Judi McLeod

Judi Ann T. McLeod (born 1944) is a Canadian journalist. Formerly a reporter for a series of newspapers in Ontario, she now operates the conservative website, Canada Free Press (CFP).

Early life and career McLeod was born in Prince Edward Island and raised in St. Joseph's Orphanage in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Career McLeod met her future husband, John, when she was a young reporter for the Oshawa Times where he was the managing editor. When her husband reinstated her to the position, the newspaper fired them both. The Globe and Mail reported that Canada's multiculturalism minister, Liberal MP James Fleming, was investigating McLeod's removal. Fleming believed the reassignment amounted to intimidation of a reporter doing her job. The Ontario Federation of Labour protested on McLeod's behalf against what they called political intervention. Days after being fired, McLeod won the Edward J. Hayes Memorial Ontario award for beat-reporting.

The work she created in her final year at the Times won the beat category, at the Western Ontario Newspaper Award.

She and her husband founded The Bramptonian, a short-lived local newspaper covering Brampton, in 1984

They were brought to the Toronto Sun in 1985, where she was the paper's education reporter and he worked for the business section. warned people against "multiculturalism gone haywire", and opposed the board's decision to organize a conference for students on apartheid in South Africa.

After being fired from the Sun, she moved to Kingston, Ontario for three years where she worked as a reporter and columnist for the Kingston Whig-Standard.

Our Toronto Free Press and Canada Free Press In 1991, she returned to Toronto and founded, with help from then-city councillor Tony O'Donohue, Our Toronto, a free monthly newspaper that printed and distributed 100,000 copies. Our Toronto Free Press, which as a free-distribution monthly newspaper with a right-wing stance, and which originally focussed on municipal politics and local issues. It was funded by advertising and from McLeod's personal savings; it was published out of her "modest" apartment.

In the 2000s, Our Toronto Free Press evolved into the Canada Free Press, which is now published online only.