Peter Worthington, founding editor of Toronto Sun, dies at 86 Peter Worthington, founding editor of the Toronto Sun and one of Canada's most decorated journalists, has died at the age of 86. Mr. Worthington - who served as a platoon commander in the Korean War and reported from a Dallas police station after witnessing Jack Ruby shoot John F. Kennedy's killer Lee Harvey Oswald - helped start the Sun from the ashes of the Toronto Telegram and served 12 years as its editor-in-chief. He continued to write columns for the paper until being admitted to the hospital last week with a staph infection. Mr. Worthington won four National Newspaper Awards during his career, a rare accomplishment that puts him among the most frequent winners since the awards were founded in 1949. He won for feature writing in 1962, staff corresponding in 1969, editorials in 1972 and enterprise reporting in 1978. And as much as he loved the paper, he was also critical at times. He was fired by co-founder Doug Creighton while promoting his autobiography for suggesting the Sun wasn't a real paper, but hired back shortly after and tasked with starting the Ottawa Sun. Rather than dwell on the incident, he simply added a chapter to the autobiography and used it to further promote the book. "Now includes the inside story of his firing from the Sun," reads the cover of Looking For Trouble, which also details his failed bid for political office in a 1982 Federal by-election. He ran as an independent after losing a nomination for the Progressive Conservative Party. His last column in the Sun reflected his blunt approach to writing as well as his compassion - it was a call for Canada to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants to "enable them to become citizens." "At times it's useful to compare America with Canada, and so far as "illegals" are concerned, we have a considerable advantage, but only if we get off our rumps and move towards making the backlog of "illegals" into productive citizens," he wrote. Writer David Frum wrote in a post Monday morning that his father-in-law managed to rise above the challenges placed before him as he aged, using many of his most difficult moments as fodder for columns. When he suffered a fall in April that cut his face and left him sprawled on the pavement outside of a grocery store, the paper ran a large photo of his cut-up face to go with his account of the ordeal. "A gifted athlete and a shrewd businessman, Peter Worthington excelled at everything he did," Mr. Frum wrote . He seemed beyond ordinary human weakness: He suffered a heart attack thirty years ago and was saved by a bypass operation. He filed a series of columns for the Sun detailing his operation, and within a very few weeks afterward, celebrated his recovery by climbing China's Mount Gonga. Mr. Worthington enlisted in the Canadian Navy in 1944,when he was only 17 years old. He wrote in the paper that "I had run away from home at age 15, hoping to join the merchant navy, but they spotted my age." He went on to train as an air gunner in the Second World War and an intelligence officer in the Korean War. "People over use the term "force of nature" but Worthington truly was," said John Paton, chief executive officer of Digital First Media and founding publisher at the Ottawa Sun. A correspondent in Africa for nearly a decade covering various and atrocious civil wars as those countries were used as proxies in various Cold War battles. A Moscow correspondent who helped his translator defect ... His journalism career informed his world view and he came to his strong anti-Communism stance having been an eye witness to what was wrought in its name. He added: "As an editor, he was also willing to defend your right to your own beliefs even if they differed from his. He could be difficult as all talented people are. Has anyone ever worked with a truly talented journalist who wasn't? Mr. Frum said that his father-in-law wrote his own obituary, which is to appear in the Toronto Sun Tuesday. "Soon the fuller and longer tributes will come," he wrote. But Peter, never one to trust others to get the story, has scooped us all by writing his own obituary ... And if there is a Heaven, Pete's already baffling the angelic editors of the local press by producing copy faster than they can use it.