Power, Prime Ministers and the Press

An intimate history of the journalists who covered Canadian history, and made some of their own.

The history of the Press Gallery is rich in anecdotes and insights about the people on Parliament Hill who have covered our leaders for more than 150 years.

Mining the archives and his own interviews, former Maclean’s editor-in-chief Robert Lewis turns the spotlight on the watchers, including reporters who got too close to Sir John A. Macdonald and Wilfrid Laurier, and others who kept their distance from Pierre Trudeau and Stephen Harper.

The Riel Rebellion, the Pacific scandal, two world wars, the Depression, Quebec separatism, and terrorism are all part of the sweeping background to this lively account of how the news gets made, manipulated, and, sometimes, mangled. Since Watergate, Press Gallery coverage has become more confrontational — a fact, Lewis argues, that fails Canadian democracy.