Fonds F0122 - Ernest H. Bartlett fonds

Ernest Henry Bartlett was a journalist, military officer and travel writer.
Born in 1903, Bartlett was the son of Florence Emily Fortune and Thomas Edward Lear Bartlett of Plymouth, Devon, England. He emigrated to Canada with his mother and two brothers in 1932.
He enrolled in the navy in England in the 1920s but influenza kept him from serving. Once in Canada he found work on a Great Lakes freighter before illness forced him to resign. He eventually found work as a journalist with the Toronto Telegram from 1924 to 1969, where he was the local expert on naval issues. He became the paper’s travel editor in 1962.

Ernest enlisted as a public relations officer and war correspondent with the Canadian navy during World War II. He filed news reports on the war effort in the Pacific and Atlantic. On 14 August 1943, the motor torpedo boat that Bartlett was aboard was shelled in the Straits of Messina between Sicily and Calabria. He and his shipmates were captured and sent to a German POW camp in Marlag und Milag Nord. The camp was liberated 2 May 1946.
Bartlett returned to his career as a journalist, acting as the Toronto Telegram's feature editor, and later travel editor, including hosting a Telegram sponsored TV travel show on Channel 9 in Toronto.
Bartlett never married, instead shared a home with his mother Florence, and his younger brother Jack in Pickering, Ontario.
He died in Scarborough Centenary Hospital 23 January 1975.