It was one of those inherently Canadian winter scenes.
Steel blades scraping against ice, interspersed with squeals of laughter. Rosy-cheeked children bundled up, the rising anticipation of Christmas morning in the air.
Save for a single boy, sitting alone on a log, watching but not joining.
A young woman approached and asked why he wasn’t on the ice.
“I have no skates,” he told the woman.
“Would you like skates?” she replied.
“Oh, very much,” he said.
The boy, Joe, would grow up to be the Star’s famed publisher, Joseph E. Atkinson. But he always remembered what it was like to sit on that log.
That Christmas morning, a pair of skates was left at his home. It was the happiest Christmas he had ever had.
The kindness shown to Atkinson that day has reverberated over the last century, not just through Atkinson’s life, but through his legacy.
More than a century later, on Christmas morning 2016, little Olin Herath received a gift box. Inside was a toy, a book, a hat, mitts, a toothbrush, toothpaste and cookies.
It was a gift to a boy, inspired by another who knew the intricacies and the heartbreak of being a child in need.
Herath is one of 45,000 underprivileged children provided with a Christmas gift through the Toronto Star’s Santa Claus Fund, established by Atkinson in 1906.
During Atkinson’s lifetime, he came to lead a media powerhouse. Under his guidance, the Star became the paper it is today. “Nobody can escape his beginnings, and I despise the man who is untrue to them,” Atkinson once said. His beginnings, and the Atkinson Principles and social justice ideals that stemmed from it, have defined more than a century of reporting at the Toronto Star.
Those principles can be summarized as: A strong, united and independent Canada; social justice; individual and civil liberties; community and civic engagement; the rights of working people; and the necessary role of government.
Born just east of Newcastle, Ont., in 1865, Atkinson was the youngest of eight children. Atkinson’s father, John, died when his youngest son was 6 months old, leaving his wife, Hannah, a struggling single mother. When her children were old enough to leave school, they were sent to work.
Atkinson worked at the post office at 16. The small teen had to stand on a box to help customers at the wicket. It was there that he began signing his name with the middle initial E. — he had no middle name, but it sounded important.
Atkinson left the post office in search of better pay. He ended up accepting a position collecting outstanding accounts for the Port Hope Times.
“I did not have the faintest intention of becoming a newspaperman when I accepted this job,” Atkinson later recalled. “I wanted to be a banker. But six dollars a week was too good to turn down.
During his nearly 50 years as publisher, his strong views based on belief in progressive policy formed the Atkinson Principles.
Atkinson never formally codified his principles, but they remain the bedrock of Star reporting. The philosophies Atkinson espoused during his tenure at the Star remain as true today as they did Dec. 21, 1899, when the one-cent paper’s masthead was ready to include for the first time: “Joseph E. Atkinson, editor and manager.”
Social justice
“The point at issue is simply this,” a Star editorial in 1946 asserted. “Is it or is it not desirable that out-of-work people should have some means of subsistence? Is it or is it not desirable that people should be able to give their children a proper start in life? . . . In brief, are human beings in a prosperous country like Canada entitled to some means of security in life? The Star thinks they are.”
Atkinson believed the state had a duty to the old, the unemployed, the widowed and others who were disadvantaged. This included a sense of obligation to the sick, and a 1979 campaign was in that spirit.
Little Herbie Quinones Jr.’s windpipe was stuck between his heart and esophagus — a birth defect that meant baby Herbie wasn’t far from death. The outpouring of support, after a series of Star stories in February 1979, amounted to $16,000.
The funds allowed Herbie to get lifesaving surgery at Sick Kids. The Herbie Fund has since helped more than 777 other children.
Strong, united and independent Canada
Atkinson was a nationalist through-and-through.
“We believe in the British connection as much as anybody does but on a self-respecting basis of equality, of citizenship, and not on the old basis of one country belonging to the other,” a 1928 editorial declared.
Atkinson believed Canada should rise above colony status, unfurl her own flag and decide her own legal matters.
Over the years, guarding against American influence became more of a priority, as did maintaining unity amid interprovincial tensions.
An editorial in 1990, amid constitutional debates, riffed off the common line “What does Quebec want?”
