Jack Todd (journalist)


Jack Todd has been a sports columnist for the Montreal Gazette since 1986. Todd was an American citizen who deserted from the U.S. Army to avoid being sent to fight during the Vietnam War. He is now a Canadian citizen.
Todd was born in the United States, and graduated from the University of Nebraska.
He worked as a journalist for the Akron Beacon-Journal, the Detroit Free Press, and the Miami Herald. He deserted from the U.S. Army in 1969 to avoid being sent to Vietnam and settled in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Since moving to Canada, he has worked for the Vancouver Sun, Radio Canada International, and the Gazette.
In 2001, he published a memoir, telling the story of his desertion. The Canadian title is The Taste of Metal, while the U.S. title is Desertion: In the Time of Vietnam.
In 2008, he published his first work of fiction, Sun Going Down, a novel on the opening of the American West based on his family history as constituted from letters and diaries. It was followed in 2010 with Come Again No More, which follows the family through the Great Depression. The final work in the trilogy, "Rain Falls Like Mercy", was published in 2011. He was interviewed for Ken Burns' 2017 miniseries The Vietnam War.