Harry Comfort Hindmarsh (January 13, 1887 – December 20, 1956) was a reporter, editor and newspaper executive who helped turn the Toronto Daily Star and its weekend supplement, The Star Weekly into one of Canada's most financially successful and politically influential newspapers. During his 45-year career at the Star, beginning in 1911, HCH, as he was known, rose from cub reporter to managing editor and after the death of owner/editor Joseph E. Atkinson in 1948, he served for nearly nine years as president of the company.
Hindmarsh shared Atkinson's principles that included the need for the state to help the poor, the sick and the elderly while safeguarding workers' rights and civil liberties. In 1915, he married Atkinson's daughter Ruth. Together, Atkinson and Hindmarsh ran the Star as a paper that spared no expense in pursuing sensational stories, playing them up with huge headlines and dramatic photos in a newsroom where the main operating principle was clear: "Get it first, sew it up, then play it big." At the same time, the paper campaigned for social reforms such as mothers' allowances, unemployment insurance, old-age pensions, votes for women, universal medicare and minimum wages. Under their leadership, the Star supported Canada's Liberal Party. By the time of Atkinson's death, it had become the largest newspaper in Canada with a daily circulation of 360,000 and annual revenues of nearly $14 million.
Over the years, Hindmarsh was both revered and hated by those who worked for him. Known at times for his generosity to Star employees struggling with debts or illness, he could also seem bullying and even vindictive especially if he felt writers were becoming too self-important. Ernest Hemingway, who worked for the Star in the early 1920s, was one of many talented writers who quit or were fired. Hemingway posted a lengthy critique on the notice board about how the paper was run. "Hindmarsh is a son of a bitch and a liar and they are easy to understand," he has been quoted as saying. "A good man is hard to understand. A son of a bitch always goes by the rules."
Hindmarsh was married to Ruth Atkinson Hindmarsh for 41 years and their four children included son Harry who had a long career as an editor at the Star. Hindmarsh died a few hours after suffering a heart attack in his office on December 20, 1956.
Early life and education
The child of Canadian parents, Hindmarsh was born in Bismarck, Missouri, but after his father's death from tuberculosis when he was an infant, his mother returned to her prosperous parents in St. Thomas, Ontario where he grew up. His grandfather, Hiram Comfort, a woollen merchant, was the richest man in town and one of the founders of the St. Thomas Times. His paternal uncle George had worked as a reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle. Hindmarsh himself wrote his first newspaper story at 14. While visiting Scotland with his mother, he reported his observations to his hometown paper the Times. After high school, he headed to the Canadian West where he filed to acquire a homestead near Carbon, Alberta. But after a year of farming, he returned to Ontario to enrol as an arts student at the University of Toronto, majoring in history. He returned to the homestead during his first summer break, but on his journey west during the second summer, he spotted an advertisement for a reporter at the Detroit News and ended up spending a whole year working there.
On his return to the University of Toronto, Hindmarsh joined the student literary journal, the Varsity, writing that every day in the life of a reporter was filled with surprises and that journalism opened doors allowing reporters to talk with anyone. By 1909, he had been appointed editor, converting the Varsity into a tri-weekly newspaper that chronicled student activities accompanied by big headlines and splashy pictures. He was also a prominent rebel on campus where, among other things, he organized a Democratic League that campaigned to have college fraternities banned on the grounds they were undemocratic and discriminatory. He drew notice with winning performances in the university's debating club and joined the university's Masonic Lodge because he believed the Masonic order was open to all men regardless of class, race or religion.