"The Bishop of Ottawa"

On the eve of his 70th birthday last week, Canada's Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King sat down to dinner (oysters and filet mignon) at Ottawa's Chateau Laurier with 40 members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery and their 60 guests. Dinner over, he was presented with a gold card awarding him an Honorary Life Membership in the Press Gallery. Then came the evening's well-kept surprise. A motion was put and carried by a rising vote. The Prime Minister rose, turned to a grey, balding newsman near him at the table.

"Charlie," he said, "may the youngest member of the Gallery present to the oldest member, the most honored and most beloved, this certificate of Honorary Member for Life. May you continue to give valuable service to our country through the years to come in shaping the highest and best of public policy." Charlie Bishop, who had celebrated his own 68th birthday a week before, stood up in his ancient swallowtail and gracefully accepted the tribute.

In all British and U.S. journalism, there is no one quite like "The Bishop of Ottawa" (his colleagues' nickname). Sedate and reticent, a completely atypical newshawk, Charlie Bishop is Canada's acknowledged No. 1 reporter. Born in Bear River, N.S., he started reporting the news of his home town for a Digby, N.S. weekly at 14, landed a job on the Ottawa Citizen in 1897. The following year he was assigned to cover Parliament. He has been there ever since. He arrived in time for the debate over the sending of Canadian troops to fight in the Boer War; now the question is whether Canadians shall be conscripted to fight overseas in World War II.

Charlie has been around so long, kept his confidences so faithfully, and knows so much about men and affairs that he has come to be a sort of father confessor, valued as much for the counsel he can give as for the stories he can write. He avoids press conferences (except King's) because he usually knows what is going to be said and is already busy writing it up. He writes in pencil in a barely legible scrawl, and in an unvaryingly matter-of-fact, elliptical style. Of his adeptness in drawing out important people, a Cabinet minister once observed: "You know, Charlie just talks about the weather and unimportant things, then slips his real question in, and he's got the story before you realize it."

No one newspaper is the exclusive beneficiary of Bishop's frequent news beats. The Southam Co. Ltd., publishers of the Citizen and five other Canadian papers, is his principal employer, but he writes for four other papers as well.. This assignment keeps him working from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., turning out twelve to 15 stories a day while Parliament is in session, and brings him a handsome income.

Charlie Bishop is all newspaperman. If a fire truck passes his house, he calls the paper to find out where the fire is. When last September's earthquake began shaking Ottawa, Charlie had his office on the phone 30 seconds after the first tremor, just to make sure the paper knew about it.

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