Along with two other founders, Don Hunt, seen in 1985, created The Toronto Sun from the ashes of The Toronto Telegram.Harvey Enchin/The Globe and Mail
Don Hunt was one of the principal founders of The Toronto Sun when it began in late 1971. There were 62 "Day Oners," almost all of them refugees from the old Toronto Telegram, but there were three main owners: editor Peter Worthington, publisher Doug Creighton and general manager Don Hunt.
Mr. Hunt was "the closest thing we had to business brains – and therefore automatic choice for general manager," Mr. Worthington wrote in his memoir. Mr. Hunt died of leukemia on Nov. 18 at the age of 85.
"Most of his journalistic life had been in sports. A huge man, he was known affectionately around the paper [the Sun] as Dr. No," the memoir said.
The Toronto Sun was born from the ashes of The Toronto Telegram, a paper owned by the Bassett family, which printed its last edition on Saturday, Oct. 30, 1971. Some of the senior people at the paper tried and initially failed to raise money to start a tabloid newspaper. The idea was a morning newspaper with street sales only, to cut down on circulation costs.
Each of the three main founders approached people they knew looking for money. One prospect was Steve Roman, the Slovak immigrant who made millions from uranium mines in Northern Ontario. He wanted too much control and also wanted an afternoon paper to compete with the Toronto Star, for which the mining magnate had an intense hatred.
It seemed a hopeless cause and Mr. Creighton and Mr. Hunt went to a cottage in Muskoka with their families for the Thanksgiving weekend. According to Mr. Worthington, Mr. Hunt was planning to move to California to work for a syndication service there. At the last minute, a Toronto lawyer helped them find the money, about $1-million (worth $6-million today, according the Bank of Canada's inflation calculator).
There were a number of investors, none of whom owned more than 10 per cent of the paper. Mr. Hunt, Mr. Worthington and Mr. Creighton split a 20-per-cent founders' stake, which was worth nothing at the time but would eventually make them all rich men. Fifteen per cent went to other "Day Oners." The three main founders, along with about 60 others, worked to produce the first edition of the paper in early November, 1971.
Mr. Hunt took care of the nuts and bolts at the new paper. He checked expenses, ordered newsprint and negotiated fees for things such as features, a job he had done as syndication manager at the Telegram.
"Don Hunt was the unsung founder of The Toronto Sun, the guy in charge of revenue and expenses," said Les Pyette, who worked at the paper as a journalist and eventually ran it. "Don plugged ahead in the background. He was no pushover; far from it. He was actually very tough if you hadn't done your homework. His contributions were immeasurable. [He was] a down-to-earth family man who played a huge role in the success of the Suns."
Donald Hunt was born in Sarnia, Ont., in October, 1929, the month of the great stock-market crash. Though that event didn't affect the Hunt family much, another market crash almost 60 years later, in 1987, changed Mr. Hunt's life.
He started writing for newspapers in high school and graduated in journalism from the University of Western Ontario, where he was one of the tallest men on campus – he was 6 foot 6 – and a star of the basketball team. When he was a teenager he had played against the Harlem Globetrotters in an exhibition game. He worked for The Montreal Star and then The Toronto Telegram. His love of sports, especially baseball and basketball, made his writing career easy. Later he moved to the management side of the paper. When it came time to start the Sun, Mr. Hunt was a natural to run the day-to-day operations.
"He was always frugal and good with money, both the paper's and his own. He was very direct, almost blunt," said Scott Creighton, Doug Creighton's son, who knew Mr. Hunt well. "He made sure things were shipshape at the paper."
Mr. Hunt had many other interests, including auto racing. He and the late John Bassett Jr. brought Indy car racing to Toronto, a race that still operates every year. He also helped bring Formula One legend Jackie Stewart to race at Mosport, outside Toronto, and helped bring Olympic alpine-ski gold medalist Jean-Claude Killy to compete in a World Cup in Canada. He loved baseball and travelled to Detroit from Sarnia to watch Tigers baseball games as a boy.
The Toronto Sun was so successful in its home market that it expanded to other Canadian cities: Edmonton, Calgary and later Ottawa. Mr. Hunt moved to Edmonton to manage the paper there. In early 1982, Maclean Hunter Ltd. bought 49 per cent of the Sun chain for $55-million, making the founders a pile of money. The next expansion was into the United States, when the chain bought The Houston Post, a struggling newspaper. The deal was described in a Globe and Mail article in 1985 as the Toronto Sun Publishing Corp.'s "most ambitious undertaking and biggest gamble."
Mr. Hunt moved to Houston to manage the paper. Right away, The Houston Post changed and started emphasizing sports and entertainment. The paper was redesigned, but its main competitor, The Houston Chronicle, fought back.
"We did try to be different than the Chronicle and everything we've done, they copied," Mr. Hunt complained to The Globe's Harvey Enchin.
In Houston, he became quite involved in community life and was a director of local groups from the Houston Symphony to the Economic Development Council. Mr. Hunt couldn't make The Houston Post mimic the success of The Toronto Sun. For one thing, the paper was delivered door to door over a wide area, not by newsagents and in street boxes.
"Houston is foreign territory for the little paper that grew," Mr. Enchin wrote.
By 1987, Mr. Hunt had found a buyer for The Houston Post, a rich man who would pay a premium to own the paper. Then the stock market crash of October, 1987, wiped out a big hunk of his wealth and the deal fell through. Mr. Hunt left the Sun organization and moved on to The Denver Post. He retired from the newspaper business in 1993 and split his time between Canada and Florida, where he belonged to a golf club in Bonita Springs.
Mr. Hunt leaves his wife, Helen, to whom he was married for 59 years, and their five children, Patricia, Cameron, Andrea, Ian and Paula. His brothers Jim and Jack (who was also a sportswriter) predeceased him.
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