New York Post columnist Murray Kempton described the writers behind them as "the people who come down from the hills after the battle to shoot the wounded".
Newspaper editorials are as sober, passionate, insightful, witty and often as nutty as the writers who pen them, says veteran journalist Don Sellar in his introduction to this entertaining and thought-provoking collection of 175 editorials published in Canadian newspapers since the early 1890s.
Whether railing against taxes and the horrors of war, mourning the death of Queen Victoria, lecturing the government of the day, pondering the future of lacrosse in 1895, or celebrating Brad Richards, "the pride of Murray Harbour," when the star centre of the Tampa Bay Lightning brought the Stanley Cup home to Prince Edward Island in 2004, editorials are the voices and personalities of our newspapers from coast to coast.
Triggering letters of approval or the wrath of readers, the editorials in this engaging collection project the moods in newsrooms from St. John's to Victoria over the last 115 years, occasionally reflecting the bias, ignorance or bigotry of their day. They are, in fact, a guided tour of the passion, anger, and occasionally the downright silly opinions that have found their way onto Canadian editorial pages throughout our history.
About the Author: Don Sellar's 40-year career as a newspaperman includes a stint as political writer for the Calgary Herald, and later as a Parliament Hill correspondent and Washington bureau chief for Southam News Services. From 1984 until 1992, he wrote thousands of Toronto Star editorials, for a time serving as editorial page editor. He became that paper's ombudsman in 1992.
