Fred Jones
Section 3, Lot 2922
Prospect Cemetery
Born in Aberdeen, Scotland Fred Jones was three when his family moved to Canada. He attended Franklin Public School and then took a business studies course, before joining The Toronto Telegram as a copy boy at the age of 16. Over the years, he worked as a police reporter and covered many other areas before he decided to specialise as a labour reporter. He became one of the city’s most authoritative labour reporters. His column On The Labour Front was, for many years, required reading for those involved in labour relations. In 1944, Jones joined the Royal Canadian Navy, and was assigned to the corvette H.M.C.S. Chilliwack as a ship’s writer, responsible for logkeeping and other duties. He returned to civilian life and his labour column in the fall of 1945. For the next decade or so, Jones was active in the Toronto Newspaper Guild (now the Southern Ontario Newspaper Guild) as an organiser, working to unionise workers in the business, editorial, classified and advertising departments of The Telegram, The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail. He joined the American Newspaper Guild as an international representative in 1956. Instrumental in his decision to become a full-time union organiser, was his devotion to bettering the industry for all those who worked in it. As an international representative, Jones was instrumental in organising several bargaining units in the Toronto area, including The Oshawa Times. In 1969, he returned to the Toronto Newspaper Guild as executive director. The closing of The Toronto Telegram in 1972, however, necessitated a reorganisation of the guild, following which Jones left and went into business with his son. By the mid-1970s he was back in the labour movement, as an international representative, once again organising locals across the country, finally retiring in 1981. Fred Jones died in December of 1988 at the age of 72.