Photo: Fred Lum

Robert Fulford October 4, 1993

"Civilization begins with the consciousness of memory; it begins when we decide we must maintain a spoken, drawn or written account of who we are, what we have done, and why we did it. Conversely, when we abandon this enterprise, or neglect it, or wilfully distort it for the political needs of the moment, we grow less civilized. A society loses its way when it loses secure connections with the past. That possibility is one of the dangers facing us during this historic period." 1

Robert Fulford

Robert Fulford, author, journalist, broadcaster and editor, was born in 1932 and grew up in the Beaches district of Toronto. He had a natural inclination for journalism; his father, A.E. Fulford, had worked for the Canadian Press and his maternal great-grandfather had been a newspaper editor. Like his father, he never finished school, but began working on a newspaper in his teens. A summer job as a copy boy at the Globe and Mail quickly led to a position as a cub reporter in the sports department. He was a prolific writer, and his reputation quickly grew through his work for the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, Mayfair, and, in the 1960s, for Maclean's. He was drawn toward Canadian cultural subjects through his love of jazz, his interest in the Toronto artistic community and the influence of his childhood friend, Glenn Gould. He became the Star‘s first book columnist in 1958, and published movie reviews under the pseudonym "Marshall Delaney". Fulford had his own CBC radio show on the arts, "This Is Robert Fulford", and was co- host on TVOntario's "Realities". Fulford promoted the careers of a number of artists and writers, notably Michael Snow, Harold Town, and Stephen Vizinczey.

At the age of 36, Fulford became the editor of Saturday Night and steered the magazine through some of its best years. He received great praise, but had to struggle constantly to keep the enterprise afloat. He wrote of this period in his life: "In fact, as we developed and refined the whole magazine, it attracted far more praise than anything else I've been associated with. We won all the National Magazine awards it was possible to win, we were now quoted more than any other magazine, the letters to the editor were warmly enthusiastic, the best writers in the country were willing to write for us, and even though we kept pushing up the price of a subscription our circulation was steadily climbing. After a while we were selling more than 135,000 copies, which meant that several hundred thousand people were looking at Saturday Night every month." 2

When he resigned from Saturday Night in 1987, Linda Matchen wrote in the Boston Globe "If, as Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man, then for the last 19 years Saturday Night has been the lengthened shadow of Fulford." 3

Fulford continues to delight us with perceptive articles in Toronto Life, Canadian Art, the Globe and Mail and the Financial Times of Canada, among others. He has also taught at the Ryerson School of Journalism, the University of Toronto, and the new arts journalism program at the Banff Centre. He has received many of this country's highest honours, including the Diplome d'honneur of the Canadian Conference of the Arts, and has been appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada.

WORKS BY ROBERT FULFORD

• Crisis at the Victory Burlesk : Culture, Politics & Other Diversions. -- Toronto : Oxford University Press, 1968. -- 225 p.

• Remember Expo : A Pictorial Record. -- Photographs by John de Visser, Harold Whyte, and Peter Varley. -- Toronto : McClelland and Stewart, 1968. -- 127 p. [Titre en français: Portrait de l'Expo ]

• Portrait de l'Expo. -- Photographies de John de Visser, Harold Whyte, Peter Varley; traduit par Massue Belleau. -- Montréal : McClelland et Stewart, Maclean- Hunter, 1968. -- 203 p. [English title: Remember Expo : A Pictorial Record]

• Marshall Delaney at the Movies : The Contemporary World as Seen on Film. --Toronto and Montreal : Peter Martin Associates, Take One magazine, 1974. -- 256 p. -- ISBN 0887780997

• An Introduction to the Arts in Canada. -- Toronto : Copp Clark Publishing, in association with the Citizenship Branch, Department of the Secretary of State of Canada, and Publishing Centre, Supply and Services Canada = en association avec la Direction générale de la Citoyenneté, Secrétariat d'État du Canada et Centre d'édition, Approvisionnements et Services Canada, 1977. -- 135 p. -- ISBN 0773040285

• Harold Town, Recent Paintings. -- Toronto : Theo Waddington Galleries, 1981. -- 20 p.

