New season, new voices for The Gazette

Decades after I last attended school, fall still seems like a time for new beginnings to me, so it is with great pleasure that I announce a couple of additions to the Montreal Gazette roster.

Today, you’ll meet a new columnist, Dan Delmar, who makes his debut in this role on page B6.

Dan’s name will be familiar to many. He is a political commentator and talk-show host who is heard regularly on CJAD 800; he is cofounder of Provocateur Communications, which specializes in public relations and content strategy.

Dan grew up in Ste-Adèle, and studied journalism, cinema and marketing before he plunged into a career as a reporter 15 years ago. Wikipedia credits him as breaking the “Pastagate” affair in 2013. (For those of you who missed it, the term was coined to describe the international mockery that ensued after the Office québécois de la langue française sent a warning letter to the restaurant Buonanotte about using Italian terms such as “pasta” on its menu.)

Dan describes himself as “a classical liberal, though I don’t really do labels” and is a fierce defender of all minorities. He is for multilingualism, and is not an “angryphone” although he loses patience with linguistic pettiness.

When Gazette columnist Don Macpherson told us he would be away for a couple of months, we knew we wanted political commentary in his absence. Hence Dan’s column, which appears in the print edition on Saturdays.

Last Saturday, we introduced a new series, Small Talks, that is designed to shine a light on Montrealers from all over the city in all walks of life. The second instalment of Sophie Tarnowska’s Small Talks appears on page B2.

One last note. Many readers have contacted us this week in the wake of the La Presse announcement that it would cease publication of its print edition Monday to Friday starting in January 2016. The Gazette has no such plans. In fact, our parent company, Postmedia, just launched a redesigned version of the Edmonton Journal in print this week.