The fonds consists of personal papers, photographs, maps, and artwork documenting life of the journalist Bill Boss. It includes personal and family correspondence, records of his service as a Public Relations Officer in the Canadian Army in the Second World War, records of his work for Canadian Press (CP) as a war correspondent in the Second World War and Korean War, and more generally as a foreign correspondent, and records of his university education and professional career at the University of Ottawa.
Boss, Bill, 1917-2007 : Bill Boss was a leading war correspondent with Canadian Press (CP) wire service who covered the Canadian Army in the Second World War and the Korean War. Boss won two National Newspaper Awards, for his reporting from the Koren War in 1951 and from Russia in 1953, and was elected to the Canadian News Hall of Fame in 1998. Gerard William Boss was born in 1917, the son of Lt. Col. William Boss and Marcelle Ramont. He was was educated at Lisgar Collegiate Institute in Ottawa, where he was active in founding the Ottawa Concert Orchestra and also worked part-time reporting for the Ottawa Citizen. He went to Toronto in 1937 as a correspondent for the Times of London and worked for them in London for several months in 1938. He returned to Canada to attend the University of Ottawa and completed a Bachelor of Arts in 1941. During this period he also worked as a reporter for the Citizen and was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the militia in the Lanark and Renfrew Scottish Regiment. After graduating from university, he joined the Canadian Army on active service as an officer with the 4th Canadian Armoured Division, then training at Debert, Nova Scotia. Boss went overseas in 1943 and took part in the invasion of Sicily and Italy as a Public Relations Officer with the Canadian Corps. Canadian Press arranged to have him officially discharged from the Canadian Army in June 1944 to cover the Canadian forces in action as a war correspondent for the wire service. In early 1945, he left the Italian campaign to cover the Canadian troops in the liberation of Holland. After the war he served as a roving foreign correspondent for CP, based mostly in London or Amsterdam, but also with a stint in their Edmonton office in 1948. On the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, Boss went to the front where his byline became nationally known as the leading Canadian journalist covering the action. As many Canadian newspapers relied on CP copy for their coverage, Boss was instrumental in shaping Canadian perception of the war in Korea. He later opened the first Canadian news bureau in Moscow for CP but left the wire service in 1958 to became the Director of Public Relations for the University of Ottawa. Boss was fluent in several languages, and was also a musician who arranged music and conducted symphony orchestras. He died in 2007 in Ottawa.
