Sun Media axes Mark Bonokoski

Mark Bonokoski, a Sun legend since 1974 and one of the original members of the Windsor Mafia, is one of the 360 layoff casualties announced yesterday.

Say it ain't so, Bono. But, unfortunately, it is. Here is what he had to say on Facebook.

"Black Tuesday: It was difficult to choose which media report to run under this post, so I chose one from the mid-West. A halfway point perhaps.

"Anyhow, unmentioned in any news reports thus far is that I. too, was relieved of my duties this morning (via a phone call) as Sun Media's national editorial writer and columnist.

"Since my Sun Media email account has already been disabled (as per protocol), I can be reached at markbonokoski@gmail.com

"PS: Any and all job offers will be appreciated. My tank is still full and I am running on all cylinders.

"To my Sun colleagues, thanks for the time, the space and the friendships. You are unrivaled." 

In our books, there was no finer a writer than Mark when he wrote about everyday people in the Toronto Sun over the decades.  It earned him wide readership and numerous awards.

This is the Toronto Sun Family profile written in 2006 before Mark was named national editorial writer/columnist:

Mark Bonokoski
1974 -
Mark Bonokoski arrived at the Toronto Sun in 1974 as a member of the Windsor (Star) Mafia. He became news columnist in 1977. Mark was the first Toronto journalist to write about Nova Scotia's brutal Billy Stafford, who abused his commonlaw wife, Jane Hurshman, until she shot him dead. (Former Sun staffer Brian Vallee later wrote the acclaimed book Life With Billy.) Mark was transferred to London as the Sun's European bureau chief in 1988 and the award-winning staffer filed copy from the shadow of the Berlin Wall the night it fell in November of 1989. In 1991, he was appointed Editor of the Ottawa Sun and became Publisher and CEO of the Ottawa Sun in 1997. In 1999, he walked the plank and rose as Sun Media's national affairs columnist in Ottawa. He left the Sun (stupidly, as he puts it) in 2000 to pursue a career as a federal politician, crashed and burned. Mark returned to the Toronto Sun as a columnist in 2002, where he was welcomed back with three Dunlop Awards and a National Newspaper Award nomination. Columns he has penned in the past two years about the Deering sisters of Port Perry, Erica and Shannon, helped raise more than $50,000 from readers for experimental stem-cell surgeries in China. The sisters were left quadriplegics in an August 2004 car accident. That is the impact of the heart-felt words of a veteran Sun columnist. He cared in 1974 when hired by the Sun and he still cares 32 years later. 

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