Paul Woods

Known to fans of Canadian football as a historian of the sport, Paul Woods combines the interviewing, writing, editing, and research skills of a meticulous journalist with the perspective and passion of a diehard fan.

Woods has worked at a national level in journalism for four decades, starting as a reporter and working up through roles as an editor, a newsroom manager and a senior executive. Currently Executive Director of the National Newspaper Awards, he served previously as Executive Editor of the Toronto Star and Director of Human Resources for the Canadian Press news agency (CP). Woods has also taught journalism in the Faculty of Communications and Design at Ryerson University, including an appointment as Rogers Distinguished Visiting Professor in 2012-13.

He is the author of three books about slices of Canadian history and culture:

• Year of the Rocket: John Candy, Wayne Gretzky, a Crooked Tycoon, and the Craziest Season in Football History (2021) tells the amazing tale of the 1991 Toronto Argonauts. That was the most magical, electrifying, and improbable year in nearly a century and a half of Argo football. Year of the Rocket is the product of four years of intensive research, including more than a hundred in-depth interviews.

• Bouncing Back: From National Joke to Grey Cup Champs (2013) is the inside story of the Toronto Argonauts’ rise to the Canadian Football League championship in 1983 after three decades of misery.

• Beads and Sequins: The Lewiscraft Story (2016) recounts the century-long history of a family-owned enterprise that mutated through four generations and multiple incarnations into one of Canada’s most iconic retail brands, before succumbing to the incursion of U.S.-based “big box” stores.