THE CANADIAN PRESS
TORONTO — George Gross, the founding sports editor of the Toronto Sun and a giant of Canadian sports journalism, died early Friday at his Toronto home. He was 85.
Known as “The Baron” because of his Czech accent and European sensibilities, Gross came to Canada in 1949 after fleeing his homeland and once he had mastered English, quickly found his niche as a sports reporter.
His impressive body of work and many contributions to sports earned him membership in the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame and the Canadian Soccer Hall of Fame, and made him a recipient of the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award winner from the Hockey Hall of Fame, the Olympic Order and the Order of Ontario.
Toronto Sun editor-in-chief Lou Clancy described Gross as “the last of the deans of sportswriting.”
“Milt Dunnell, James Coleman, Trent Frayne, Scott Young, Ted Reeve and Jim Hunt, they were all legends,” Clancy said. “And George certainly stands right with them.”
Gross remained active until the end, playing tennis regularly and continuing to write a column for the Sun. He worked a full day Thursday in the newsroom, which made his sudden death all the more shocking to his colleagues.
“It just stopped us cold when his son phoned in this morning,” said Clancy. “George was working on a story that he was going to write for next week. I had lunch with him a week ago, it was George. He was in good shape, in good humour.
“George was always the same, he was here in the morning before I was, so it comes as a bit of a shock.”
Born in Bratislava, then of Czechoslovakia, Gross played tennis, basketball and soccer in his youth and also worked as a sports and political journalist before his writings landed him in jail under the post-Second World War communist regime.
In 1949, Gross and a kayaker friend posed as paddlers out for a training session and rowed their way across the Danube into Austria.
Eventually Gross made it to Toronto, working as a farmhand and in construction before re-starting his career in journalism by doing some freelance work for the Toronto Telegram.
He was hired full-time at the Telegram in 1959 and when the paper shut down in 1971, he and other staffers at the paper founded the Toronto Sun, becoming the paper’s first sports editor.
Gross was a demanding editor but one who rewarded hard work, according to current Toronto Sun sports editor Dave Fuller.
“George hired me in 1977 and if you worked hard and broke stories, you’d be fine with him,” said Fuller. “He liked guys who worked long hours and were really dedicated.”
Gross served as sports editor until 1986, when he became the corporate sports editor writing one column a week. In recent years he wrote more frequently and was responsible for a soccer column, a notebook column and a Sunday column per week in recent months.
“I had lunch with him just over a week ago and we were talking ostensibly about the upcoming soccer season in Toronto but George, interestingly, was reminiscing,” said Clancy. “He was telling me about how we went back to Czechoslovakia back in 1966 and how a petty communist bureaucrat held him at the airport for a couple of hours until the Czechoslovakian ambassador called. Of course then the stern customs officer turned pale and whistled George through.
“He was a wonderful storyteller but he was telling personal stories, which is a moment now I will certainly treasure.”
Gross is survived by his wife, his son and his daughter.