George Charles Stewart Bain wrote
newspaper columns that drew the admiration of other journalists and kudos even
from his political targets because of his elegant, urbane and incisive style. National
Award winning journalist Val Sears once said that Bain “wrote the most important column in Canada ... (and) was the most
stylish of people writing about Canadian politics.”
In 1982, Bain and his wife Marion
moved to Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia where they designed and built a home with a
full wine cellar to house George’s vintage collection. He spent his final years
writing about wine and serving as dean of journalism at King's College in
Halifax.
Ironically, Bain’s gained greatest
recognition as a writer for using the “F... word” in print.
In 1968 when the late Prime Minister
Pierre Trudeau swore at an opposition member in the House of Commons, most of
the national media corps reported with pursed lips and respectful tenor that
Trudeau had used an unspecified obscenity - or quoted the Prime Minister as claiming
he had mumbled the words “fuddle duddle.” Bain set the record straight, using
the notorious four letters in sequence for the first time in a major Canadian publication
via his Globe and Mail column.
Although known primarily as a
political journalist, George Bain did not restrict his humour to side projects
like his Leacock Medal Book, Nursery
Rhymes to be read aloud by young parents with old children. He injected
humour and wit into his regular columns and mock newspaper reports, like his
pretend Letters from Lilac, Saskatchewan . The popular writer Allan
Fotheringham called Bain "the wittiest columnist ever to grace Ottawa."
A Toronto native, George Bain quit
school at age 16, in 1936, to work as a copy boy at the Toronto Star during the Depression. Later, he worked at the Toronto Telegram until joining the Royal
Canadian Air Force in World War II.
Bain served as a bomber pilot in
Britain, North Africa, and Italy during the War despite a fear of flying that
lasted his whole life.
In 1957, Bain opened the Globe and
Mail's first London bureau, where he covered Europe, Africa and the Middle
East. From 1960 to 1964 he was posted to Washington and reported on the civil
rights movement, the Cuban missile crisis and the assassination of John F.
Kennedy.
Bain was known to be a
"perfectionist" who would regularly rewrite his opening paragraph 30
times.
In addition to the Leacock Medal
winner, Nursery Rhymes, Bain authored other books known for their with and
humour including I've Been Around and
Around and Around, Letters from Lilac, Champagne is for Breakfast, and Gotcha.
In 1982, Bain and his wife Marion
moved to Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia where they designed and built a home with a
full wine cellar to house George’s vintage collection. He spent his final years
writing about wine and serving as dean of journalism at King's College in
Halifax.
The couple had a son, Christopher, who
presumably benefited from the Nursery
Rhymes.