Toronto Sun founding editor Peter Worthington dies
Posted May 13, 2013 7:39 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Peter Worthington – a Toronto media icon and founding editor of the Toronto Sun – has died. He was 86.
Worthington died in hospital on Sunday after he was admitted for a staph infection, his family told the newspaper.
“The man was amazing,” Sun columnist Rita Demontis told CityNews.
“I was struck by how brave he always was, how fearless and how he always looked at the world with a bemused expression.”
Worthington, a former staff reporter at the Toronto Telegram, covered the Vietnam War and witnessed Lee Harvey Oswald’s murder.
During his long career, he also reported on conflicts in the Gaza Strip, the Portuguese Colonial War, the invasion of Netherlands’ New Guinea by Indonesia and was in the northeast frontier of India when Chinese forces invaded, the Sun reported.
During the Cold War, Worthington opened a bureau in Moscow in 1965.
After the Telegram folded in 1971, Worthington, J. Douglas Creighton and Don Hunt founded the Toronto Sun.
Worthington was the editor-in-chief for 12 years and helped launch the Ottawa Sun in the late 1980s.
Sun columnist Joe Warmington said Worthington should be remembered for more than just his journalism career.
“He really is one of the giants, not only in journalism, but really in Canadian history as well,” Warmington told 680News.
Worthington is survived by his wife, Yvonne Crittenden, and children Casey Worthington, Guy Crittenden, Danielle Crittenden, and six grandchildren.
Worthington’s son-in-law, journalist David Frum, said a memorial service will be held in Toronto in the next few days. Frum said he would post the details in his Twitter feed.
With files from 680News
Reporters from the Toronto Sun and other newspapers remembered Peter Worthington on Twitter.
