A Writing Man

On Saturday the old man did what he had done for 42 years. In his book-littered office in the Winnipeg Free Press, slowly, with a stub pencil, he wrote the first draft of an editorial. After luncheon he picked up his black, battered old leather bag, stuffed it full of papers and documents, went home for a quiet weekend of reading. On Sunday, Editor John Wesley Dafoe, a great Canadian, was dead at 77.

He was the last of a generation: a personal journalist with more power in his own country than Dana, Greeley and Watterson had had in theirs. For 42 years in the Free Press he fought fiercely for the things he believed in: the survival of the individual, free trade, a liberal British Commonwealth, the League of Nations. At the end, a tired old lion of a man, he knew, as Canada did, that he had influenced the thinking of an Empire.

Homespun, frontier-born Dafoe distrusted noise, excitement and quick results. His tools were tireless industry, forceful writing, lust for information. He found his spiritual home in Winnipeg, when the Free Press's owner, Sir Clifford Sifton, gave him a free hand as editor. When Sir Clifford broke with Canada's great Liberal French leader, Laurier, on the issue of U.S.-Canadian reciprocity, Dafoe supported Laurier. But when Laurier failed to support conscription in World War I, Dafoe broke with him, threw the Free Press weight behind Conservative Sir Robert Borden.

Conservative Borden, Liberal Dafoe were agreed upon one thing: the Dominion should have a voice in the peace. So the Prime Minister took Editor Dafoe to Versailles as adviser. There and thereafter Dafoe fought for the idea of the British Commonwealth, and the League of Nations. When, in 1935, he saw the League was dying, he said: "A universal smash is right down the road."

For a time he believed he had seen the end of an era. But as the tide of war turned, he wrote again with his old vigor. The country felt his weight until he died. Canada had long offered him honors: a Cabinet post, appointment as first Minister to Washington, a knighthood. Dafoe had said: "Me a knight? Why, I tend my own furnace and shovel snow off my porch." He would, he said, remain a writing man. A writing man he died.

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