• Peter Gzowski was a descendent of Sir Casimir Gzowski. Peter was very proud of his great-great-grandfather, a Polish nationalist, engineer and lawyer, who championed public works in Canada.

• His father, Harold Gzowski, was the black sheep of the Gzowski clan. He was described as an alcoholic who had a hard time holding down a job.



• Peter spent his summers with his Gzowski grandparents at Lake Simcoe while his birth father weaved in and out of his life. It was his grandparents who paid his tuition at Ridley College, a prestigious boarding school in St. Catharines, Ont.

• Gzowski flourished at Ridley - excelling in sports and studies. He won a scholarship to attend the University of Toronto and soon found his calling working as an editor (1955-1956) at the university paper, The Varsity.



• Peter Gzowski was 14 when his mother died suddenly at age 39.

• Two years after his mother's death, he changed his name back to Peter Gzowski.

• At 19, Gzowski got his first newspaper job as an ad salesman for the Timmins Daily Press. A year later, he was working as a police reporter for the Toronto Telegram.



• In 1957, bored with his studies at the University of Toronto, Gzowski quit to become the city editor at the Moose Jaw Times-Herald in Saskatchewan. He was paid $55 a week. Gzowski later said it was the "smartest thing" he had done.