(10 June 1870-?), journalist. (Charles Gordonsmith) He is said in Morgan’s biog. dict. to have been born at Twillingham, Essex, Eng., but there appears to be no Twillingham in Essex (perhaps Tillingham is the place meant). Parents: Mr and Mrs C.E. Gordon-Smith (the father and son used different spellings of their surnames). Charles came to Canada with his father in 1884. Since he was about 18 when his father became a clergyman in GC, he is unlikely to have been for long a GC resident in any settled sense. However, GC must for some years have been the place where “home” was. Charles began his journalistic career as the Lancaster correspondent for the Cornwall Freeholder. As correspondent, “he was a good one.” (Cornwall Freeholder 27 March 1919) The Freeholder editor when Gordonsmith was reporting on Lancaster events was C.W. Young. Gordonsmith had known Young as a neighbour at Stratford, Ont., before the Gordon-Smiths came to GC.

     Gordonsmith studied chemistry as a young man, but gave it up in 1891 in favour of journalism. He was employed first by the Montreal Herald and afterwards by the Montreal Star. From 1896 to 1901 he was city editor of the latter publication. He was editor of the Montreal Weekly Witness from about 1901. At the time of his entry in Morgan’s biog. dict. of 1912 he was still the editor of the Weekly Witness and was also the managing editor of Canadian Pictorial. In 1901-1902 Gordonsmith was the president of the Press Association of Quebec Province. In 1918, when he gave 120 new books to the Lancaster Public Library, he was managing editor of the Montreal Herald. On the occasion of this gift the books were described as “up-to-date and readable” and predominantly fiction and war stories, and Mr Gordonsmith was called “an old Lancaster boy.” (Cornwall Freeholder 21 Nov. 1918: Lancaster column; Glengarry News 29 Nov. 1918)

     In 1919 he resigned as editor of the Montreal Herald, and it was rumoured that he would soon take a position on the Family Herald. (Cornwall Freeholder 27 March 1919) The Family Herald (i. e., Family Herald and Weekly Star) was a substantial farm magazine, which was to remain familiar in Ontario farm homes for some decades. Gordonsmith was editor-in-chief of the Family Herald in 1927 when he published a letter in the Freeholder (FH 14 April 1927) in tribute to the long-term Freeholder editor C.W. Young who had just died. In 1942 Gordonsmith was described as “formerly” the editor of the Family Herald. (obituary of his brother Arthur Erith Gordonsmith, a railway employee, born Coventry, Eng., Standard Freeholder 28 March 1942) Charles Gordonsmith married Alice Hall, Sept. 1894.

     As a long-term practising journalist on publications which mattered, he was necessarily one of the significant moulders of Canadian public opinion in his time. During his long professional career he must have published a vast number of articles, some under his own name and some without a byline. However, virtually all of this journalism is now forgotten. The following item has come to hand merely by chance: his article on Sir John A. Macdonald which appeared in the Family Herald of 28 Feb. 1940. Gordonsmith seems not to have been himself the author of any published books. However–a glimpse of the private man–there were sales 1929 and 1935 of Canadiana and Americana from his “Notable Library,” as the sales catalogues called it. The McGill and University of Toronto Libraries have books with his bookplate.

     His brother-in-law William J. Dunn, of Montreal, who was buried in 1922 “from the old homestead, East Lancaster, Glengarry County,” was superintendent of repairs for CPR Steamships and had “invented a number of labor-saving devices, forming several companies for their manufacture.” (quotations from his obituary, Cornwall Standard 24 Aug. 1922)

Morgan (1912) 459, cf. also 1037 for Smith, J. Gordon, journalist, b. Edinburgh, Scotland, also on Montreal Herald * The Canadian Who’s Who 1936-1937 * Charles Gordonsmith, “a Lancaster boy,” becomes editor of Weekly Witness, recalled in 20 Years Ago column, Cornwall Freeholder 24 Feb. 1921