Christina McCall

Background

Christina McCall was born on January 29, 1935, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She was a daughter of Christopher Warnock McCall, a civil servant, and Orlie Alma (Freeman) McCall, a registered nurse.

Education

McCall attended the Jarvis Collegiate Institute in Toronto in 1952. She was also educated at Victoria College of the University of Toronto, earning her bachelor's degree in 1956. In 1977 McCall had graduate courses in political science and sociology at Massey College of the University of Toronto.

Career

McCall came up through the ranks in Toronto’s publishing industry, taking an entry-level job at the prestigious Maclean's magazine. She then worked her way up, at that periodical and others—and with a four-year break for freelancing between 1963 and 1967 during which she published her first book, The Man from Oxbow—became a national reporter for Toronto’s Globe and Mail.

After leaving the field of daily reporting in 1976, McCall began working on her second book, which was published in 1982 as Grits: An Intimate Portrait of the Liberal Party. Maclean’s called the portraits of five of Canada’s leading Liberal figures—Pierre Trudeau, John Turner, Keith Davey, Marc Lalonde, Michael Pitfield and Jim Coutts—contained in the volume “devastating.” In an interview with Maclean’s contributor Mary Janigan, McCall agreed that Grits presented the five men’s early ideals as having been “bent by the realities of politics,” but denied that any of them was corrupt in the literal sense.

McCall then embarked upon the writing of a two-volume study of Trudeau’s political self, titled Trudeau and Our Times. The first volume emerged in 1990 under the subtitle The Magnificent Obsession.

Other works include The Man From Oxbow (1967) and The Unlikely Gladiators: Pearson and Diefenbaker Remembered (1999).

Achievements

• For her many achievements, McCall won numerous awards. She earned the President’s Medal for the best magazine article, in 1970, from the University of Western Ontario. In 1981 she received the National Magazine Gold Medal Award. For her book Grits: An Intimate Portrait of the Liberal Party, McCall earned Book of the Year Award, from the Canadian Authors’ Association, as well as the Governor-General’s Award for Nonfiction, both in 1983. She also earned the Governor- General’s Award for Nonfiction (together with Stephen Clarkson) in 1990, for her Trudeau and Our Times, Volume 1: The Magnificent Obsession. In addition, McCall became the winner of John Dafoe Prize for Distinguished Writing 5 years later. She was also a recipient of several Press Club awards for magazine writing.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Trudeau and Our Times

    (Volume 1: This volume examines the formative influences o...)

  • Trudeau and Our Times Vol. 2 : The Heroic Delusion

    (Vol. 2 : The Heroic Delusion)

  • THE MAN FROM OXBOW
  • Grits: An intimate portrait of the Liberal Party

Interests

• literature, travel, theatre, film

Connections

McCall married Peter Charles Newman in 1959, but the couple divorced in 1977. Next year McCall married Stephen Hugh Elliott Clarkson. She is survived by a daughter from the first marriage - Jennifer Ashley Newman, and by children with the second husband - Kyra Clarkson and Blaise Clarkson.

Father:

Christopher Warnock McCall

He was a civil servant.

Mother:

Orlie Alma (Freeman) McCall

She was a registered nurse.

Daughter:

Jennifer Ashley Newman

Daughter:

Kyra Clarkson

Daughter:

Blaise Clarkson

2-nd husband:

Stephen Hugh Elliott Clarkson

He was a political economist, educator and author.

1-st husband:

Peter Charles Newman

He is a journalist and writer.