Nothing recent, mind you. On Feb. 26, 1998 senators convened to say farewell to Richard J. Doyle, late of the Globe, one of the first senators Brian Mulroney had appointed to the red chamber almost 13 years earlier. I often wonder what Doyle, whom I never met, would have made of the world that has come into being since he died in 2003. I am not at all sure politics is the only field he would view with dismay, but it’s true that I was thinking of the Senate when I looked him up today. Here is some of what Doyle’s colleagues said on his retirement:

Hon. John Lynch-Staunton (Leader of the Opposition): …Just look at his background. His entire career was involved with journalism, starting with the Chatham Daily News until 1942, when he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and served overseas with the RAF in Bomber Command until the end of the war. He then returned to the newspaper business and joined The Globe and Mail in 1951, where he occupied many senior positions, including those of managing editor, editor, editor-in-chief, and Editor Emeritus.

In 1983, when he was made a member of the Order of Canada, the following citation was read:

 As managing editor and, since 1979 until recently, editor-in-chief of the Toronto Globe and Mail, Richard Doyle has been the guiding intelligence behind the development of the influential editorial policy and the national and international coverage of Canada’s leading English-language newspaper. Largely through his guidance, the paper has set high standards of writing and ethics in journalism.

Colleagues may be interested to know that since 1967, 3,848 Canadians have been inducted into the order, and fewer than 100 are identified as journalists. I will resist a temptation to speculate on why this profession has been given so little recognition by the selection committee except to comment that it certainly must be nigh impossible to find many in this field who can match the ethical standards which Dic Doyle brought to a profession to which he is so deeply attached…. Continue…