![]() ![]() A member of the Canadian News Hall of Fame with degrees in arts and philosophy, he spoke French, Italian, German, Dutch and Russian, along with a little Korean and Japanese, as well as his native English. The stories about him at Canadian Press are truly the stuff of legends-even 60 years after the fact.”Ĭape Breton Military History Collections bb was more than a journalist. “Boss built his own legend in Korea, where he was seen as the senior Canadian correspondent during the entire conflict. “Bill Boss is the last of the generation of Canadian Press correspondents from the Second World War who did a remarkable job of reporting from the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific,” said Scott White, editor-in-chief of The Canadian Press in Toronto at the time Boss died in October 2007. He was among the elite of Second World War reporters, ranking alongside the likes of Ross Munro and Bill Stewart of The Canadian Press, Matthew Halton and Peter Stursberg of CBC, and Charles Lynch of Reuters. He ate censors for breakfast,” said Berton.īb’s career with the national news service was a relatively brief 14 years, but the legacy he left behind as one of the wire service’s legendary war correspondents endured until he died. He wasn’t only tough physically he was tough in other ways. “I got to know him in Korea, and he was the toughest reporter I encountered there. “The stories about him at Canadian Press are truly the stuff of legends.” “The Bill Boss byline has always been a trusted and familiar one to Canadian newspaper readers,” Berton wrote in the Toronto Star in 1958. ![]() He was an eclectic, highly cultured, much-travelled and multi-talented writer and raconteur.īorn May 3, 1917, in Kingston, Ont., Bill Boss was the epitome of foreign correspondents-“a man with a mission,” one of many articles about him said-who roved the world’s hotspots in a goatee, khakis, silk scarf and black beret. The collection of art, books, photographs, newspaper tearsheets, letters, telegrams, mementoes and press credentials showed the man known affectionately by his wire-service initials “bb” to generations of Canadian Press reporters and editors for what he was-a Renaissance man of the highest order. Recently, an Ontario firm auctioned off the estate of Gerard William Ramaut (Bill) Boss, 13 years after he died of pneumonia in an Ottawa hospital, age 90. Pierre Berton called him one of the toughest war correspondents he ever knew, a trusted and familiar newsman who “ate censors for breakfast.” Bill Boss was the epitome of foreign correspondents. ![]()
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