After a few months in Chatham, Peter was offered a job at Maclean’s. At that time the magazine was the most important window on Canada, and its journalists were among the best. No doubt he was pleased to be rid of Chatham society, which he considered “pretty closed.”41 It didn’t matter that Jennie was making arrangements to join the architectural firm of Joe Storey. In 1958 there was no option for her but to move with Peter. Like many other talented women of her generation, Jennie was limited to domestic duties and to loving, honouring, and obeying the head of the household. She “girled” and “boyed,” as Peter called the birthing process,42 and she tended to the growing family, which allowed Peter to take pleasure in the joys of fatherhood, a fulfilling career, and an extramarital life. Peter was on his way to the top.
— 4 — The Dangerous Temptation of Prediction, 1958–1962
It is now an inescapable fact that we are headed toward separation into two countries.
— Peter Gzowski, “Conversations with Quebec’s Revolutionaries,” Maclean’s, September 7, 1963
Soon after the twenty-four-year-old Peter bounded into the offices of Maclean’s, the day after Labour Day 1958, he boasted to June Callwood, and to anyone else at Maclean’s who noticed him, that he would be a published novelist by age thirty. He may have been attempting to emulate Ralph Allen, the magazine’s editor, who had written several successful novels.1 Allen had taken note of Peter when he was editor of The Varsity. While in Moose Jaw and Chatham, Peter had bombarded Allen with short pieces and story ideas. During the summer of 1958, Allen had called Peter in Chatham to offer him a job as one of eight assistant editors at Maclean’s at $6,000 per year.2
Allen soon became Peter’s “most important idol,” and long after Allen’s death, Peter wrote almost nothing, he claimed, without feeling that Allen was peering over his shoulder.3 As editor of Maclean’s from 1950 to 1960, Allen insisted on detailed outlines and multiple drafts before he accepted an article for publication. Delete the writing of which you are most proud, he used to tell his staff, for pride was a sure sign of self-indulgence. He required his writers to adhere to his formula: a lead or introduction followed by a sub-lead or hook that captured the reader. A series of anecdotes and expositions were to follow. If the article was a profile, at the halfway point the writer provided details such as the subject’s birth and childhood. The conclusion of all articles, Allen told his staff, should be “succinct and tangy.”4 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”