Obituary: Peter Worthington

[Jacob]

An interesting life, for sure:

If you are reading this, I am dead.

How's that for a lead?

Guarantees you read on, at least for a bit.

When the Sun's George Gross died suddenly in March 2008, at age 85, there were few of his contemporaries left alive to recall the old days, when he was in his prime and his world was young. I was one of the few who knew him then.

After attending his funeral I half-facetiously remarked to the Toronto Sun's deputy managing editor, Al Parker, that I had been around so long that no one was left who knew me back then, and I had better write my own obituary.

"Good idea!" said Parker with more enthusiasm than I appreciated.

I mentioned it to my wife, Yvonne, who approved.

So here it is, not exactly an obit but a reflection back on a life and a career that I had never planned, but which unfolded in a way that I've never regretted.

Journalism never entered my mind when I was younger. I suppose my father's colourful life before entering the army in the First World War affected my outlook. He had been orphaned at age 10, worked as a water boy in a Mexican silver mine and witnessed his half-brother, superintendent at the mine, killed by the Mexican bandit Pancho Villa. My dad went to sea, became a ship's engineer, was in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, fought in Central American wars (Nicaragua, Honduras) before heading off to serve in the First World War. Passing through Montreal, he enlisted in the Black Watch as a private, and returned in 1919 as a captain with a Military Cross and Bar, and a Military Medal and Bar.

As a kid, there was no way I could match that for adventure, and in my teens dreaded anything that was mindful of a staid, inside job. I worked on construction sites during the war and at 15 ran away from home to join the merchant navy, but was rejected. At 17, my mother signed consensual papers for me to enlist in the navy — Fleet Air Arm, as it turned out. I later got a commission and at 18 was the youngest and least competent sub-lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve.

On discharge in Vancouver, I used veteran credits to attend the University of British Columbia. I hadn't finished high school in Ontario, but, by the time UBC learned that, I had passed the first year, so they let me continue. I spent more time missing classes than I did studying, and by the time the Korean War started in 1950, my only achievement was winning the university's light-heavyweight boxing title and the Golden Gloves.

I joined the army as a lieutenant and went to Korea as a platoon commander, later became battalion intelligence officer, and then went on loan to the U.S. Air Force to join a Mosquito squadron, flying in the rear seat of Harvard planes to direct air strikes onto Chinese targets. It was felt infantry officers could read maps better than pilots, and understood ground defensive positions better.

When the war ended, I had mild depression. What to do now? I still yearned for an adventurous life, but the world had changed since my father's youth.

Rumour was that the French were hiring experienced infantry officers to serve in Indochina at $1,000 a month. I applied through the French embassy in Tokyo, and got a terse "Cher Lieutenant" letter that said the rumour was false, but I could join the Foreign Legion for five years as a private. In time for Dien Bien Phu, perhaps. I returned to Canada, took parachute training, joined the Princess Pats Mobile Strike Force, then quit the army.

What to do? I returned to UBC (on veteran credits), got a Bachelor of Arts degree and applied to the Vancouver Province to be a sports writer. I was considered unqualified for that, but was hired as a news reporter at $35 a month. I spent the summer of 1954 trying to get a byline and failed, until the city editor, Tom Hazlitt, took pity and re-wrote my story with my byline.

I went east to Ottawa's Carleton College for a journalism degree, won a couple of graduation prizes and was hired by the Toronto Telegram as a reporter by the paper's acerbic city editor, Art Cole, who seemed to expect every reporter to have an excuse not to cover an assignment, and was suspicious of those who were eager to work.

Shortly after joining the Tely, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary, and the Suez War erupted. When the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) was authorized to go to Gaza, I took courage in hand and asked managing editor J. Douglas MacFarlane to send me.

He refused outright, and said a rookie reporter would never be sent on such an assignment. I replied that I had recently left the army, that I knew many of the soldiers involved, could get exclusive stuff, that I'd go on my holidays, charge no expenses, arrange my own way. Everything free for the Tely.

It was an offer MacFarlane couldn't refuse. I went, and the stories worked out.

It set the pattern for my future at the Tely, and was an argument for enterprise.

Soon after my return, the U.S. Marines landed in Lebanon to prevent a coup.

As the Tely reporter who had most recently been to the Middle East, I was the automatic choice this time, since my UNEF stuff had been acceptable (and cost nothing).

In the middle of the Lebanon crisis, Baghdad erupted with King Faisal and his family being assassinated. With another reporter, I hired a taxi in Damascus and we headed east across the roadless desert to Baghdad. I was first to report from Iraq.

At the same time, British paratroopers had landed in Jordan to protect King Hussein from a coup, supposedly being planned by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser.

I headed to Amman, after interviewing Brig-Gen. Abdul Karim Kassem who staged the coup in Iraq.

