'20s Newsman Charlie Defieux

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CAREER TOUCHED MANY BASES
Newspaperman Charles Defieux dies
By JOHN GIBBS

Charles M. Defieux, the Sun maritime columnist who was never a seaman but managed to do just about everything else in his life, died Monday at age 71.

Mr. Defieux collapsed and died suddenly in his apartment at 1125 West Twelfth. He was still active as a freelance journalist, lecturer in marine affairs and writing The Sun column, Of Ships and Men.

His multiple careers embraced the worlds of newspapers, broadcasting and show businesses, sports, government, the military and history.

With a lifelong interest in the sea, inherited from his father who was a master mariner on sailing ships, Mr. Defieux was best known in recent years for his column on shipping news and local marine history. He began the column in 1964 ? 40 years after he was named marine editor in an earlier stint with The Sun.

Mr. Defieux sang and danced in vaudeville and radio revues, coached Canada?s first national football championship team; was a personal assistant to a federal cabinet minister; was the first mayor of White Rock; and compiled a massive history listing major events of the world to 1960.

Born in Liverpool, Eng., April 9, 1901, Mr. Defieux emigrated to Canada with his family in 1911, settled in Edmonton, where, in 1917, he began his newspaper career as a copy boy and later junior reporter on the Edmonton Journal.

His newspaper experience totalled more than 35 years, with more than 25 years at The Sun in a variety of jobs that included columnist, city editor, assistant news editor, assistant sports editor and various beats, including police reporter at a time when they carried guns and assisted constables.

He wrote for the Edmonton Journal, the Edmonton Bulletin, San Francisco Chronicle, the Columbian, Victoria Times, the Province and for two years was owner and publisher of the weekly Richmond-Marpole Times.

Although under age in the First World War, Mr. Defieux joined the Royal Air Force for the last two months of the war in 1918. The next year he joined the U.S. Army, staying for two years, including service in Siberia.

During the Second World War, he was an officer with the RCAF, working in public relations and operations intelligence. He was discharged in 1945 as a flight lieutenant.

Returning to Edmonton from the U.S. in 1921, Mr. Defieux combined newspaper work with radio. He was the first Canadian broadcaster to announce basketball games when the Edmonton Grads women?s team was the world champion.

He continued to combine newspaper and radio work during the 1920s and 1930s in Vancouver, where he was a news and sports announcer for CJOR and CKWX, as well as a writer, actor, dancer-singer in radio and national radio revues. Mr. Defieux also worked briefly at KOMO in Seattle in 1928.

While in Edmonton and San Francisco he acted in stage productions.

In 1923 he came to The Sun where he stayed for most of the next 17 years.

In 1924, he coached the first Canadian football championship team, the Ex-King George men?s team from Vancouver, and during the ?20s and ?30s was an emcee at hockey, wrestling and bicycle racing events in Vancouver.

In 1940 Mr. Defieux entered the RCAF and in 1945 returned briefly to The Sun as head of The Sun?s Veteran Bureau, a service helping vets adjust to civilian life through counselling and help in dealing with government departments.

Later in 1945, he joined the federal department of veterans affairs, a two-year job that included service as a personal assistant to the then-minister Ian McKenzie.

During later writing trips abroad, Mr. Defieux wrote reports on business and finance for the then-prime minister Lester Pearson, and handled China and Poland relief contributions for the federal government.

Returning from Ottawa in 1947, he started a public relations business in Vancouver, becoming actively involved in publicity for and management of the Pacific National Exhibition for the next 12 years.

He also ran the weekly Richmond-Marpole Times for two years before selling it in 1951, and continued work on the massive volume Years of Man, begun in 1943 and completed in 1961.

The work began as a history of medicine but later branched out to include all other major historical events with some 17,000 cross-referenced entries. It was never published.

Mr. Defieux did get a royalty advance on the book and took a world tour writing newspaper stories. In 1958 he had made a four-month study of the economic system of the United Kingdom.

His writing career also included freelance work for varied publications, with fiction and non-fiction writing appearing in Macleans magazine.

In 1957, a resident of White Rock who helped in the fight for incorporation, Mr. Defieux was appointed the first mayor to get the civic administration going, but he had to resign six months later for health reasons.

Mr. Defieux had spoken on international trade and affairs for many years throughout B.C. and in the Northwest U.S. and had been lecturing of transportation and port management at the B.C. Institute of Technology and the University of B.C.

As requested in his will Mr. Defieux will be cremated and the ashes spread on the ocean off the coast of B.C.

A memorial service will be conducted by Canon Stanley Smith at the Seafarers Club, 1301 Robson, at 2 p.m.Thursday.

Mr. Defieux is survived by his wife Dorothy; two daughters, Doreen Burns, of Richmond, and Mrs. Adele Marguerite Griffith, of 208-204 Alpha Ave., Burnaby; four grandchildren; and one brother, O.T. Defieux, of Camas, Oregon.

Vancouver Sun, Oct. 10, 1972, pg. 14.