Alan Fotheringham, RIP

One of the greats of Canadian political punditry, Alan Fotheringham, dead at 87.

Anyone remotely sentient who enjoyed Canada in the 70s and 80s will recall "the Foth" or, as a few of his less charitable rivals sometimes called him, "the Froth."

He revelled in his ability to draw blood, for sport as much as for therapeutic purposes. He took down mayors and monarchists, prime ministers and PR men, other journalists and the justice system, bureaucrats and the bourgeoisie with whimsical wordplay that was no less cutting for its folksiness. He built them up, too, taking credit for sparking the political careers of Brian Mulroney, Paul Martin, and Stockwell Day. 

A prairie boy turned expense-account bon vivant, celebrated as much for his wit and wardrobe as his reporting, Mr. Fotheringham was, according to the Progressive Conservative Party backroom operator Dalton Camp, “the only stand-up comedian we know who works sitting down.” 

And so, among his pithy descriptors known as Fothisms: he dubbed Brian Mulroney “The Jaw That Walks Like a Man”; our neighbours to the south, “The Excited States of America”; the first Prime Minister Trudeau, “Pierre Elliott Himself”; Ottawa, “the town that fun forgot” and “yesterday’s city tomorrow”; Vancouver, “the Narcissus of the West Coast”; and when the CN Tower neared completion, he declared Toronto to be in the grip of a “pathetic phallusy.”

Allan Fotheringham was born Murray Allan Scott, the third of Edna and John Scott’s four children, on Aug. 31, 1932, in Rouleau, Sask. (home of TV’s yokel-fest, Corner Gas), and raised in nearby Hearne – a place, he frequently quipped, "so small that we couldn’t afford a village idiot. Everyone had to take turns.”