Pierre Berton, 84; Canadian Writer, Historian, Talk Show Host

Pierre Berton, the prolific writer, historian and broadcaster known as “a great Canadian voice,” has died, as he put it, “after a long battle with life.” He was 84.

Berton, who died of heart failure Nov. 30 in Toronto, had proposed the phrase he preferred in his Toronto Star newspaper column in 1994. Obituaries, he lamented, usually stated that a person had died after a long battle with heart problems, cancer or some other illness.

“They battled valiantly; they lost,” he wrote. “When I finally depart, I hope somebody will write, instead, that I died after a long battle with life.”

Berton had an enlarged heart, congestive heart failure and diabetes.

Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin said of Berton’s death, “His passing silences a great Canadian voice, but his work will live on to enrich the lives of Canadians for generations to come.”

Berton, who continued to write 2,000 words a day into his 80s, published 50 books, plus 20 history books for children. He also wrote and edited for Maclean’s magazine and several newspapers and was a fixture on Canadian radio and television.

In addition to hosting his own talk show for 16 years, he was a popular panelist -- with his trademark white sideburns, bow tie and irreverent wit -- on the quiz show “Front Page Challenge” for 37 years, trying to guess the identity of a hidden guest related to a news story.

Born in Whitehorse, Yukon Territories, and educated at the University of British Columbia, Berton began his career on the Vancouver News Herald in 1941. After serving in the Canadian army during World War II, he continued working for newspapers and joined Maclean’s in Toronto in 1947, rising to managing editor.

Unable to support his growing family on a journalist’s pay, he started moonlighting on radio shows and wrote his first book, “The Royal Family,” published in 1954. Encouraged by the $10,000 the book earned, he began churning out a volume approximately every year.

His subjects included the Klondike gold rush, the Canadian transcontinental railway, the War of 1812, World War I, the Dionne quintuplets, collections of newspaper columns and an autobiography.

Berton’s first bestseller, “The Klondike Fever,” was adapted for a Canadian documentary film, “City of Gold,” which earned a Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival.

His two-volume railroad history, “The National Dream” and “The Last Spike,” was turned into an eight-part television miniseries, and his “The Dionne Years: A Thirties Melodrama” was also made into a television movie.

Hanna-Barbera made an animated film in 1983 of his children’s book, “The Secret World of Og.”

Although best known in Canada, Berton, who wrote astutely about Canadians’ fear of U.S. domination, also found a ready audience in the States.

Former Los Angeles Times book critic Robert Kirsch, in reviewing Berton’s “The Impossible Railway: The Building of the Canadian Pacific” in 1972, called the book “a deeply researched, effectively evoked history of the enterprise, satisfying in all respects.”

Nevertheless, Berton, who was loved for his lively, readable style, was often criticized by academics for writing history in too popular a manner that lacked critical analysis.

“If it’s popular, it’s something large numbers of people read. I would say my history is also scholarly,” he once told the Dictionary of Literary Biography. “It’s narrative history, which is easier to read than expository history History books should read as much like novels as possible.”

Three of Berton’s books won the Canadian Governor General’s Awards for creative nonfiction. Canada’s National History Society established the Pierre Berton Award in 1994 for distinguished achievement in popularizing Canadian history.

Berton is survived by his wife, Janet, and eight children.