The first time I realized Bob MacDonald was more than words, a mob was angrily chanting his name.... Bob was more than just wor

Almost a decade ago, the Toronto Sun legend -- one of the city's most beloved columnists, who died yesterday at age 76 -- wasn't so popular with a group of vocal critics, gathered outside the paper's downtown headquarters.

Dozens of protesters waved placards and largely took over busy King St. E. Sun security had bolted the doors. Streetcar drivers looked worried as they stood on their brakes.

I and another writer went with him. Past the nervous security guards, and employees nosed up against windows, we headed for the doors on to King.

With not a hint of reservation, Bob walked through the main doors, stood in the street, among that crowd, and waited. And waited. Someone eventually screamed, "There he is."

As Bob flipped open his notepad, ready to ask his own questions, he simply said: "The same rights that allow you to stand out here and protest."

They weren't, it turned out, a violent lot. But what air had been in their tires, soon leaked out when the man they wanted to lynch decided to show up.

I never told him, I figured he could handle whatever they tossed at him. And I was more curious how many he would take down, if it ever came to that.

Because Bob MacDonald was never one to back down. Many more in our newspaper knew him better. But I always knew enough to boast that he was a man of rare conviction. A newspaperman willing to face the fire of his words.

He could bring you along to a small Nova Scotia skating pond for an afternoon of hockey, and, days later, chronicle the fall of the Soviet Empire.

He wrote it on Oct. 31, 1971 -- the day after the Toronto Telegram closed for good -- on the fifth-floor attic of the old Eclipse Whitewear building, that served as the Sun's first newsroom.

He had found his way into that newsroom, after almost two decades writing news -- as well as working in a steel plant, picking berries, climbing telephone poles and even playing hockey for hire.

"Since we would have no home delivery, we had to break stories day after day, to grab the attention of readers and keep them coming back," he wrote of the birth of a paper.

For the first day of the rising Sun, the first contact he called on was Max Henderson, the auditor-general of Canada. The result was a front-page story of a "$10-million Goof" -- how Pierre Trudeau's Liberal government had wasted a mint by selling Argentina jet fighters the feds had declared surplus. But the Canadian government soon realized they needed the planes and had to order new ones.

Bob went on to become one of the first true celebrities at the paper -- taking readers on journeys to hunt down FLQ separatist terrorists, to inside devil-worshipping cults getting government grants to cabinet scandals.

From our internal library, we can call up his work throughout the decades. His copy from a 1991 coal mine disaster in Nova Scotia is chilling in detail and honest storytelling.

He had a knack not only for getting under the skin of the powerful -- including some newspaper owners and editors -- but becoming a part of the lives of the public.

In the early days of the paper, readers knit Bob -- and others in the newsroom -- socks and sent in baked goods. They believed legendary columnist Paul Rimstead when he wrote staff at the paper were in the poor house.

In recent years, he was one of the paper's toughest watchdogs on terrorism. His was the voice of a seasoned fighter, who knew something about right and wrong.

If there is a character trademark of the coal mining sons of that province, it is a social mischievousness melded with a strong-willed sense of public good. By birth, they know how to stir the pot. And Bob did that well.

In 1998, as archrivals at the Toronto Star were trying to buy this paper, Bob, along with fellow scribe Joe Warmington, launched a campaign of their own.

For years, I sat beside his journalist daughter, Moira, and watched their interaction, which went beyond a father and child, into the arena of friends and respected peers.

For a column last Father's Day, Bob wrote about the goodness of his dad, Dan William MacDonald. A man who raised Bob, his older brother, Russell, and their sister, Betty, during the Great Depression. He was Bob's first hero.

Bob's mother was chronically ill, from the time he was 4 years old, so his father's honesty and strength -- Dan MacDonald died at 60 -- had a profound impact.

When he was about 6, Bob tried to steal some fish hooks from a local department store. His father made him take them back and apologize to the clerk.

There are many kinds of journalists. Some are in waiting -- to write a novel, or become an editor or get a better paying job in public relations. Then there are the hardcore scribes -- writers who, if it came down to it, would likely tap out their work for a sandwich and a cot to sleep on.

That was Bob MacDonald. He was so determined, that immediately after a 1998 quadruple heart bypass -- the prize after a career of indulging in the ingredients of every newsroom; fast food, stress, long hours and no time to exercise -- he wrote a first-hand account of medical cutbacks.

That was when he was allowed to listen on the family's tabletop Philco radio to Foster Hewitt and his play-by-play broadcast from Maple Leaf Gardens in far-off Toronto.

During the day, he would do his chores, before putting on his skates and grabbing his hockey stick to head for the rink for hours of playing shinny with the neighbourhood kids. Then, after supper -- often baked beans and steamed Boston brown bread -- it was bath time. Then Hockey Night in Canada.

"Finally, scrubbed and in my pajamas, I was allowed to head for the living room radio with its exciting Hewitt voice and the sound of the crowd from that distant, magical building called Maple Leaf Gardens," he wrote of the sport.

"He was a finesse player. He was very good at breaking up the opposition's attacks and then counter-opposing by passing the puck to his forwards,'' his fellow teammate, Connie MacNeil, once recalled.

Moira once wrote: "My mother, Nellie-Joe, has never been too thrilled when he's come home with his leg in a cast or his collar bone broken by an errant puck.

"As anyone who knows him will attest, he pursues a story the way he pursues the puck: With unflagging determination and settling for nothing less than the goal."

Today, we are poorer for the loss of a man who spent his life making sure you got the full story. But we are richer for the example he set for those who still try to get that job done.

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