Education
Born in Pincher Creek, Alberta, Halton attended teachers college in Calgary and taught school for several years before attending the University of Alberta, where he gained experience reporting and editing for The Gateway.
television journalist theatre critic
Born in Pincher Creek, Alberta, Halton attended teachers college in Calgary and taught school for several years before attending the University of Alberta, where he gained experience reporting and editing for The Gateway.
He subsequently went to London, England to study at King"s College London and at the London School of Economics, writing extensively on European affairs for Canadian newspapers. He briefly returned to Canada in 1931, but then returned to Europe as a correspondent for the Toronto Star. Halton was briefly reassigned to the Star"s Washington, District of Columbia bureau in 1940, but was soon sent back to cover the North African campaign.
He reported extensively for the Canadian Broadcasting Company over the next two years, and then briefly returned to Canada to write and publish the memoir Ten Years to Alamein.
In 1943, he was named the Canadian Broadcasting Company"s senior war correspondent, returning to London and covering all aspects of the final two years of the war. After the end of World World War II, he remained in Europe as the network"s senior foreign correspondent, covering the Nuremberg Trials, the funeral of King George VI, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and the 1954 Geneva Conference, among other stories.
He also filed frequent reports for the British Broadcasting Corporation as well. In 1956, Halton received an honorary doctorate from the University of Alberta.
He died several months later, following stomach surgery.
Halton"s son David later became Canadian Broadcasting Company Television"s chief political correspondent. Matthew Halton High School in Halton’s home town of Pincher Creek, Alberta is named after him.
He covered such issues as the rise of Nazism in Germany, the Spanish Civil War and the Winter War. With the Munich Crisis of 1938, he began filing reports for Canadian Broadcasting Company Radio as well.