Fotheringham, Allan

ENCAENIA, MAY, 2003
ALLAN FOTHERINGHAM
to be Doctor of Letters

After forty-eight years in the profession, Allan Fotheringham is one of Canada's best known journalists. For 34 of those years, he has written his own column in which, as Dr. Foth, he has pilloried the politicians, satirized his fellow countrymen, wickedly performed the same service for our neighbours to the South, and jabbed and prodded wherever and whomever seemed in need of jabbing and prodding. As his Constant Readers know, Dr. Foth was most often encountered on the back page of Maclean's, reinforcing the preference of many to read the magazine from back to front. For whatever unfathomable reason, he was recently dropped, after twenty-seven years of hilarity, and the magazine is the poorer for it.

A hundred years ago, President Teddy Roosevelt had a name for Dr. Foth's kind of writing. He called it "muckraking," which meant that he didn't much like it. But on the other hand he had to acknowledge its popular appeal and its undeniable ability to force change. Dr. Foth has come close to calling himself a muckraker, although, to use his words, his purpose is to "muddify the fuzzifications." Fuzzifications, as his Constant Readers know, are the pronouncements of our politicians, the fuzzifiers, none of whom escapes Dr. Foth's gaze or his satirical pen. The difference between the muckrakers of a century ago and the Fotheringham style is that the latter is invariably funny. Little wonder that among his many awards is the National Magazine Award for Humour.

Allan Fotheringham was born in Saskatchewan and stayed just long enough to start school in a one-room schoolhouse. He grew to adulthood in British Columbia, graduating from Chilliwack High School and the University of British Columbia, where he earned a BA in English and Political Science. In his senior year he was editor of "The Ubyssey", the student newspaper, and immediately on graduation he embarked on a career in journalism at the Vancouver Sun. In his long and fulfilling career, he has lived and worked in Canada, Britain, and the United States, filing copy for Reuters, Southam Newspapers, the Financial Post, and the Globe and Mail among others. He also found time to appear as a regular panelist on Front Page Challenge, the popular Canadian television show, and to write six books, with such titles as Malice in Blunderland, his first, and Fotheringham's Dictionary of Facts and Follies, his latest.

Some of Dr. Foth's aphorisms are memorable, because so nearly bang-on. The first Gulf War he called "the George Bush re-election war." CNN, he pointed out, "now runs the world." Politicians are useful, he wrote, because they "provide amusement for the masses and outrage for the editorial writers." Among his many descriptions of our country, he has written: "Canada, as we know, bears no resemblance to reality." And again,: "Canada, as we know, is the most overgoverned patch of pasture on earth, having not only three layers of politicians - municipal, provincial, and federal - but, as a result of that, the fallout of more pundits per square cliche than the populace really needs."

The latter he wrote a little over ten years ago. If it was true then that Dr. Foth was only one among many pundits, it certainly is no longer so. Indeed, if what has happened to American journalism in the last six months is anything of a trend, political pundits, especially the kind of fearless critics of the fuzzifiers exemplified by Dr. Foth, are an endangered species. That is why our honouring Allan Fotheringham today is so timely and so important. Like his friend, the late Dalton Camp, one of UNB's most illustrious graduates, Allan Fotheringham has regularly awakened Canadians from their complacency, knocked the politicians down to size, and reminded us how senseless it is to take ourselves too seriously. He peels away hypocrisy and pomposity, giving us his x-ray version of Canadian and World politics, and few can match him. We need more journalists like him.

From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 4