Don Martin (born September 12, 1956) is a retired

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

journalist, best known as a former ''

Calgary Herald The ''Calgary Herald'' is a daily newspaper published in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Publication began in 1883 as ''The Calgary Herald, Mining and Ranche Advocate, and General Advertiser''. It is owned by the Postmedia Network. History ''The ...

'' columnist, television pundit and television show host on CTV News Channel.

Life and career

Martin was born in

Rochester, New York Rochester () is a City (New York), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, the county seat, seat of Monroe County, New York, Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffalo, ...

, the son of Mary and George Martin, an insurance company executive. His family moved to Pickering, Ontario in the early 1960s where Martin attended Pickering High School before graduating from the journalism program at

Ryerson Polytechnical Institute Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU or Toronto Met) is a public university, public research university located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The university's core campus is situated within the Garden District, Toronto, Garden District, although i ...

Newspaper career

In 1978, Martin was hired by the ''

'' newspaper where he began a 22-year career as city hall bureau chief,

1988 Winter Olympics The 1988 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XV Olympic Winter Games (french: XVes Jeux olympiques d'hiver) and commonly known as Calgary 1988 ( bla, Mohkínsstsisi 1988; sto, Wîchîspa Oyade 1988 or ; cr, Otôskwanihk 1998/; srs, Guts� ...

bureau chief and civic affairs columnist. In 1993, he was transferred to Edmonton as the newspaper’s provincial affairs columnist. In 2000, he relocated to Ottawa as the ''Calgary Herald''’s national affairs columnist, syndicated opinion writer for the Southam newspaper chain and regular on-air contributor to CBC, CTV and CPAC political shows. In 2008, Martin published a column criticizing the campaign of former journalist

Arthur Kent Arthur Kent (born December 27, 1953) is a Canadian television journalist and author. He rose to international prominence during the 1991 Persian Gulf War during which he acquired the nickname "The Scud Stud". He is the brother of Canada's forme ...

for a seat in the

Legislative Assembly of Alberta The Legislative Assembly of Alberta is the deliberative assembly of the province of Alberta, Canada. It sits in the Alberta Legislature Building in Edmonton. The Legislative Assembly currently has 87 members, elected first past the post from singl ...

in the

2008 Alberta general election The 2008 Alberta general election was held on March 3, 2008, to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. It was expected to be called early because the governing Progressive Conservatives held a leadership election on December 2, 20 ...

. The case spent eight years in the courts before the judge found in favour of Kent, awarding him $200,000 in damages, in 2016. Kent was awarded a further $200,000 in damages in 2018, after filing an

appeal In law, an appeal is the process in which cases are reviewed by a higher authority, where parties request a formal change to an official decision. Appeals function both as a process for error correction as well as a process of clarifying and ...

on the grounds that the initial award was not sufficient to compensate for the damage to his reputation.

Television career

In 2010, CTV hired Martin to host the news channel’s flagship politics show ''

Power Play Power play or powerplay or their plurals may refer to: Sports * Power play (sporting term), a sporting term used in various games * Powerplay (cricket), a rule concerning fielding restrictions in one-day international cricket * Power play (cur ...

''. In 2012 he received the Public Policy Forum’s Peter Lougheed Award for Public Service in Western Canada. He retired as host of ''Power Play'' in December 2019, but continues to write a weekly blog for CTVNews.ca.

Writing

Martin has written two biographies. His first, ''King Ralph: The Life and Political Success of Ralph Klein'', was published in 2002 and became a national bestseller. His second book, ''Belinda: The Political and Private Life of Belinda Stronach'', was published in 2006.Barbara Yaffe, "More than we wanted to know". ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', October 11, 2006.

References

External links

CTV News
{{DEFAULTSORT:Martin, Don Canadian columnists Canadian television news anchors Living people Place of birth missing (living people) National Post people Canadian political journalists CTV Television Network people 20th-century Canadian journalists 21st-century Canadian journalists 1956 births 20th-century Canadian non-fiction writers 20th-century Canadian male writers 21st-century Canadian non-fiction writers 21st-century Canadian male writers Canadian male non-fiction writers American emigrants to Canada