Allen was ruthless. “This is bullshit,” he often scrawled beside a flatulent sentence. However, there was one piece of advice that Peter didn’t absorb from his mentor: “Never stick your pecker into the payroll.”
Peter began as a researcher for and contributor to the brand-new “Preview” section, which was printed in “the yellows,” the outer section that wrapped around the much larger “white” section where the “feature” articles were published. Much in the manner of a newspaper, the yellows allowed the magazine to report and comment on current events and to speculate about the future. These short pieces usually bore no byline. In 1958 and 1959, “Preview” topics included a piece about the benefits of a four-day work week, and news of a new granting program to make films based on Canadian novels such as Mordecai Richler’s Son of a Smaller Hero. The Alaska Highway was to be extended to Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories, and golfing was the coming rage. Velcro would replace the zipper, and faster skates might speed up hockey, a piece that bears the Gzowski style in lines such as “The blistering speed of Howie Morenz has long been a cherished dream for red-blooded Canadian boys.”
At Maclean’s, Peter was working with some of the best journalists in English Canada, including Peter C. Newman, June Callwood, Trent Frayne, Farley Mowat, and Bruce Hutchison. Soon Peter was promoted to Ken Lefolii’s old job of copy editor, following which he became “Preview” editor. He made use of his wide array of friends across the country, including Harold Horwood from Newfoundland; Murray Burt from Moose Jaw; Don Gordon, son of the president of Canadian National Railways; Charles Taylor, son of tycoon E.P. Taylor; and Fred Kerner, a publishing executive in New York who had once been a reporter in Saskatoon.5
Peter used the telephone to keep in touch with his stringers, and occasionally met them in person. For instance, in September 1959, he attended Murray Burt’s wedding in Regina, which coincided with Peter’s first trip to the Mackenzie Delta. Peter flirted with one of the bridesmaids, and he and the bride entertained guests with piano duets.6 In the “Preview” section, the first short article to bear Peter’s name was published on October 11, 1958, on the subject of a beer strike in Ontario.
He challenged the contention of teetotallers that if alcohol were prohibited, money spent on booze would flow to better causes. Not true, Peter argued. Money not spent on beer would gravitate toward spirits and wine. He also wrote feature articles for the white pages. His first, published on January 31, 1959, was called “The Gay and Gusty World of the College Press.” Canada’s twenty-three university newspapers, among them The Varsity, were, he noted, among “the last outposts of a flamboyant, crusading brand of journalism.” His second feature, published on May 24, 1959, was called “What’s It Like to Have a Famous (but Forgotten) Ancestor?” Its subject was, of course, Sir Casimir. On October 10, 1959, in “How Innocent Card Players Become Bridge Fiends,” Peter wrote about bridge, one of his passions. “A million Canadians play a game called contract bridge,” he wrote. “But it’s much more than a game to a few thousand addicts, some of whom have thrown up promising careers to concentrate on one of the trickiest, most demanding mental exercises man has ever devised.”
In the November 7, 1959, issue, “Preview” included several short speculative pieces on the 1960s. June Callwood predicted a decline in moral standards and an increase in both materialism and public displays of emotion. Ken Lefolii predicted that Polynesian could replace Chinese as the “ethnic” food of choice, while Barbara Moon foresaw flat-screen televisions mounted on walls showing up to ten channels. Peter wrote on cities of the 1960s. Winnipeg would experience a “controlled boom,” and Ottawa would become a “modern Athens.” On November 21, 1959, “Preview” predicted that automation would cause job losses in the postal system, and that in all provinces except Quebec, movie censors would allow more overt sex and frank language such as bastard and bitch.7 On December 5, Peter Newman predicted that Canada would have both a national anthem and a flag by 1967, and that either Toronto or Montreal would host the world’s fair in 1967. “Preview” also predicted that E.P. Taylor’s colt “Victoria Park” would soon be an all-time great racing horse. (Did Charles Taylor send that one to Peter?) Two weeks later “Preview” notified anyone with a distinguished ancestor to get in touch with George W. Brown, who was collecting names for the first of up to twenty volumes of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. In the issue of December 19, 1959, in the “Backstage” portion of the “yellows,” Peter wrote about religion. Did the recently discovered Gospel of Thomas throw doubt on the four gospels, and on the “truth” of the pronouncements of Jesus Christ?
On January 16, 1960, Peter’s first profile, “Ross McLean, the TV Star You Never See,” was published. It was the first of Peter’s long articles to venture away from familiar topics like family, student newspapers, and card games. One of the most acclaimed executive producers of his day, McLean worked in the CBC’s Public Affairs Department. McLean, Peter wrote, “has brought the flair of show-biz to the often-dull realm of televised talks and public affairs.” In shows like Close-Up and Tabloid, McLean had made stars of Max Ferguson, Joyce Davidson, and Pierre Berton.
By using code words, Peter’s article hinted at a closeted side. McLean was a bachelor. His conversation was “spangled with epigrams of the Oscar Wilde school.” His voice seldom lost “its hesitant, prepared quality or its wit.” He dressed “meticulously” in a well-tailored dark suit; he carried his tall frame “stiffly”; he lived in a “swanky” area near Avenue Road and St. Clair Avenue; and he drove a shiny black Thunderbird. McLean was a “very complicated man,” to use Peter’s phrase.8 Quite clearly, Peter was uncomfortable with McLean. In the 1980s, he was still trying to come to terms with the man. In a draft of his memoirs, he described McLean as “shy … and easily wounded, but like a lot of shy people he seemed curiously insensitive to the effect his barbed words could have on others.” The line is a good one, but it never made it into the published version of the memoirs, for Peter crossed it out, perhaps because he realized that the description suited not only McLean but himself, as well.
Throughout 1960, Peter remained as “Preview” editor and continued to keep in touch with his stringers across the country, urging them to come up with breaking and slightly unusual stories. Peter often called Murray Burt in Moose Jaw. “Got anything today, Murray?” Peter would ask. Peter was especially pleased if the news came from an unusual-sounding place like Elbow or Bienfait, pronounced Beanfate. In the “Preview” of Saturday, April 9, 1960, Burt predicted that if the CCF government of Tommy Douglas were to win the upcoming Saskatchewan election, it would embrace the British model of health insurance. In the same issue, “Preview” published a short piece, no doubt by Harold Horwood, on the growing reputation and price of Cape Dorset carvings and prints. On May 21, 1960, “Preview” included a paragraph on the dangerous rise in smoking, its link with cancer, and the worrisome fact that 80 percent of adults started smoking in their teens. (Did the “Preview” editor write this piece?)
One spring weekend in 1960, Peter and Jennie flew to New York. In an article that appeared in the July 2 issue, Peter began by claiming that Jennie and he had known the city for years by way of photographs and movies.9 They posed for photographer Frank Wolfe, a New Yorker hired by Maclean’s to record the visit. Several of Wolfe’s photographs were published with the article, including one of Peter and Jennie looking down into Central Park from the balcony of their hotel. Another photograph shows them inside the Guggenheim Museum. Peter had his photograph taken while lighting a cigarette in Times Square, which he thought “garish and sleazy.”
On the Thursday evening, Jennie and he arrived early at the Broadway production of A Thurber Carnival. In the lobby, they tried to guess the professions of fellow patrons. One distinguished grey-haired man they took to be an unsuccessful author. Next day they window-shopped at Tiffany’s, after which they had lunch with Fred Kerner. In the afternoon, they headed over to the Algonquin Hotel to see the Round Table made famous by, among others, Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley. They had already had a Dubonnet for lunch. At the Algonquin they