“While 47 of Ontario’s 839 municipalities, representing only 300,000 people, petulantly declare themselves English-only, another 33 larger municipalities, representing 635,000 people, proudly declare themselves bilingual . . .
“What does Canada want? Surely, most Canadians want tolerance, understanding, and dialogue; official bilingualism in Parliament, and the unofficial bilingualism of French immersion classes for their children; a sense of common purpose to overcome Western alienation, Atlantic Canada’s economic hardship, Quebec’s cultural challenges . . . ”
Individual and civil liberties
Since its inception, the Star has advocated for free speech and the right to public assembly. Past articles have grappled with racial and religious bigotry, police power and deportation, often sparking controversy.
In 2010’s groundbreaking “Race Matters,” reporter Jim Rankin told the story of countless Black men in Toronto, who are stopped, questioned and documented by police at rates higher than white people. The 2010 investigation found Black people were three times more likely to be stopped than white people.
It took seven years for the reporting team to get the data on carding through a freedom-of-information request.
“There was a real commitment to getting the data,” Rankin said. “And that really speaks large to the Atkinson principles and what drives a lot of the journalism at the Star.”
The stories led to further work on police carding that sparked political action.
Community and civic engagement
Atkinson believed in Toronto and the people living here. In a 1900 editorial, Atkinson wrote that Toronto was going to be a big city. “We should begin to shape things accordingly.”
Around the turn of the century, Atkinson’s wife, Elmina, suggested the Fresh Air Fund, allowing Star readers to donate money to send children on excursions and to summer camps. The tradition continues to this day.
A century later, the Star looked at a basic part of city life: the food we eat.
Reporter Robert Cribb’s Dirty Dining exposé in 2000 resulted in an inspection blitz of Toronto food establishments. The multi-month effort that brought about headlines reading “Health check finds rats at eatery,” “Latest closing is 50th since food inspection blitz began” and “Filthy eatery passed March test: Restaurant given clean report now has visible vermin.”
“The public is much more aware that there are clean restaurants and restaurants that aren’t so clean,” John Filion, chair of the city’s health board, said in a June 17, 2000, story by Cribb.
“People are a lot more interested in making sure places they eat in are clean and that’s good for everyone’s health.”
Rights of working people
Atkinson once said: “The human element in the manufacturing industry, the quality and standards of living of the workers and workmen, is more important than the product.”
And labour remains at the forefront of the Star’s reporting. As recently as September, Sara Mojtehedzadeh and Brendan Kennedy’s “Undercover in Temp Nation” exposed workplace conditions at Toronto’s Fiera Foods.
Temp Nation was meant to shine a light on “a workforce that is pretty invisible to a lot of people,” Mojtehedzadeh said.
Necessary role of government
During his tenure at the Star, Atkinson pushed for playgrounds and sanitariums.
In 1914, he advocated for “some form of unemployment insurance” at the Toronto Moose Club. The following year, at the Canadian Club of Toronto, he warned that: “After the war things will not be the same as they were before. Many pet prejudices will have to go by the board, and more attention and sympathy will have to be devoted to the everyday life of the people.”
Sometimes that everyday life was shockingly dire.
In 1996, reporters Moira Welsh and Kevin Donovan investigated the deaths of 77 children in Ontario.
“An ongoing Star investigation of 77 child deaths in the past five years has uncovered serious warning signs prior to death in at least 23 cases,” they said in the article, titled “They died despite signs of abuse.”
On Sept. 18, 1996, deputy chief coroner Jim Cairns announced a joint task force with the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies to study child mortality in Ontario to help prevent further deaths.
The Star’s legacy of being, as the masthead said, “a paper for the people” did not end when Atkinson died in 1948 at age 82.
In 1957, his son Joseph Story Atkinson became president of the Star. He told employees the paper had been part of his life for as long as he could remember.
“From its inception in 1892, the Star has been a champion of social and economic reform, a defender of minority rights, a foe of discrimination, a friend of organized labour and a staunch advocate of Canadian nationhood,” Atkinson said.
“We shall continue to support these principles with all the vigour at our command,” Atkinson promised.
It was a promise that would have made his father proud.
With files from the Star archives and the book J.E. Atkinson of the Star by Ross Harkness.
