Five years of pioneer farming, laying track, heaving lumber and coal, was ideal cross-Canada preparation for newsman and author Rufus Johnston. Hired by the Vancouver Province in 1910, a wizard with words and steeped in the issues, Rufus was a natural. Editorial stints in Duncan and Victoria, then war service as a Canadian Corps staff officer at Vimy and Passchendaele, further equipped him for big league journalism. The Province rewarded his postwar scoops with its magazine section, then Southam News with their London bureau. From here, drawn like a moth to a flame, this ambitious journalist went to meet Germany s dictator. He never returned.