The Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star. The Globe and Mail is widely described as Canada's English-language newspaper of record.

The predecessor to The Globe and Mail was The Globe, founded in 1844 by Scottish immigrant George Brown, who would later become a Father of Confederation. Brown's liberal politics led him to court the support of the Clear Grits, precursor to the modern Liberal Party of Canada. The Globe began in Toronto as a weekly party organ for Brown's Reform Party, but seeing the economic gains that he could make in the newspaper business, Brown soon targeted a wide audience of liberal minded freeholders. He selected as the motto for the editorial page a quotation from Junius, "The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures." The quotation is carried on the editorial page daily to this day.

Jeffrey Carl Simpson, OC (born 17 Feb 1949 in New York City, New York), is a Canadian journalist. He has been The Globe and Mail's national affairs columnist for almost three decades. He has won all three of Canada's leading literary prizes — the Governor General's Award for non-fiction book writing, the National Magazine Award for political writing, and the National Newspaper Award [1] for column writing. He has also won the Hyman Solomon Award [2] for excellence in public policy journalism. In January, 2000, he became an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Simpson was born in New York and moved to Canada when he was 10 years old. He was educated at the University of Toronto Schools. He graduated from Queen's University in 1971 in History and Political Science. While at Queen's he worked for the campus radio station CFRC. He won the University's Tricolour Award in his graduating year. He then went on to the London School of Economics. In 1972–1973, he worked as a Parliamentary Intern in Ottawa where he worked for Ed Broadbent. A year later, he joined The Globe and Mail newspaper.

Norman "Norm" Kelly (born August 11, 1941) is a Canadian politician. He is a city councillor in Toronto, Ontario representing one of two municipal wards that make up the jurisdiction of Scarborough—Agincourt.

Kelly is a trained historian. He studied Canadian political history at the University of Western Ontario (undergraduate) and Carleton and Queen’s universities (post-graduate). Among his most important accomplishments, Kelly undertook a two-year research project for the two best-selling books in the field of Canadian history: The National Dream and The Last Spike, written by Pierre Berton. Kelly won the Governor General's Award for his work in The National Dream. The The National Dream has also been transferred to television by CBC in a very popular, award-winning documentary series of the same name.

Kelly later became a history teacher at Upper Canada College, a private school in Toronto.

When he first entered politics as an alderman on the borough council of Scarborough, then a suburb of Toronto. Kelly served from 1974 to 1980.

Robert Bruce "Rob" Ford (born May 28, 1969) is a Canadian politician and businessman. He is the 64th and current Mayor of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He was first elected to city council in the 2000 Toronto municipal election, and was re-elected to his council seat in 2003 and again in 2006. Ford was elected Mayor in the 2010 mayoral election, and took office on December 1 of that year. Ford's father Doug Ford, Sr. was also a politician and his brother Doug is a Toronto city councillor.

Born in Etobicoke, Ford is the youngest of four children of Diane and Doug Ford, Sr.. Ford Sr. was the founder of DECO Labels and Tags, which makes pressure-sensitive labels for plastic-wrapped grocery products at an estimated $100 million in annual sales. Ford Sr. later became a Member of the Ontario Legislature in the Progressive Conservative government of Mike Harris. Not long after Rob Ford's birth in 1969, the success of the family business allowed the family to build a six-bedroom home in Etobicoke, which has a full-sized swimming pool and gardens that can host nearly a thousand visitors.

Jan Wong (Chinese: 黃明珍; pinyin: Huáng Míngzhēn; born 1952 in Montreal, Quebec) is a Canadian journalist. Wong worked for The Globe and Mail, serving as Beijing correspondent from 1988 to 1994, when she returned to write from Canada. She is the daughter of Montreal businessman Bill Wong, founder of Bill Wong's buffet which was the city's first Chinese restaurant to open outside of Chinatown.

Towards the end of the Cultural Revolution period, she left McGill University and flew to China. The Maoist became one of two foreign college students permitted to study at Beijing University. While at Beijing she denounced a trusting fellow student who had sought her help to escape communist China to the West. The student was subsequently shamed and expelled. "She suffered a lot ... she was sent to the countryside for hard labour. When she came back, she fought hard to clear her name." Long after, Wong takes comfort in having returned from her own escape to the West, and eventually found this person again, learning she had not been her confidante's only betrayer, and that she expressed no anger. Wong wrote another book, and did interviews on her own experience.