Sun milestones

• Click on invitation for larger type

It is 35 days and counting to the Toronto Sun's 40th anniversary and not a peep about how Sun Media will mark another tabloid milestone for current and previous employees.

A couple of insiders at 333 say they have a feeling it will be beers at Betty's across from their now-rented newsroom. 

It is not that the Sun is destitute and losing money. It isn't. PKP just doesn't see any advantage in spending money to reward employees for any reason, let alone surviving the Quebecor carnage to reach year 40.

The Toronto Sun was only 20 when it marked that milestone with an anniversary party at the SkyDome, thrown by Doug Creighton, Peter Worthington and Don Hunt, that is still being talked about 20 years later.

Former Toronto Sun employees working at other Suns were flown in for the party, a surreal event that at times - think merry-go-round - felt like the set of a Fellini movie.

The glory years? You betcha.

The cost of the heart-felt thank you party must have shaken bean counters to the core. Was it a contributing factor that led to Creighton's ouster a year later? We have no doubt it was on the checklist of shareholder-obsessed board members.

Why spend money to reward employees for making the company millions? Newspaper people like Creighton and Worthington understood the dividends for rewarding the people who helped make the Sun a success. Loyalty, a sense of reward for dedication to the job etc.

Since Doug's departure, it has been a steady stream of people undermining what he and 61 other former Telegram employees and the hundreds the hundreds who followed created.

Since 1999, Quebecor has been sucking the life out of the Suns, employee by employee, benefit by benefit, building by building.

The 40th appears to be a dud, left to a few Day Oners to have brunch, not an open house affair for all who helped the Toronto Sun when it was rising.

But we do have the 20th to remember.