Pierre Berton

Pierre Francis de Marigny Berton was a Canadian historian, writer, journalist and broadcaster whose life stretched from July 12, 1920, to November 30, 2004. He wrote 50 best-selling books, mainly about Canadiana, Canadian history and popular culture, along with critiques of mainstream religion, anthologies, children’s books, and historical works for young readers. He also worked as a reporter and war correspondent, served as an editor at Maclean’s Magazine and The Toronto Star, and spent 39 years as a panelist on Front Page Challenge. He was a founder of the Writers’ Trust of Canada and received many honours and awards.

Berton was born in Whitehorse, Yukon, where his father had gone for the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush. In 1921, the family moved to Dawson City. His mother, Laura Beatrice Berton, had come north from Toronto as a schoolteacher and later published an autobiography, I Married the Klondike, which gave her, in her son’s words, “a modicum of fame, which she thoroughly enjoyed.” Dawson City was remote, and Berton grew up among people who had come north during the gold rush and stayed after it ended. That childhood, in a place full of eccentrics and stories, gave him what he later called an eye for the colourful.

In 1932, the family moved to Victoria, British Columbia. At 12, Berton joined the Scout Movement, which he later said “was the making of me.” Scouting also gave him his first contact with journalism: a weekly typewritten paper produced by the Seagull Patrol of St. Mary’s Troop. He stayed in scouting for seven years and later wrote about it in “My Love Affair with the Scout Movement.” As a history major at the University of British Columbia, he worked in Klondike mining camps, as his father had done, and wrote for the student paper The Ubyssey.

His newspaper career began early. In Vancouver, at 21, he became the youngest city editor on any Canadian daily, working at the Vancouver News-Herald while other editorial staff had been called up during the Second World War. The war felt closer to him after Japan’s attacks in December 1941, and in 1942 he noted Japanese Canadians being held in Vancouver’s Hastings Park before being sent to internment camps. Berton was conscripted into the Canadian Army, then chose to “go Active,” volunteering for overseas service. He trained through several military courses, became a captain, went overseas in March 1945, and volunteered for the Canadian Army Pacific Force, though he was no closer to combat employment when Japan surrendered.

After the war, Berton’s name grew through journalism that mixed energy with close observation. In 1947, he went on an expedition to the Nahanni River with pilot Russ Baker, and his account for the Vancouver Sun was picked up by International News Service, making him a noted adventure-travel writer. In 1948, his Maclean’s article “They’re Only Japs” became the first account of the internment of Japanese Canadians in the Canadian media to include interviews with interned people, among them Marie Suzuki, a second-generation Japanese Canadian schoolteacher whose career had been ruined by the internment.

Berton’s work kept returning to Canada: its history, its popular culture, its north, its wars, its public life, and its uneasy memories. He wrote for broad audiences without treating them as distant from serious subjects. That is why his words still carry weight on a quotes website: they come from a writer formed by newspapers, military service, public broadcasting, and the Yukon stories of his youth, and they speak in the direct voice of someone who believed Canadian history belonged in everyday conversation.