Boy from Nowhere: A Life in Ninety-One Countries

by Allan Fotheringham

Overview

Born in Hearne, Saskatchewan, in 1932, Allan Fotheringham has had a distinguished career. Dubbed "Dr. Foth," Fotheringham graduated from the University of British Columbia and has worked for numerous news organizations, including the Vancouver Sun, Southam News, The Financial Post, Sun Media, the Globe and Mail, and most notably as a long-time columnist for Maclean's.

His career has taken him to many places on almost every continent as a correspondent and allowed him to meet many renowned personalities, from Robert F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Brian Mulroney to The Beatles, Pierre Trudeau, and Nelson Mandela. For ten years he was a panellist on the popular CBC-TV show Front Page Challenge, and he's won many awards, including the National Magazine Award for Humour, a National Newspaper Award for Column Writing, and the Bruce Hutchinson Life Achievement Award.

Time once described Allan Fotheringham as "Canada's most consistently controversial newspaper columnist ... a tangier critic of complacency has rarely appeared in a Canadian newspaper."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781459701694
Publisher:	Dundurn Press
Publication date:	10/25/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Allan Fotheringham has been a journalist and columnist for nearly fifty years, first with the Vancouver Sun, for nearly three decades with Maclean's, and more recently with the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and Zoomer. He has published eight previous books, including Fotheringham's Fictionary of Facts&Follies and Malice in Blunderland. "Dr. Foth" lives in Toronto.

Allan Fotheringham has been a journalist and columnist for nearly 50 years, first with the Vancouver Sun, for nearly three decades with Maclean's, and more recently with the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and Zoomer. He has published eight previous books, including Fotheringham's Fictionary of Facts&Follies and Malice in Blunderland. "Dr. Foth" lives in Toronto.

Table of Contents

Preface 9
1 Hello, World 13
2 To the Garden of Eden 21
3 Campus Chaff 31
4 To Warsaw on a Scooter 40
5 London Town 49
6 Newspaper Madness 56
7 Vancouver and Marriage 59
8 Twenty-Six Libel Writs 69
9 Hitting $492,000 78
10 Toronto Sun Days 89
11 2000 Was a Busy Year 99
12 Conquering Africa 108
13 Me and Mulroney 111
14 Pierre Elliott Himself 115
15 The Reluctant Queen 122
16 I Meet the Gem 125
17 On to Hollywood 134
18 You Wanna Be a Journalist? 140
19 Death Beckons 143
20 My Female Friends 148
21 From a Man I Had Never Met 152
22 My Greatest Accomplishment 157
23 And Then There’s %$#&*!! 166
24 The Bohemian Grove 169
25 Watershed 173
26 Bowen Island 176
27 Cast of Characters 179
28 Life Is a Series of Memories 213
29 Fothisms 225
30 The First Page Last 227
31 Left on the Copy Room Floor 231
 

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"What Canadians lack most is the ability to laugh at themselves, and Dr. Foth has filled the gap. He set a cheeky new style in journalism that has never been equalled. Tilting against the prevailing winds of Canadian politics is his specialty and humour, his weapon. He remains neutral — he attacks everybody. At Maclean's he occupied the prestigious back page with grace and guts for twenty-seven years. Allan Fotheringham was never replaced nor can he be."
— Peter C. Newman, Author of When the Gods Changed: The Death of Liberal Canada

"Allan Fotheringham is a unique personality. He has been an unforgettable force in Canadian journalism and a forceful player in the public life of our country. We are friends, but that didn't make him less objective."
— The Right Honourable John Turner, Canada's Seventeenth Prime Minister

"As a chronicler of our times, Allan Fotheringham had rare gifts. He combined humour and courage, a capacity to regale and impale. Full of kiss and vinegar, he was. The sun shone from his fingertips. The wit, the mirth, the sabre — they're all here in a story of a life and then some."
— Lawrence Martin, Globe and Mail Columnist

"The Boy from Nowhere became the Man from Everywhere, from Moscow to Moose Jaw, anywhere there was a story to tell, people to meet, and political absurdities to unmask. Foth did more than invent the back page — he has the last word on that national species known as Canadians."
— The Honourable Patricia "Pat" Carney, Former Senator and Conservative Minister

"Allan Fotheringham — sometimes he's right, sometimes he's wrong. Often he makes you laugh, often he enrages you. But under all circumstances he never leaves you indifferent. It makes for quite a life!"              — The Right Honourable Paul Martin, Canada's Twenty-First Prime Minister

Editorial Reviews

There's a good deal about the fundamentals of the business: booze and sex.

The Globe and Mail - Shane McCune

Fotheringham is a storyteller, a dancer, a lover of women. He lunches well, dines better, and remembers every detail. You could toss 'Who's Who' off the CN Tower, and not drop as many names as he does in this book... An agreeable way to spend a few hours.

Maclean's magazine

During his quarter-century as Maclean's back-page columnist, Dr. Foth, now 79, was indisputably the country's most popular political columnist - a deft phrase-turner and pomposity-skewer...

Toronto Star

Fotheringham did not fall into the category of those who wrote history but some of his stuff certainly influenced history. An example that comes to mind was his wickedly cruel, colorful but accurate saga of Joe Clark's botched world tour shortly after he won the Conservative Party leadership in 1976. The Foth's description of lost underwear, walking into bayonets and inane conversation with peasants created a devastating first impression, picked up by the rest of the media that Clark never fully recovered from.

Literary Review of Canada

During his quarter-century as Maclean's back-page columnist, Dr. Foth, now 79, was indisputably the country's most popular political columnist - a deft phrase-turner and pomposity-skewer...

From the Publisher