Allan Fotheringham has been writing a column for 34 of his 48 years in journalism, first with the Vancouver Sun and later with Southam News, The Financial Post, Sun Media and The Globe And Mail.

He is a graduate of the University of British Columbia, where he was the editor of The Ubyssey. Fotheringham claims to have previously worked as a steelworker and in a food-processing plant, spreading frozen peas.

He has lived in Hearne, Saskatchewan, where he was born and started out in a one-room schoolhouse, in London, England where he dabbled in Fleet Street (with little visible impact); in Ottawa (where he did leave a visible impact) and Toronto, where he did post-graduate work and consumed a lot of sherry. His musings have appeared in the South China Morning Post of Hong Kong, the Christian Science Monitor and the Chilliwack Progress.

He has traveled widely in some 89 countries, has reported from the Soviet Union and China and has been in Africa five times over 20 years. Attempting to avoid work, he now lives, more or less permanently, in Toronto counting the days until he can retire to Positano, Italy.

Fotheringham was a columnist in Washington for five years, covering the Reagan and Bush administrations and has travelled extensively in the United States, missing only four states.

Fotheringham wrote for Maclean’s magazine for 27 years where he made the back page famous and put the magazine on the map. As a tribute to him, Macleans' retired the backpage in 2005, which was considered the finest piece of print real estate in the industry. He was a ten-year panelist on the famous Canadian television show, Front Page Challenge.

Fotheringham was the 1964 winner of the Southam Fellowship in Journalism, the 1980 winner of the National Magazine Award for Humour, and the first winner of the National Newspaper Award for column-writing. In 1999, he was inducted into the Canadian News Hall of Fame along with Conrad Black. In 2002, he was the winner of the Bruce Hutchison Lifetime Achievement Award at the Jack Webster Awards in Vancouver. In 2003 Dr. Foth received his first Honorary Doctorate from the University Of New Brunswick, a Doctor of Letters (D. Litt.) He now really is a Dr. Foth.

A letter to the editor once said, “He is the greatest cobweb-blower and guff-remover in Canadian journalism.” Time magazine has described him as “Canada’s most consistently controversial newspaper columnist…a tangier critic of complacency has rarely appeared in a Canadian newspaper.”

Fotheringham feels the smartest thing he has ever done is his 1998 marriage to Toronto Art Dealer, Anne Libby and the two of them crowned the Millennium with a six week tour of South America and spent Christmas Day in Antarctica holding hands with a penguin.

He has published six books, the latest being, “FOTHERINGHAM’S FICTIONARY OF FACTS AND FOLLIES” Published by Key Porter Books.

Political Journalism, Political