The journalist David Halton discusses the biography he’s written about his father, Dispatches from the Front: Matthew Halton, Canada’s Voice at War (McClelland & Stewart, 2014), with Joseph Planta.

Dispatches from the Front: Matthew Halton, Canada’s Voice at War by David Halton (McClelland & Stewart, 2014). Click to buy this book from Amazon.ca: Dispatches from the Front: Matthew Halton, Canada’s Voice at War

Text of introduction by Joseph Planta:

I am Planta: On the Line, in Vancouver, at TheCommentary.ca.

Matthew Halton has been described as Canada’s Edward R. Murrow. In the area of war journalism and reporting, Matthew Halton is probably our greatest of correspondents. His life is the subject of a new biography: Dispatches from the Front: Matthew Halton, Canada’s Voice at War. It’s a terrific book that sketches out Halton’s life from Pincher Creek, Alberta, born in 1904, to one of the fastest rises in Canadian journalism, he joined the Toronto Star in the 1930s, and after a year was overseas writing presciently about Adolf Hitler’s ascendancy. Then he filed dispatches for the CBC and for a lot of people during the Second World War was their link to the events of the day overseas. Matthew Halton had interviewed everyone from that era from Franklin Roosevelt to Goring, to de Gaulle and Gandhi, as well as other figures from the 1930s and 1940s. His encounters along the way, with people like Charles Lynch, Ernest Hemingway, Gordon Sinclair, King George VI & Queen Elizabeth, are the stuff of legend. He became a hero in Canada, and has become regarded as one of the best wartime reporters. The author of this new book is his son, David Halton, himself a very fine award winning journalist, whose forty year plus career took him around the world for the CBC. From 1978 to 1991 he was the CBC’s Chief Political Correspondent. This book is published by McClelland & Stewart. Please welcome to the Planta: On the Line program in Toronto today, David Halton; Mr. Halton, good morning.

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