David Spurgeon reports from Jericho, Palestine, in 1956 for The Globe and Mail.The Globe and Mail
David Spurgeon was a pioneering science journalist in Toronto and Ottawa who later reinvented himself, taking on science writing and editing roles with international organizations in Nairobi and Paris.
Outwardly reserved, Mr. Spurgeon had a reputation for tenacity, integrity, generosity and a passion for examining the often-obscure policies that shaped Canada's science efforts. Yet that apparently serious demeanour masked an impish side, according to veteran newsman Clark Davey, who served as managing editor toward the end of Mr. Spurgeon's tenure at The Globe and Mail from 1953 to 1971.
"David once told me that he spent some Saturday afternoons sitting on the roof of his house in Don Mills eavesdropping on what neighbours were saying up to a half-block away. He thought it was great recreation."
Mr. Spurgeon died April 11 at L'Hôpital Laurentien in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, Que., because of complications from prostate cancer and a virus. He was two days past his 90th birthday.
Mr. Davey's anecdote reflects what colleagues say was Mr. Spurgeon's greatest journalistic attribute: He took a genuine interest in people and enjoyed listening to them.
Mr. Spurgeon's biggest news story, however, was one for which he couldn't interview the key players. On July 21, 1969, under a front page headline "MAN ON MOON" about the successful U.S. Apollo 11 mission, Mr. Spurgeon wrote: "The lunar landing freed man from his tiny island in the universe and opened new worlds to him. … Never again will man be bound to his planet by the bonds of gravity."
Despite the prominence of his science reportage, many journalists and scientists remember Mr. Spurgeon more for his stewardship from 1968 to 1979 of Science Forum, a six-times-a-year magazine, while he was also employed full-time in other jobs. His editorial in the first issue said the magazine "is designed primarily to become a national forum in which Canadian scientists and engineers can discuss their vital issues. But because these issues are so far-reaching, it is meant also to be read by non-scientists."
Science Forum punched above the weight of its modest circulation and was required reading for anyone interested in how science was conducted in Canada. Nobel chemistry laureate John Polanyi was on the magazine's advisory board and a frequent contributor.
"Science Forum was a marvellous invention that we badly miss today. We have no agora where scientists can gather and talk about the process of doing science," Mr. Polanyi said.
David Carey Spurgeon was born April 9, 1925, in Woodford Green in northeast London, England, to Elizabeth and Carey Spurgeon. His father was an insurance actuary who had served with the Royal Air Force during the First World War. His older sister, Muriel, born 21/2 years earlier, would later become the first woman to be ordained as a Baptist minister in Ontario and a long-serving missionary in India.
The family moved to Waterloo, Ont., in 1928 and Mr. Spurgeon graduated from the University of Western Ontario (now Western University) with a BA in 1946. Like many other Canadian journalists of his generation, Mr. Spurgeon discovered his métier by writing for the student newspaper, in his case covering research at Western's science labs. He then completed his master's at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in New York, an uncommon step for a Canadian journalist at that time.
After graduating, Mr. Spurgeon worked briefly at The London Free Press and then spent a year in Europe as a travelling companion to the scion of a wealthy London, Ont., family. In 1953, he joined The Globe and Mail as a general-assignment reporter but began specializing in medicine and science. His name and face were soon prominently featured on sidewalk posters promoting his on-the-spot reports in The Globe covering a British-Canadian archeological dig in Jericho.
In 1960, he was appointed the newspaper's first full-time science reporter. The previous year, when Mr. Spurgeon was at Columbia University on a year-long advanced reporting fellowship, Joan Hollobon had been assigned the medical beat.
She recalls: "Nobody could have been more generous, kind and helpful in getting me into the medical beat."
Throughout the 1970s the duo of Mr. Spurgeon and Ms. Hollobon set the bar for newspaper coverage of medicine and science in Canada, garnering accolades that included an honorary doctor of laws degree for Mr. Spurgeon from the University of Guelph in 1970.
In 1971, however, the 45-year-old upped stakes and moved to Ottawa to head communications for the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), a Crown corporation that supports research in developing countries. "I think he was somewhat bored that there were no new worlds to conquer at the paper," Mr. Davey says.
With his knack for finding a human interest dimension in science stories, Mr. Spurgeon helped the IDRC brass build a favourable profile for the fledgling agency. He also served in 1972 as the second president of the Canadian Science Writers' Association, an organization he helped found two years earlier.
Job-related travel to developing countries led Mr. Spurgeon in 1979 to take on another publications post in Nairobi, Kenya, at an IDRC spin-off, a centre for agro-forestry research. The locale was exotic, with giraffes loping across the savannah behind his home on the city outskirts. But his interest in the social dimensions of science again soon beckoned and in 1983, the bilingual Mr. Spurgeon shifted to UNESCO in Paris to edit the organization's quarterly magazine.
He went back to Ottawa a few years later and established himself in the highly competitive field of freelance science journalism, writing for prestigious publications such as Nature, the British Medical Journal and Science. Shortly after the death of his 54-year-old wife, Vicki, from breast cancer in June, 1986, Mr. Spurgeon moved to a lakefront house in Mont Tremblant, where he indulged his passions for ham radio, jazz played on a high-end stereo system, skiing, watersports and tennis. On the opposite side of a tennis net one day he met Maria Martinengo, who became his companion for the last 25 years of his life.
Mr. Spurgeon played a determined game of tennis and was still thrashing younger opponents until he broke a hip while diving for a ball … at the age of 83.
Mr. Spurgeon leaves his daughter, Toni Boston; sons Scott and Brad; sister Muriel Spurgeon Carder; and seven grandchildren. A celebration of his life will be arranged for this summer.
To submit an I Remember: obit@globeandmail.com
Send us a memory of someone we have recently profiled on the Obituaries page. Please include I Remember in the subject field.