For most readers of The Globe and Mail, Richard (Dic) James Doyle was little more than a name on the masthead, but for 20 years his voice rivalled that of its founder, George Brown, in shaping the newspaper's editorial policies.
Mr. Doyle died on Wednesday in Toronto, one month past his 80th birthday. His wife of 50 years, Florence, predeceased him on March 20.
Before Mr. Doyle became editor in 1963, The Globe and Mail was a newspaper solidly entrenched in the Progressive Conservative camp. To many, it had been the voice of the Toronto Establishment.
It strayed from the Tory fold for the first time in decades under Mr. Doyle's predecessor, Oakley Dalgleish, who in 1963, after much soul-searching, decided that John Diefenbaker was unacceptable as a prime minister of Canada. That year The Globe backed the Liberals.
Then Mr. Doyle took over as editor, and the paper's stand on any issue was no longer necessarily cloaked in Tory blue. It would support the government on one day only to attack it on a separate issue on the next - something unthought of in the days of his predecessors.
"In the time I've been editor," Mr. Doyle once said, "we've not supported any party in office. I think we make whomever we support uncomfortable. We're the kind of friend you could do without."
His views, although stamped on the editorial page, were never imposed on his reporters.
He wanted The Globe to be a writer's newspaper and gave his writers autonomy, even when their views went against his own philosophies. Contradictory opinions could be expressed on the same page and that was fine with Mr. Doyle.
The same rules didn't apply to The Globe's editorials, which were very much a reflection of Mr. Doyle's prejudices (he freely admitted to them) and his thinking. He expected and even encouraged arguments with the editorial board, a small corps of editors and senior writers. But as editor, he was responsible for the page's content and, in his own wry phrase, cast a "loaded vote" on editorials.
The full impact of Mr. Doyle's presence as editor was probably first felt by Globe readers on March 20, 1964, when a front-page editorial appeared under the heading, Bill of Wrongs.
It was prompted by legislation proposed by the provincial attorney-general, Frederick Cass, which empowered the Ontario Police Commission to summon any person for questioning in secret; deprive him of legal advice; and keep him in prison indefinitely if he refused to answer questions.
"For the public good," the editorial stated, the Ontario Government "proposes to trample upon the Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus, the Canadian Bill of Rights and the Rule of Law.
"Are we in Canada - or are we in Ghana? In the Canada of 1964 - or in the Germany of 1934?
"This legislation is supposed to be directed against organized crime. In fact, it is directed against every man and woman in the province."
The editorial concluded with the Junius quotation which still appears on top of The Globe's editorial page: "The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures."
Three days later, Mr. Cass resigned.
Mr. Doyle preferred to work in anonymity, only accepting honorary degrees and later a seat in the Senate near the end of his newspaper career.
He sat on no boards, belonged to no important clubs, almost never appeared on TV or radio, didn't sign petitions and seldom gave speeches. He was made an officer of the Order of Canada in 1983.
He didn't hold a driver's licence and for years arrived at the old Globe office on King Street in Toronto by street car. When The Globe moved to its present office on Front Street, Mr. Doyle took a taxi.
Montreal Gazette publisher Clark Davey, a former managing editor of The Globe and a close friend of Mr. Doyle, suspected "he didn't trust his Irish temper and that was probably to the common good."
Mr. Davey said Mr. Doyle's low public profile "was part of his own protection against conflicts on his own part. The Globe was his church. Journalism was his religion.
"I think that Dic, in the context of his time, probably had a greater influence on Canadian journalism than any other single individual," Mr. Davey said. "He was the guy who led the parade in making newspapers accountable to the readers."
Mr. Doyle, who was born March 10, 1923, said in 1985 that he decided on a newspaper career at the age of 7 and joined the Chatham Daily News as a sports reporter after he graduated from Chatham Collegiate Institute. He was promoted to sports editor, city editor and then news editor.
During the Second World War, he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force and served with the 115 (Bomber) Squadron (Royal Air Force) at Ely, near Cambridge in England. He was discharged at the end of the war with the rank of flying officer.
He was 23 and felt that life was passing him by, so rather than attending university, as other returning air force officers were doing, he returned to the Chatham paper. It was a decision he said he later regretted.
In 1947, he strayed from newspapers, working for a year as a public relations director for Canada and Dominion Sugar Co. With the year up he returned to the Daily News, then the flagship of Thomson Newspapers Ltd.
However, Mr. Doyle was lured to The Globe and Mail for $65 a week in 1951. It was a raise of only $10 over his Chatham wage, but it gave him a sense of being wanted.
Had he been offered the additional $10 in Chatham, he would have stayed because he was thinking of getting married. As it was, he waited two years before marrying Florence Chanda. They had a daughter, Judith, and a son, Sean.
He wanted to be a reporter at The Globe but the only job available was as a copy editor. He was, however, assigned to reporting when Nathan Phillips made an unsuccessful run for the Toronto mayor's office in 1951. Then it was back to the copy desk. His first byline appeared in The Globe in December of 1952 over a story about milk bottles.
In the same year he also wrote the book The Royal Story, a labour of love which proved to be a standard treatment of the English monarchy, replowing already well-tilled soil.
(The Royal Family had a special status at The Globe under Mr. Doyle. One former senior editor tells of being taken off the front-page layout after he removed a picture of Princess Margaret, which appeared in early editions, in favour of the Royal Winter Fair's prize-winning sow. Mr. Doyle, in the editor's words, "was not amused.")
When The Globe decided to publish a weekly supplement in 1957, Mr. Doyle became its first editor. From there, in 1959, he became managing editor and then editor in 1963. He served as editor-in-chief from 1978 until August, 1983, when he began his column which appeared three times a week.
Former Globe publisher A. Roy Megarry once said that "in my opinion, no one - including the seven publishers that Dic has served with during his time at the paper - had made a more positive and lasting impression on The Globe than he has."
But among the greatest tributes paid to him as an editor came from the Kent Commission, which investigated Canadian daily newspapers after the Ottawa Journal and the Winnipeg Tribune folded in virtually simultaneous moves by the Thomson and Southam chains.
In its August, 1981, report, the commission credited Mr. Doyle with "adhering to an ideal of press freedom that often tends to get lost in the management of newspapers. ...
"To a great extent, the editor-in-chief of The Globe belongs to a breed which unfortunately is on its way to extinction.
"The Globe and Mail testifies to the influence that continues to be exerted by a newspaper with a clearly defined idea of its role and substantial editorial resources. It is read by almost three-quarters of the country's most important decision-makers in all parts of Canada and at all levels of government. More than 90 per cent of media executives read it regularly and it tends to set the pace for other news organizations."
Mr. Doyle was appointed to the Senate by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and sat as a Tory, the first active Globe journalist to receive such an appointment since George Brown in 1873. As an editor and a columnist, Mr. Doyle had often preached Senate reform and had opposed patronage appointments.
His acceptance prompted a flow of letters to the editor that favoured and disapproved of the appointment in about equal measure.
In the House of Commons, one Liberal member said Mr. Doyle was the first Senate appointee who was guilty of contempt of Parliament. He was referring to a unanimous vote of censure in December of 1976 after The Globe published an editorial attacking James Jerome, then the Commons Speaker.
When Mr. Doyle was asked what he was going to do toward reform, he replied that he was "going to settle down and learn from experience what is and isn't possible. I don't want to be seen as the honourable member from left field."