Dennis Morgan, 63: Wheels' founding editor
The Canadian automotive journalism profession – the entire Canadian automobile industry – lost a giant this past week.
Dennis Morgan, founding editor of the Wheels section, succumbed to a heart attack last Sunday.
The Wales-born, London-raised-and-trained journalist and editor joined The Toronto Star in 1976, and rose quickly through the ranks.
In an on-going attempt to smooth out production of Canada's largest newspaper, the powers-that-were decided in 1986 to cut off changes to automotive classified ads at 5 p.m. Wednesday instead of 5 p.m. Friday, so eight more pages (in those pre-Auto Trader days) of the Saturday Star could be printed earlier in the week.
Morgan, well-known for his enthusiasm of all things automotive, was afforded the opportunity to co-ordinate this effort, which was to include moving the technical "My car goes clunk – why?" column, then written by the late Ray Stapley, from the Sunday paper, and my road test column from beneath the rutabaga recipes in the Monday Life section, and creating an automotive section in the Saturday Star, the week's largest-circulation edition.
Morgan saw well beyond this production scheduling convenience and envisioned a proper automotive section along the lines of what he had known growing up in England.
It has far surpassed that, to the point where Wheels is by far the largest newspaper automotive section in North America.
The repercussions of Morgan's vision have been far-reaching. Wheels redefined automotive marketing in Canada, making the Wheels "buy" the first step in any car-selling plan.
On the sincerest-form-of-flattery front, Wheels also influenced the competition – there is scarcely a serious newspaper in Canada that does not now have a semblance of a Wheels section. Not only do two dozen or more Wheels writers over the years owe their careers to him – and none more so than myself – but so do dozens more at competitive outlets across this country.
John Arnone, former PR executive at Ford of Canada, commented that Morgan's influence extended well beyond the automotive realm. Indeed, following on the success of Wheels, Morgan took charge of all Special Sections in the paper, and brought the same degree of integrity, readability and profitability to them.
Morgan was a demanding editor, always requiring the highest standards of accuracy and ethics. As a member and director of the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada, he attempted on several occasions to impose The Star's (and his own) standards on the entire profession. He wasn't always immediately successful at these attempts, but over the years, his views have become accepted as the base line from which we all operate.
He leaves his wife Angelina and his son Kevin, whose budding kart racing career was the highlight of Dennis's life.
Father, husband, writer, editor, friend, colleague, visionary and mentor, he will be missed at so many levels.
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