Mel Morris was happy to call himself a newspaperman, never a journalist, in the Golden Age of newspapers. He loved the split-second decisions that had to be made to shape a story that was worth reading, accurate, and to-the-point – and doing it better and faster than the competition.
Mel died peacefully at the age of 93 in a Toronto hospital, surrounded by his family: his beloved wife of 70 years, Shirley (née Dworkin), their daughters and spouses Kelly, Kathleen (Mauro Iacobelli), Jennifer (David Alcock), and their grandchildren, Connor (Diane), Amelia, Ruby, Stella, Sophie, and Gabriel.
Mel was raised on a farm near Rockland, Ont., learned to read and write in a one-room schoolhouse where lessons were taught in English and French, depending on the subject, and graduated from Carleton College (now Carleton University) in 1952 with a Bachelor of Journalism degree. He never lost the lessons learned in a hard-working farming family.
Being bilingual served Mel well during his later working years in Montreal despite his vocabulary being limited initially to that of a young boy. He could shoot pool or talk about baseball in French, not much of a help in 1952 in the Duplessis era when he started working at British United Press in Montreal.
He began his career covering football games, sitting beside a Morse code operator to whom Mel handed his play-by-play story, one sentence at a time. The operator tapped out his story to a West coast radio station where an announcer pretending to be an on-the-spot-sportscaster read the copy, backed by crowd noise supplied by recorded sound effects. Mostly he rewrote stories from Quebec sources for other Canadian newspapers and radio stations. He left to work for BUP’s competition, the Canadian Press, in Montreal and Quebec City, filing stories that were carried by newspapers across the country.
In 1957, he and Shirley went to Europe with vague plans of travelling for perhaps six months, maybe picking up a job. In London, their first stop, they were sightseeing on Fleet St. when Mel spotted the Reuters building. He walked in to discuss job possibilities with the North American desk and they asked him to start work that same day. He did, staying for five years and leaving as head of Nordesk.
He returned to Canada in 1962 with Shirley and their first two daughters to work as foreign editor at The Toronto Star. Their third daughter was born in Toronto. He was later the features editor and city editor over three separate periods of employment at The Star. Mel was city editor at the Toronto Telegram when the paper folded in 1971. He was also managing editor at Maclean's during the 1970s where he oversaw its conversion from a monthly features magazine to a weekly news magazine. During his time in Toronto, he was an active member of the Toronto Press Club. He went to Montreal as managing editor of The Gazette in 1981, before retiring in 1991. He was inducted into the Canadian News Hall of Fame in 1998.
In the summers, Mel and Shirley would pack the family into the Country Squire station wagon for camping trips across the Maritimes. His daughters recall his fondness for cigarillos and staticky baseball games on these long car trips. Befitting a country boy, Mel had an uncanny ability to make fires with wet wood, endless patience for berry picking, and could always find “a patch of blue sky" on a rainy day.
Moving back to Toronto, he linked up with a group of retired Star editors to own thoroughbred racehorses trained by John Cardella. Mel loved every minute of his retirement, which eventually meant front row seats at Blue Jays games, golfing without worrying about his scores, travelling with Shirley and wintering in Florida.
In accordance with Mel’s wishes, there will be no funeral or memorial service. Donations in Mel’s memory may be made to Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Canada (www.doctorswithoutborders.ca).
Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.rosar-morrison.com for the Morris family.
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