Over the course of a 69-year journalism career, including nearly 45 with The Canadian Press, Mel Sufrin established himself as an avid storyteller and stickler for grammar, but above all is remembered by family and former colleagues as a sweet and thoughtful “gentleman.”
Sufrin died Sept. 19 in a Toronto retirement home at 96 years old.
Sufrin worked his way up the ranks of the national newswire from teenage messenger to vice-president of editorial. In 1941, at the age of 16, he was hired as a copy boy at $11 a week by The Canadian Press after his father made him quit high school to join the workforce.
Sufrin retired from The Canadian Press in 1986, but went on to serve as the executive secretary of the Ontario Press Council for 23 years until 2010. The organization, which was amalgamated into the National NewsMedia Council in 2015, reviews and investigates public complaints about newspapers.
You can read more about him and his incredible legacy here.