Mike Toth can’t compete with today’s great athletes in Mississauga. But then, Mississauga’s great athletes might not be competing if it hadn’t been for Mike Toth. If they gave out medals for establishing the importance of sports in our city, he would win two gold medals — one as a builder, the second as a journalist.

     He was among the driving forces and chair of the committee that established the Mississauga Sports Hall of Fame. And as a journalist, his name was synonymous with The Mississauga News for nearly 20 years (1974-’92), first as a sports editor then editor. He was named Canada’s Sportswriter of the Year in 1978 as chosen by the Sports Federation of Canada.

  

     In fact, a lot of what we take for granted on the Mississauga sports scene today, all started with Toth’s hard work. He has been on the Mississauga Sports Celebrities Dinner committee since its inception, and was its chair for two years. There might not be a Mississauga Sports Council if he wasn’t there to chair the steering committee that established its mandate. 

     He was a founding member of the Mississauga Sports Complex Foundation and was a member of the Peel Olympic Committee, raising funds to assist promising amateur athletes of the region.

     Toth was also a member of the Olympic Organizing Committee of Peel that was part of the structure bidding to bring the ‘96 Olympics to Toronto and vicinity. Not that Toth wasn’t an athlete in his day. He left behind a promising soccer and table tennis career when he escaped to freedom after the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. He learned to speak and write in English — while retaining his lovable Hungarian accent AND temper — and broke into journalism in Vancouver with The Province. He also did work for the Vancouver Times and Canadian Press. He came to Toronto in 1967 as editor of the North American Soccer News, and later edited Tele-Sport. He spent two years as public relations director for Steve Stavro’s soccer operation promoting big-time international matches, at the time the only man in Canada employed full time in soccer. Stavro went on to bigger and richer things — like making millions from food stores and as owner of a hockey club called the Toronto Maple Leafs — while Mike took on other journalistic challenges. He was named sports editor of the Mississauga Times in 1971 and took over the same job at The Mississauga News in 1974. 

     During that time, he wrote award winning stories from the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, and was winner of the Ontario Gymnastic Federation’s Media Award. Meanwhile, he was organizing, building, twisting politicians’ arms and establishing Mississauga as a training ground for some of the finest amateur and professional athletes in the world.