Guest Notebook: (2) Local News One Farmer at a Time, The Rise of George McCullagh

by Mark Bourrie

“The main street of Arden; now an unincorporated village of 250 population which may be the centre of a prosperous mining area if present indications are fulfilled,” Toronto Star, September 09, 1936 (Toronto Star Archives/Getty Images)

Read Part One of this post here

On the verge of twenty, a superstar salesman as well as the southwestern Ontario regional circulation manager, wunderkind George McCullagh was sent across the rest of the province to sell subscriptions and advise the managers who used to be his bosses. He made a lot of money, but he wanted more than that. He wanted respect. He wanted the Globe’s managers to praise him, to see that he had gone from being a tall, skinny teenager to a handsome, successful young man who made the paper a lot of money. Instead, when he arrived in Toronto for a meeting with the publisher, William Gladstone Jaffray, McCullagh “got a severe reprimand for a few indiscreet drinks I took in North Bay and a little poker I played on the train.”