William Arthur Deacon is best remembered as, for four decades, Canada's leading literary journalist. From 1922 to 1928 he was literary editor of Toronto's Saturday Night, a prestigious weekly with a national readership, from 1928 to 1936 of the Mail and Empire and from 1936 to 1960 of the Globe and Mail, both leading daily newspapers based in Toronto. He was proud to claim the distinction of being the first full-time literary journalist in Canada; when he died his central and dynamic place in the development of Canadian literature was acknowledged by William French, his successor at the Globe and Mail , who headed his obituary with the words, "He made a structure for Canadian literature."

Deacon was born in Pembroke, Ontario, in 1890 to Sarah Annie Davies and William Henry Deacon. His lawyer father died when he was a baby, and he and his mother moved to Stanstead, Quebec, to live with her parents, retired...