An hour after arriving in Amman, I went to the king's palace to apply for an interview and got mixed up with a group of German businessmen who were to meet King Hussein. I joined them, and by the time the king realized I was an interloper, it was too late and he tolerated my presence.

My success started a stampede of other journalists, who had been waiting weeks for an interview, to the palace. For me, it was a realization that for journalists, reconnaissance can be valuable, and that it's better to be lucky than good.

For the next 15 years, I covered every major war, crisis or revolution in the world. I was reluctant to take holidays for fear of missing a foreign crisis. Not in any particular order, I covered the Algerian war of independence, the Congo, Angola insurgency, Jews fleeing Morocco, the Dalai Lama's escape from Tibet, the coup in Laos, the Vietnam War, Indonesia's invasion of Dutch New Guinea, India versus Pakistan, China's invasion of India, Israel's 1967 defeat of Egypt, China shelling Taiwan, riots in Belgium, civil disturbance in France, the mutiny of the Foreign Legion in Algeria, and so on.

In the early days, when attending a crisis, my method was to start with a colour story, like getting roughed up by angry crowds, or confronting the police or the army, and gradually learning the politics of what was happening. At the end of each assignment, I liked to do a five-part series on what it all meant, ending with a prediction of what the future would bring — which I still feel is important, as the reporter learns to analyze.

Those years were enormously stimulating and satisfying — being at the centre of the hurricane, or most newsworthy story of the moment. I relished being in the centre of action, with adrenalin flowing, and motivated by being able to write about it the same day, and going to another adventure the next day.

All at the publisher's expense. A huge privilege.

The endless travel cost me my first marriage, since the job took precedence — especially when I went to Moscow to open the bureau for the Toronto Telegram in the mid-1960s. Before that, the Tely wanted to open a bureau in China. The Chinese had indicated approval, and I spent a couple of months in Hong Kong waiting for a visa.

The Chinese eventually rejected me — not, as I had feared, because I had been a soldier in the Korean War but because I showed too much enthusiasm and had co-operated with the Americans in bombing Chinese troops.

My wife, Helen, understandably didn't want an absentee husband. We divorced and she bettered herself by marrying a judge, and living happily. I later married a Tely reporter, Yvonne Crittenden, whose husband had run off with another Tely staffer (Caligula's court in those days), and we all benefitted accordingly.

When President John Kennedy was assassinated, I was one of a team of Tely reporters dispatched to Washington. I went on to Dallas for the arraignment of Lee Harvey Oswald, accused assassin of JFK.

An hour after arriving in Dallas on the redeye flight from Washington, I checked out the Dallas police station and inadvertently stumbled into the underground garage where the cops (who mistook me for an FBI agent) were ready to transport Lee Harvey Oswald to the jail. I was there when Jack Ruby emerged from the crowd and shot Oswald. I appear briefly on TV shots of the killing, but it doesn't stand out in my memory as a watershed moment.

... it goes on, here: http://www.torontosun.com/2013/05/14/peter-worthington-in-his-own-words

[11B4V]

I'm sure he was a fine chap, but why should I give a shit about this dude?

[Valmy]

I'm sure he was a fine chap, but why should I give a shit about this dude?

Because no man is an island entire of himself, 11B4V.  Ask not for whom the obituary rambles on about, it rambles on for thee.

[katmai]

I'm sure he was a fine chap, but why should I give a shit about this dude?

See if i think of you fondly on Veteran's Day

[11B4V]

I'm sure he was a fine chap, but why should I give a shit about this dude?

See if i think of you fondly on Veteran's Day

He seems like a fine dude. Other than his veteran status, what???? That was yesterday.

[The Brain]

I would hope that my Tomb will speak for me when the time comes. No need for words in the presence of such a monumental statement.

[Jacob]

I'm sure he was a fine chap, but why should I give a shit about this dude?

Why should I give a shit about what you give a shit about?

[Neil]

Good find, Jacob.  I hadn't realized the Worthington had died.

[Admiral Yi]

Why should I give a shit about what you give a shit about?

Because you posted it here ostensibly in the belief that people would find it interesting.

[Jacob]

Why should I give a shit about what you give a shit about?

Because you posted it here ostensibly in the belief that people would find it interesting.

You categorize 11B4V as people?

[11B4V]

Why should I give a shit about what you give a shit about?

Because you posted it here ostensibly in the belief that people would find it interesting.

You categorize 11B4V as people?

Quite right people is plural.

[Admiral Yi]

You categorize 11B4V as people?

Snippy.

[11B4V]

You categorize 11B4V as people?

Snippy.

[Barrister]

Why should I give a shit about what you give a shit about?

Because you posted it here ostensibly in the belief that people would find it interesting.

I had only a passing familiarity with Peter Worthington, but when I saw this obit (last week) I found it a very fascinating read.

[Admiral Yi]

I was calling Jacob's comment snippy you blockhead.