Article

George Victor Ferguson

Published Online December 16, 2007

Last Edited December 14, 2013

George Victor Ferguson, newspaper editor (b at Cupar, Scot 20 Apr 1897; d at Montréal 26 Jan 1977). One of John W. DAFOE's newspaper "pupils" and a distinguished journalist in his own right, Ferguson was educated at the University of Alberta and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes scholar.

Ferguson, George Victor

George Victor Ferguson, newspaper editor (b at Cupar, Scot 20 Apr 1897; d at Montréal 26 Jan 1977). One of John W. DAFOE's newspaper "pupils" and a distinguished journalist in his own right, Ferguson was educated at the University of Alberta and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes scholar. He served in WWI as a private soldier and joined the Manitoba Free Press in 1925, rising to managing editor under Dafoe in 1933. Like Dafoe, he took a strong nationalist view and sought to understand the roots of Canadian unity. In 1944, when Dafoe died, Ferguson became executive editor of the Free Press, but soon after left for Montréal, where he served as editor in chief of the Montreal Star and where his editorials on French-English relations were important reading. Ordinarily Liberal in politics, Ferguson, much like Dafoe, had the capacity to take issue with his party and was positively exultant when the Conservatives won power under DIEFENBAKER in 1957.