Allan Fotheringham

Allan Fotheringham (born August 31, 1932 in Hearne, Saskatchewan) is a retired Canadian newspaper and magazine journalist. He was once widely known by the nickname Dr. Foth.

Fotheringham studied journalism at the University of British Columbia, and has worked for a variety of media outlets during his career. He was best known as a columnist, originally at the Ubyssey newspaper at the University of British Columbia and soon after for the Vancouver Sun in the heady times of the late '60s, the last days of the old Bennett Socreds and the advent of Pierre Trudeau. Fotheringham's columns and commentaries brought him national attention as well as wider syndication and a broader subject base (he was one of hte leading specialists in the twisted world of British Columbia politics during his duration at the Sun). When he left the Sun his column showed up in Maclean's Magazine, where his column appeared on the back page of the magazine for 27 years. Fotheringham's column was so widely read and so influential that he is said to have made Maclean's "the magazine people read from back to front".

In 2001, Maclean's underwent an editorial revamp, and Fotheringham's column was moved to an inside page to make room for a guest column. Soon afterward, Fotheringham left Maclean's, and became a columnist for The Globe and Mail.

Fotheringham was a regular panelist in the latter years of the CBC TV program Front Page Challenge, replacing the deceased Gordon Sinclair.

Affectionately known as "Foth" as well as "Dr. Foth", he dubbed himself "the Great Gatheringfroth" and coined some well-known terms in BC political history:

• Lotusland --British Columbia, particularly Victoria
• the Granite Curtain -- the Rocky Mountains
• the Tweed Curtain -- the Oak Bay, British Columbia]]-Victoria border, referring to the former's deep conservative British flavour
• "the Brogue that walks and talks like a man" -- (journalist and broadcaster Jack Webster) (who had many nicknames, not all of them Foth's)
• the Natural Governing Party -- the federal Liberals
• the Holy Mother Corporation -- the CBC
• and many more

Fotheringham was of a generation and an era in journalism in British Columbia that, in retrospect, have both historical importance and a luminary air and all of whom were part of Fotheringham's regular social and professional milieu, and all of whom he knew:

• Bruce Hutchison -- editor/writer and historian, publisher and editor for many years of the Vancouver Sun, author of several books on BC history and geography, notably The Fraser, concerning that river
• Len Norris-- influential political cartoonist. A must-see and widely imitated in political cartoon styles continent-wide, with absurdist but a propos miniatures and side-plots tucked into detail throughout the image, done in a few brief minutes each eday. Inventor of the sarcastic Amblesnide and Tiddlycove parody of the tweedy West Vancouver neighbourhoods of Ambleside and Dundarave and many more local parodies, including the "Socred Cow" for the BC Govt Liquor Stores
• Paddy Sherman -- editor/writer and political commentator, also an editor at the Vancouver Sun and known for his histories and biographies
• Jack Wasserman -- society and talk columnist for the Vancouver Sun in the wild heyday, glitter and sleaziness of the Vancouver nightlife and society whirl and scandal in the 1950s and 1960s
• Paul St. Pierre -- columnist, author and MP for Coast-Chilcotin. St. Pierre's writings on the Chilcotin and Cariboo districts as well as his profile in -- and, when not serving as MLA, editorial columnist and commentator on -- the arcane backroom politics of provincial politics and big business. An educated scholar as well as crafty politician, now retired in Mexico and writing from there on occasion
• Margaret Lally "Ma" Murray -- editor/writer and wife of publisher and MLA George Murray and Order of Canada recipient. A Kansas farm girl come to Canada to find a man and make good, she became famous for her spicy wit and backcountry, down-to-earth style, "Ma" was co-founder with her husband of Bridge River-Lillooet News and the Alaska Highway News, and both had a high profile in provincial politics
• Jack Webster -- pioneering talk radio host who eventually launched a TV interview program that became the nerve centure of British Columbia, and sometimes national, politics.
• Pierre Berton -- Klondike-born historian and commentator, prominent in Canadian politics and popular historical writing, a "character" who in recent years, in late age, has endorsed marijuana legalization and smoked the evil weed on television, on the program Monday Night with Rick Mercer
• the aforementioned Gordon Sinclair, broadcaster and predecessor and long time veteran of the television game show Front Page Challene, alongside Pierre Berton
• and more, plus the artistic and entertainment and busines cocktail-party crowd of the era, and various colourful shady characters, some of whose careers Fotheringham is noted for profiling and covering in the course of his columns

Books by Allan Fotheringham

• Collected and Bound (1972)
• The World According to Roy Peterson with Gospel According to Allan Fotheringham (1979)
• Malice in Blunderland (1982)
• Look Ma...No Hands (1983)
• Capitol Offences (1986)
• Birds of a Feather: The Press and the Politicians (1989)
• Last Page First (1999)
• Fotheringham's Fictionary of Facts and Follies (2001)

External link

• Allan Fotheringham's Official Site