by Judi McLeod
april 22, 2004
On the eve of our 14th anniversary this May 15, we’re paying closer attention to Canadafreepress.com than to our monthly printed edition.
Never thought it would happen, but it’s a breath of fresh air poking around at the international scene, the United Nations and European Union than it is doing the same at Toronto City Hall, where nothing much has changed through five municipal elections.
The socialists were in charge when we burst onto the scene in 1991 and they’re even more in charge now by having managed to solidify their base. The municipal level has been pretty much overrun by the New Democrat Party for decades. By the fall of 2003, they were bolstered by the election of a lib-left Ontario premier and by December 2004, came lefty, UN-loving "Mr. Prime Minister," Paul Martin.
NDP councillors were reinstalled in landslide elections on November 10, even though still under the shadow of a multi-million computer leasing scandal, and had only the spring before sent hard-working owners of the lawn and garden industry broke with draconian anti-pesticide bylaws.
But it was a blossom-laden breeze that took CFP far beyond the dank council chamber of Toronto City Hall.
Retired marines, Belgian patriots, asian students, Europeans and american writers form part of the readership of beyond-Toronto-borders CFP.
The editor is bowled over that letters from patriots in far-away Belgium arrive, asking help in finding the surviving families of brave Canadian airmen who went down in airplane crashes of 60 years ago. and even more pleased when letters from Canadians, earnestly trying to identify them, pour in.
although we’d had a Toronto Free Press site for more than a decade, it was only two years ago that we decided to go international with CFP.
Determined to keep the site as investigative and exclusive as our printed publication, we attracted readers from the beginning. Last year was a watershed one with some of our cover stories and columns picked up by the likes of NewsMax.com, New York Times.com, Lucianne.com, Instapundit.com, tysk (thought you should know). com to name just a few.
Brian Thomspon, arthur Weinreb and myself thought we hit the big time when we were interviewed by Fox News for last July’s cover story, The White Star Brigade.
The Toronto Star had come out with a Saturday front-page story accusing the Toronto Blue Jays of being racist, as there were too few non-whites seen in their opening day roster.
Like many others, we thought the Star was off the mark in accusing Blue Jay management of racism. So following up on an idea of arthur Weinreb, we went into the Star’s home page, found and hoisted up on the Net, pictures of 90 some odd of their mostly white writers, running it under the headline, The White Star Brigade.
Peter Worthington wrote about the White Star Brigade in his July 2 Toronto Sun column. When Fox News called asking permission to run our story on the O’Reilly Factor, we were elated.
another CFP story, antsy in Toronto, a piece about the absurdity of the exaggeration of the SaRS impact on Toronto by the media, was picked up by the Washington Times website and was carried by newspapers as far away as Spain.
as the months wore on, some of the american writers we could only admire from afar: Henry Lamb, Tom DeWeese, Frank Salvato, al Caruba, Steve Milloy and others now file regular CFP columns.
While we used to be happy with thousands of readers, we have now reached a high of half a million readers a year and are still growing.
For certain, we still worry about what the anti-Toronto Island airport Toronto Mayor David Miller is up to, and although thrilled that Jack Layton is an Ottawa more than a City of Toronto problem, we are hoping that current Paul Martin scandals won’t provide the opportunity for Layton to ride to Official Opposition status on tainted Liberal coattails.
Miller, Layton and Company will continue to find their deeds detailed in our printed monthly publication, but now that the door to the world has been opened for CFP by the Internet, and we’re going daily on May 1, they can read us online.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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