Val Sears

Who is Val Sears?

Val Sears is an eminent Canadian journalist. Widely recognized of one of the most important political journalists of his day, he has long experience as reporter, editor, Ottawa Bureau Chief and foreign correspondent in London, England and Washington, D.C. for the Toronto Star. Val Sears has won numerous awards for his reporting including a National Newspaper Award for feature writing and for news as well as a science writing Award. He is author of the book Hello Sweetheart: Get Me Rewrite, which is a lively account of the 1950s newspaper wars between the Toronto Telegram and the Toronto Star, both of which employed him. The book has become a cult classic among journalists and appears on the curriculum of journalist schools in Canada. After retiring from the Toronto Star, Val Sears became a columnist for the Ottawa Sun from 1998 to 2005.

Val Sears has always had an intense interest in the career of the Prairie populist conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. He was commissioned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to write a trilogy of television plays detailing the life of John Diefenbaker, which were ultimately not produced due to budget cuts at the CBC.

In 1991 Mr. Sears accepted the Bell Chair as Visiting Professor of Journalism at the University of Regina. In 1999 he was made a lifetime member of the Ottawa Press Gallery.