculties of journalism and Canadian studies, and began passing along his skills and passions to the next generation.

It was at Carleton in the 1990s that Tony first assumed his role of guardian angel for a small and struggling publication called the Literary Review of Canada, conceived and nurtured...