By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
In 1976 I went to work as a copy editor on the National Desk at The Toronto Star, after having worked for a number of other Canadian media outlets. One of the first people I met was Michael Cooke who had just come over from England to also work as a copy editor on the Star’s National Desk.
Cooke and I initially were rather friendly toward each other and it was at the height of that year’s Quebec general election that we began discussing Canadian and Quebec politics.
I conveyed to Cooke the fact that I was a socialist, which he also claimed to be, and that I supported the Parti Quebecois and was confident that the separatist/social democratic party would win the election.
I even showed him a riding-by-riding analysis I had done, correctly predicting with one seat the dimensions of the PQ’s victory, including Liberal Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa’s personal defeat at the hand of Quebec poet Gerald Godin.
Right after that, an estrangement began to develop between Cooke and myself. I was not surprised that this “true Brit” was rather uppity about an anglophone journalist supporting the sovereignist PQ. read more »