History of the historian

A new biography reveals things about Pierre Berton's past that even he didn't know PAUL GESSELL, Canwest News Service Published:Â 1 hour ago Pierre Berton seemed to know everything there was to know about Canadian history, but only three months before his death in 2004 did the famous author learn a "shocking" secret about his own family's past. Berton was 84 when he was told that his father, Francis George Berton, had been placed in an orphanage in Saint John, N.B., on Sept. 18, 1878, by the 6-year-old boy's own destitute, widowed mother, Lucy. Pierre's grandmother had two young sons at the time. She felt that, as an impoverished widow, she could not afford to raise two boys, so she kept 5-year-old Jack and left Frank, as the lad was known, at Wiggins Male Orphan Institution. Perhaps she felt Frank, being older, could better... [read full story]