• Canada : A Celebration -- Photographs by John de Visser. -- Toronto : Key Porter Books, 1983. -- 240 p. -- ISBN 0919493122 [Titre en français : Canada]

• Canada. -- Texte de Robert Fulford; photographies de John de Visser; traduit par Jean Chapdelaine-Gagnon et Jean- Philippe Beaudin. -- Toronto : Key Porter Books, 1984. -- 240 p. -- ISBN 0919493513 [English title: Canada : A Celebration]

• Best Seat in the House : Memoirs of a Lucky Man. -- Toronto : Collins, 1988. -- 260 p. -- ISBN 0002154382

• The Language of Now [audiotape]. -- Toronto : Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Learning Systems, 1973.

WORKS EDITED BY ROBERT FULFORD

• Read Canadian : A Book about Canadian Books. -- Edited by Robert Fulford, David Godfrey, and Abraham Rotstein. -- Toronto : James Lewis & Samuel, 1972. -- 275 p. -- ISBN 0888620187

• Kenojuak. -- Text by Jean Blodgett; edited by Robert Fulford; design by Howard Pain. -- Toronto : Firefly Books, 1985. -- 252 p. -- ISBN 0920668313

COLLABORATIVE WORKS

• Harold Town Drawings. -- With an introduction and text by Robert Fulford. -- Toronto : McClelland and Stewart, 1969. -- 191 p.

• Michael Snow : A Survey. -- Text by Robert Fulford et al.; photographs by John Ayris et al. -- Toronto : Art Gallery of Ontario and the Isaacs Gallery, 1970. -- 124 p.

• The Journalists. -- By Robert Fulford et al. -- Ottawa : Royal Commission on Newspapers, 1981. -- xii, 202 p. -- ISBN 066011058X [Titre en français : Du côté des journalistes]

• Du côté des journalistes. -- Par Robert Fulford et al. -- Ottawa : Commission royale sur les quotidiens, 1981. -- xii, 210 p. -- ISBN 0660908204 [English title: The Journalist]

• The Beginning of Vision : The Drawings of Lawren S. Harris. -- Written by Joan Murray and Robert Fulford. -- Toronto : Douglas & McIntyre in association with Mira Godard Editions, 1982. -- 226 p. -- ISBN 0888943644

• Ontario. -- Introduction by Robert Fulford ; contributors, William Kilbourn et al. -- Toronto : Key Porter Books, 1983. -- 160 p. -- ISBN 0919493173

WORKS ABOUT ROBERT FULFORD

• McDougall, Anne. -- "Spotlight on...The Robert Fulford Lecture". -- National Library News. -- Vol. 26, No. 1 (January 1994). -- P. 11.

• McDougall, Anne. -- "Pleins feux sur...La conférence de Robert Fulford". -- Nouvelles de la Bibliothèque nationale. -- Vol. 26, no 1 (janvier 1994). -- P. 11.

• "Banff's Urban Visitor: The Reluctant Mr. Fulford". -- Calgary Herald. -- (July 2, 1989): insert 28-31.

• Ross, Gary. -- "From the Best Seat in the House, ‘I've had a wonderful view of the changing spectacle' -- Fulford". -- Quill & Quire. -- Vol. 54, No. 7 (July 1988), pp. 6; 8.

¹ Robert Fulford, "The Future of Memory: Cultural Institutions in Time of Radical Change", Queen's Quarterly, Vol. 100, No. 4 (Winter 1993), pp. 785-86. [An earlier version of this essay was delivered as the first annual National Library Lecture in Ottawa, October 4, 1993.]
² Robert Fulford, The Best Seat in the House: Memoirs of a Lucky Man (Toronto: Collins, 1988), p. 239.
³ Ibid., p. 236.